Mouse Stem Cells Made Without Harm to Embryos
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WASHINGTON – Two teams of scientists provided the first definitive evidence Sunday that embryonic stem cells can be grown in laboratory dishes without harming healthy embryos, an advance that some scientists and philosophers believe could make the medically promising field more politically and ethically acceptable.
The work, done with mouse cells, generated several colonies of mouse embryonic stem cells without destroying any embryos that otherwise could have developed into mice.
If the new approaches were to work with human cells, as many scientists suspect, they could help defuse a moral maelstrom that has raged since human embryonic stem cells were discovered seven years ago. But the new techniques raise ethical issues of their own.
Stem cells from days-old human embryos can morph into virtually every kind of tissue, including nerves to replace those destroyed by spinal injuries and cardiac muscle to fill in for cells lost in a heart attack. Scientists see stem cells as the key to a new era of regenerative medicine.
Until now, however, the only way to get these cells was to destroy young embryos – which are deemed by some people as “the youngest members of the human family” and deserving of certain human rights.
The new work suggests an alternative might be possible. “This establishes the scientific feasibility of the idea that you can obtain fully functional embryonic stem cells from an entity that is not a natural, normal embryo,” a Stanford University professor, William Hurlbut, said.