Progress on Regressing Adult Cells into ES Cells
Nature is reporting that scientists may be close to creating a protein "elixer" that would regress adult cells to an embryonic pluripotent state. According to the report, "Doctors might be able to take a simple biopsy of cells from a patient and reprogramme them, using one set of proteins to first transform them into embryonic stem cells, and then another to coax them into growing new blood, pancreas or other tissue."
If these proteins can applied as scientists hope, it would do away with the need to clone human life for use in ESC treatments. For all the hoopla by politicians and media, we may actually find a scientific way out of our moral dilemma. As one scientist put it, "Obviously that's where the field is really headed. It's a terribly exciting time."
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:37 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Even if such promising research yields that escape from the moral dilemma, there may be some who will always support ES cell research. If they do, it will be in part because they're heavily invested in the work, regardless of its moral or ethical implications. Many researchers will see their careers and reputations as so closely tied to ES cell research that the field will die hard if at all.
As more scientists become involved in adult and embryonic stem cell research, the scientific community may find itself in the middle of an arms race with two sides working to render the opponent's paradigm obsolete. The side that "loses" the race may establish a history of precedents, accumulating enough potentially valuable findings to keep it alive as a minor paradigm.
So even if adult stem cell research allows an ethical escape, the bottom may have already fallen out from under much of the scientific community. That's probably an ongoing situation we're just going to have to deal with, caused by previous failures to deal with the ethical implications of our development and use of technology.
Post a Comment
<< Home