Obama to reverse embryonic stem cell ban

To my understanding, the main appeal of embryonic stem cells is that they can be developed into any tissue, whereas adult stem cells are 'set' and so are not as flexible.

I'm not sure that it isn't possible to regress adult cells to an undifferentiated state so they are as good to use as embryonic cells. The popular media seems to assert that but is vague. I suspect the advantages of embryonic cells are they are economically easier to harvest, and I believe some medical treatments (neurological, CNS) are already known to work using embryonic cells.
 
To my understanding, the main appeal of embryonic stem cells is that they can be developed into any tissue, whereas adult stem cells are 'set' and so are not as flexible.

Obviously you have not been paying attention to proper research that has been done on this issue.
Single factor converts adult stem cells into embryonic-like stem cells
The simple recipe scientists earlier discovered for making adult stem cells behave like embryonic-like stem cells just got even simpler. A new report in the February 6th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows for the first time that neural stem cells taken from adult mice can take on the characteristics of embryonic stem cells with the addition of a single transcription factor. Transcription factors are genes that control the activity of other genes.

The discovery follows a 2006 report also in the journal Cell that showed that the introduction of four ingredients could transform differentiated cells taken from adult mice into "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS) with the physical, growth, and genetic characteristics typical of embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent refers to the ability to differentiate into most other cell types. The same recipe was later shown to work with human skin cells as well.
The part in bold shows what we can be working with, The advantages of working with adult cells is that they alredy have the genetic make up of the person, so when you re-inject the cells back into the body, the body already recognises them and will not reject them. Also there is the issue of trying to turn off embryonic stem cells, since there are many instances of tumours forming. This is a decision of hype over science. I shall say it as the audacity of hope.
 
Yaaay now we can pull the souls out of unborn babies with black sorcery and forge them into medicine. :D
 
California wasted 4 billion dollars on this and now crying to the federal government for bail out.
 
classical_hero said:
Obviously you have not been paying attention to proper research that has been done on this issue. ...
Obviously. All ahead full!
 
Yeah, it was replaced with the Wr on the Economy.

That is one war George W. Bush can accurately use the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.
 
Oh, I'm all for stem cell research -- just not for it being funded by the federal government.

I can understand your position. I disagree that the feds shouldn't be funding scientific research, but we don't need to go into this deeply.

The advantage Obama has is that he can lift the restriction on ESC research without actually increasing federal funds into ESC research. The way the ban was set up really hampered the researchers, because if they already had fancy, high-tech, equipment in their labs, they could not use that (already purchased) equipment to study a variety of new cell lines. They could only work in animals, or in established lines. Heck, Classical Hero mentioned iPS lines, suggesting they were just as good as ESC (which is a tough claim to make if you're not allowed to do experiments on ESC!), so they could also work using technology discovered in Japan.

So, with the lifting of this ban, established researchers are now going to be able to migrate any promising results seen in the established lines, or in animal models, to human ESC. That's really huge, because now they can use equipment they'd already bought. They can replicate experiments using a larger number of test samples, and they can investigate events which might not have been apparent in the established lines

The problem with Bush's ban, is that a researcher would need to build an entirely new lab in order to study ESC (or, even more frustratingly, toss out equipment purchased with Fed dollars, and rebuy equipment with other dollars). A lot of equipment is too expensive for one lab (e.g., laser-scanning confocal microscopes), and so labs would often pool resources to purchase these. If even ONE lab had used federal dollars for the microscope, none of the labs would have been able to use the equipment to study ESC. They could take high quality images of their animal cells, but not their human cells, etc. What makes matters even worse is if a building had been partially funded by the feds. They had to construct entirely new buildings.

The stem cell research field is one of the hottest and most-promising fields in biotech. And the problems they're dealing with are huge too. We need all the resources we can get. If Obama does this reversal, he needn't add more resources, because he's decreasing the cost of currently-existing resources. Of course, I'd be happy if the feds increased money. Science is a certainly a shovel-ready stimulus project.

edit: a for a more general comment, since I'm Mr. Links, here's a talk (video) regarding the science and utility of stem cell research (as it applies to the brain) from one of the world's most respected neural stem cell researchers.
http://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.asp?showID=9136
 
Awesome. Finally we can stop throwing something extremely useful into garbage cans.

Of course, now we have to deal with throwing away other useful things, namely money, something the feds just love to throw away to no end.
 
Awesome. Finally we can stop throwing something extremely useful into garbage cans.

That's a good point. There were many, many embryos which people would have donated to science, instead of destroying. And many of those people were actually unwilling to generate 'snowflake children' with those embryos.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29586269/
The ban has been lifted! :thumbsup:

There's an additional benefit, too. Now that the feds can fund some of this research, those research can be made available for open-source reporting. This means that regular people will be able to get free access to those articles. This means that people can read primary research results, and help stimulate even more innovation to get out of the recession.
 
There's the change we've been hoping for!

Spoiler :
Oh, I'm all for stem cell research -- just not for it being funded by the federal government.
Why? The US's position as the number one government sponsor of research and development is one of the reasons for its leadership in science and technology.
 
Update

So, it turns out that the ban is lifted for cells from fertility clinics that were slated for disposal anyway, and not lifted for the creation of new cell lines. Basically, it's turning garbage into gold, and is not actually creating more embryonic death than is already happening.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30266108/

Quite frankly, I think that this is a hell of a compromise.
 
Why? The US's position as the number one government sponsor of research and development is one of the reasons for its leadership in science and technology.

Not really. The real reason the US leads in R&D is simple arithmetic. It has the greatest GDP.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/e...-economy-research-development-expenditure-gdp

Not to mention, the vast majority of the federal research money goes towards military research and development, unlike most of the other countries in the chart.

And the reason it leads in medical research is pure greed. With the patent laws and no governmental restrictions on making drugs generic after a specific period of time as there are in other countries, it makes much more economic sense to do the R&D in US-based companies than elsewhere.

But the Obama administration is changing that to some extent with some of the money from the stimulus package:

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE51G6FW20090217

The $787 billion economic stimulus measure President Barack Obama signed on Tuesday includes $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, with more than $8 billion of it to fund medical studies and the rest to upgrade research facilities.

Leaders in the research community said they expect money to go to scientists looking for better ways to treat cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, arthritis, Parkinson's disease and other conditions.

"We have been working around the clock to prepare for this possibility, to make the most effective, transparent and immediate use of these extraordinary resources," acting NIH Director Dr. Raynard Kington said in an e-mail.

NIH funding is the lifeblood of much U.S. medical research. NIH funding was doubled from 1998 to 2003 in a push started during the Clinton administration, but stayed flat for the past six years under the Bush administration.

The non-military pure science dark ages in the US may indeed be finally coming to an end.
 
No! Human cloning is immoral, it makes Jesus cry! Stop the abomination! :mad:

(I kinda liked it when the US shot itself in the leg... :mischief: )
 
Good stuff. Funny how pro-lifers are against this research which can bring an end to so many living people's suffering.

I'm a pro-lifer and I'm not against embryonic stem cell research. You do know that abortion clinics do not supply the research. You can't be sure of the quality of an aborted fetus, the stem cells come from other means.
 
Quite a bit of research is done using aborted fetuses, but they're not that easy to get, and the regulations around their use are onerous.
 
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