Unfortunately, its adult *mouse* stem cells, used to grow *mouse* teeth.
Still, if the technique can be ported to humans then we may not need
dentures in the future.
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Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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I hear the NHLPA is going to make a huge investment in this research.
I can’t wait! I hate flossing! But I’m cheap too, so I guess I better stick with it for now.
God willing more people will pay attention to adult stem cell research.
More news:
major clinical trial to investigate if adult stem cells can be safely used to treat multiple sclerosis source
Vatican funding ethical stem cell research by $1M source
Should we support adult stem cells research or embryonic stem cells research ? Hum, let’s see… Adult stem cells research is moral and useful, whereas embryonic stem cells research is immoral and completely useless. What to do, what to do ???
What do you say to people who note that we wouldn’t even know about adult stem cells except for research on embryonic stem cells?
I think scientists knew of the existence of adult stem cells long before any research was done on embryonic stem cells.
Experimenting on human embryos is a new area of research and is thus ‘exciting’. In theory, embryonic cells do offer greater potential, because an embryo is totipotent rather than pleuripotent (as adult stem-cells are).
But, almost all the existing (eg bone marrow transplant) and nearly-ready therapies use non-embryonic stem cells. It is important to point out this fact to those who are tempted by a pragmatic/utilitarian argument that good ends justifies evil means.
Testing drugs on or harvesting organs from adult humans would be even more immediately effective therapies, but we consider this an immoral means (even on prisoners), even though it would have extremely beneficial ends.
Benjamin Baxter, some might claim that embryonic research has enabled non-embryonic research. I don’t know the details, but I expect both areas of research informs the other. I would reply that if you have to research on embryos, they don’t have to be human embryos. It is their humanity not their embryonicity which is the moral issue, although their embryonicity might be the main research interest.
Bill912, I do not know which types of stem cells were known first – if you do know I would be interested. In my biological studies I remember that embryonic differentiation into the different cell lines was presented as the ‘miracle’, with sci-fi talk of possible therapies. Later on I discovered that adults also had stem cells. It might just have been the specialisms of my professors though.
I suspect the continued funding of embryonic stem cells is more an ideological front to continue legitimizing abortion by continuing to describe embryos of being of insignificance and just a commodity.
Though I have my own hypothetical science fiction theories as to what they are after. One thing adult stem cells are is they are mature and age faster. Embryonic stem cells are young, they’ll continue to divide for a long time before reaching their limit.
Now say they find a way to make organs etc from foreign tissue embryonic stem cells somehow usable in our bodies, we could hypothetically produce very long lasting organs, perhaps even replace all our aging organs with new ones… in other words… perhaps they believe they’ll find a way to biological immortality and perpetually delay death itself… So like the pagans sacrificing people on the altars to steal their lives for themselves to live forever, immoral scientists today are seeking to do the same and combined with genetic engineering and chimeras, seek to become something other than human and become like gods, or rather the same as the demons in hell who cast off the image of God they hated to take on the characteristics of the beasts. So it’s the same old same old… I always wanted to write a science fiction story/comic book about this idea of mine… Though I fear that the truth may be stranger than my fiction…