Stem Cell Revival: The 1990s are Back
By New Scientist,
New Scientist
| 04. 30. 2014
"SINCE what works in sheep is likely to be possible in humans, we are suddenly propelled right past the imagined techniques of Brave New World." That was how New Scientist greeted the news, in March 1997, of the creation of Dolly the cloned sheep.
It has taken longer than expected. More than 17 years later, what worked in sheep finally appears to be working in humans (see "Insulin-making cells created by Dolly-cloning method"). This is a potentially major medical breakthrough, but no longer feels as challenging as it once did. In fact, after endless hope, hype and failure, it is hard to feel there is anything brave or new in this line of research.
To say stem cell science has a chequered past would be an understatement. Those with long memories will recall that South Korea's fallen stem-cell hero Woo Suk Hwang falsely claimed to have replicated the Dolly technique in humans in 2005.
Controversy has dogged the field ever since. Because the Dolly technique involves the destruction of human embryos, its ethical dimensions have been...
Related Articles
By Priyanka Runwal, Chemical and Engineering News | 08.05.2024
Saritee Sanodiya, 26, has spent countless days wondering if she’ll ever live a “normal” life. Growing up, Sanodiya often missed school, frequenting the hospital for sudden, life-threatening drops in her hemoglobin levels and excruciating pain in her joints. High fever...
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Sarah Kliff and Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times | 07.15.2024