The dark ages are over!

[Requia ☣]

New stem cell lines have finally been approved.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35257_New_Embryonic_Stem_Cell_Lines_Approved

[Remington]

Not if I have anything to say about it.
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A New American Dark Age: Vote Palin/Satan 2012!

[Iason Ouabache]

It's about fucking time. If Bush hadn't been so concerned about Snowflake Babies we would have cured Alzheimer's by now.

[Triple Zero]

It's about fucking time. If Bush hadn't been so concerned about Snowflake Babies we would have cured Alzheimer's by now.

Seriously????

I thought it was kind of an unstoppable degenerative process that would happen sooner or later to anyone, except not much people live to 120.

But

But there's possibility of curing Alzheimer's via Stem Cell research?? Cause I fucking HATE that disease. Sure, cancer's bad, and we're working really hard on it. But Alzheimer's is probably the single hesitation I have about wanting to live really really long.

I gotta ask my dad about this (neuropsychologist, works with demented people a lot) because fuck if some fundie religious idea is gonna stunt that research.

Also I gotta read up on what Stem Cell research actually does and why people think it's bad. It's about experimenting with a fertilized egg cell right? Like after it has divided a couple of times, you have an embryonic clump of cells that haven't really decided yet what kind of cell they're going to be and as long as they keep being generic cells, they don't "age" or something?

Can someone fill this in with some more specifics?

Cause if that's it, myeah, I do kind of wonder, it forces one to ask tough questions on whether humans have a soul and when this soul starts to appear, right? I mean, aborting a foetus is one thing, because it is (usually) an informed (and really tough) decision. But I can understand some people would have issues with using something that could potentially become a living human being, using it as a resource. It's different cause abortion says "we don't want this particular one", versus "we need to harvest embryonic matter".
I think I would personally be okay with it, but I could kind of understand why some people would feel wrong about it.

UNLESS I am completely misinformed and whatever I just wrote above here is based on rumours, and somebody please fill me in with the correct story?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's about fucking time. If Bush hadn't been so concerned about Snowflake Babies we would have cured Alzheimer's by now.

Seriously????

I thought it was kind of an unstoppable degenerative process that would happen sooner or later to anyone, except not much people live to 120.

But

But there's possibility of curing Alzheimer's via Stem Cell research?? Cause I fucking HATE that disease. Sure, cancer's bad, and we're working really hard on it. But Alzheimer's is probably the single hesitation I have about wanting to live really really long.

I gotta ask my dad about this (neuropsychologist, works with demented people a lot) because fuck if some fundie religious idea is gonna stunt that research.

Also I gotta read up on what Stem Cell research actually does and why people think it's bad. It's about experimenting with a fertilized egg cell right? Like after it has divided a couple of times, you have an embryonic clump of cells that haven't really decided yet what kind of cell they're going to be and as long as they keep being generic cells, they don't "age" or something?

Can someone fill this in with some more specifics?

Cause if that's it, myeah, I do kind of wonder, it forces one to ask tough questions on whether humans have a soul and when this soul starts to appear, right? I mean, aborting a foetus is one thing, because it is (usually) an informed (and really tough) decision. But I can understand some people would have issues with using something that could potentially become a living human being, using it as a resource. It's different cause abortion says "we don't want this particular one", versus "we need to harvest embryonic matter".
I think I would personally be okay with it, but I could kind of understand why some people would feel wrong about it.

UNLESS I am completely misinformed and whatever I just wrote above here is based on rumours, and somebody please fill me in with the correct story?

Memory and cognitive degeneration happen to everyone with age, but that's not the same as Alzheimer's.

[LMNO]

In basic terms, stem cells have the ability to "become" any cell in the body, and aren't rejected by the immune system.  If, for example, you have lymphoma and you get all your bone marrow blasted out of you by radiation, if you shoot some stem cells in there, and they "become" bone marrow cells (yes, it's more complicated than that, and no, I won't go into it).

In this way, scientists hope (among other things) to develop ways to regenerate diseased or malformed tissue.  Imagine someone with liver damage getting an injection of stem cells, which repair and rejuvinate the liver. No need for a transplant. Or, healing a severed spinal cord.  One of the implications seems to be that someday, there is the possibility that we can halt or even reverse the aging process.  And yes, there is some speculation that it might help Alzheimer's patients.

It is considered "bad" by the fundies because the easiest way to get stem cells is from a blatocyst, i.e. a fertilized egg about 8 cells big.  The underlying fundamentalist belief system declares that since a fertilized egg can develop into a human, when we collect the stem cells, we are "aborting" a human life.


So yeah, you've pretty much got it right on the head.

[Cain]

As I understand it, the ban has meant countries like the UK and France have greater expertise than the US in stem cell research at the moment.

Who could've thought that advancing fundamentalist positions and attacking science would cause the USA to lag behind countries with much smaller budgets and population?

[Kai]

In basic terms, stem cells have the ability to "become" any cell in the body, and aren't rejected by the immune system.  If, for example, you have lymphoma and you get all your bone marrow blasted out of you by radiation, if you shoot some stem cells in there, and they "become" bone marrow cells (yes, it's more complicated than that, and no, I won't go into it).

Can I expand upon this? In essence, stem cells are undifferentiated, meaning they have all the background housekeeping genes running but none of the genes that cause specialized function. All cells are like that originally, in the embryo of every organism. Transcription factor cascades from the mother originally start the differentiation process, and the gradients lay down a grid on the body, which is further subdivided by more transcription factor gradients. The factors interact with the genome in such a way that they epigenetically turn on genes so that offspring cells will express those genes even without the presence of the transcription factors. If you put a stem cell next to a cell that is already expressing some sort of differentiation, the stem cell will take on the character of that differentiated cell due to the transcription and growth factors predominant. The stem cell isn't rejected by the organism because it lacks membrane tags which label it as "native" or "foreign", since only differentiated cells have these genes turned on.

Like everything I say, I may have screwed some part of this up, so don't take it as gospel. Just like everything else in science.

[LMNO]

^ What he said.

[Mangrove]

As I understand it, the ban has meant countries like the UK and France have greater expertise than the US in stem cell research at the moment.

Who could've thought that advancing fundamentalist positions and attacking science would cause the USA to lag behind countries with much smaller budgets and population?

From what I gather, while other countries have been busily working on stem cells, the USA did the following:

G H W Bush - Restrictions  (actually, might have been Reagan as well)
Clinton       - Lift restrictions
G W Bush   - Replace restrictions
B Obama    - Re-lift restrictions

It's hard to do consistant research when your timetable is based on election cycles 

[Remington]

^ What he said.

Indeed. Also worth noting is that early-embryonic cells produce telomerase, which regenerates the cell's telomeres (the "caps" on the end of a DNA strand that prevent it from fraying when it divides). This effectively stops the cellular clock, enabling them to divide as many times as they wish (similar to what cancer does). When coupled with stem cells' pluripotency*, this means that you can produce any type of tissue you want and keep culturing the original cells indefinitely. So long as they're kept in a stem cell state, they don't really age.

*Pluripotency = ability to become any one of the three germ layers (endoderm, mesoderm, ectoderm)

[Thurnez Isa]

As I understand it, the ban has meant countries like the UK and France have greater expertise than the US in stem cell research at the moment.

Who could've thought that advancing fundamentalist positions and attacking science would cause the USA to lag behind countries with much smaller budgets and population?

How much you wanna bet that most people will be willing to use any of the treatments developed from the research?

[LMNO]

As I understand it, the ban has meant countries like the UK and France have greater expertise than the US in stem cell research at the moment.

Who could've thought that advancing fundamentalist positions and attacking science would cause the USA to lag behind countries with much smaller budgets and population?

How much you wanna bet that most people will be willing to use any of the treatments developed from the research?

To their credit, a lot of the fundies understand this point, which is why they don't want it started in the first place.  It's one of those, "if there's a tool, it will eventually be used" cases.  It's easier to stop the technology from being created than to stop people using it once it's there.

I mean, if we were able to make a prototype of a weapon that could instantly liquify your organs and turn them into gasoline, it wouldn't be too long before our moral arguments were tossed out the window of our homeless-powered SUVs.

[Remington]

As I understand it, the ban has meant countries like the UK and France have greater expertise than the US in stem cell research at the moment.

Who could've thought that advancing fundamentalist positions and attacking science would cause the USA to lag behind countries with much smaller budgets and population?

How much you wanna bet that most people will be willing to use any of the treatments developed from the research?

To their credit, a lot of the fundies understand this point, which is why they don't want it started in the first place.  It's one of those, "if there's a tool, it will eventually be used" cases.  It's easier to stop the technology from being created than to stop people using it once it's there.

I mean, if we were able to make a prototype of a weapon that could instantly liquify your organs and turn them into gasoline, it wouldn't be too long before our moral arguments were tossed out the window of our homeless-powered SUVs.

Kind of like Alfred Nobel, the poor bastard. He envisioned dynamite as a way to revolutionize public service works... dams, things like that. Apparently he was quite surprised when the monkeys started using it to kill each other.

[Triple Zero]

Memory and cognitive degeneration happen to everyone with age, but that's not the same as Alzheimer's.

Right. Slipped my mind eh

So I wonder, can't they then figure out how to "un-cascade" regular cells then? Although that would be a lot more efford if the all-purpose cells are already available.