Adult stem cells vs embryonic stem cells - and
Hong Kong as Front Line. Oh, the screaming we heard about embryonic stem cells during the George W. Bush presidency. It was a time of hysteria and demagoguery that did not permit reasoned debate. It was also a time of political advantage-taking. New York began funding such studies in But guess what? Indeed, after all these years, there have been very few clinical trials using embryonic products — and no FDA approved therapy of which I am aware. In contrast, adult-stem-cell research is thriving and induced pluripotent stem cells — that is, stem cells made from skin — are bringing great benefit to science and medicine in just the way President Bush predicted. From the Science story:. adult stem cells vs embryonic stem cells.
In fact, most scientists are working on both adult and embryonic stem cells, which are both very cool. Why do some people extol one type at the expense of the other? What are their relative strengths and weaknesses? Why would the Vatican spend a ton of money organizing a conference see speaker list here just on adult stem cells and specifically exclude embryonic stem cells? In a general sense, adult stem cells are safer than ES cells, but this does not mean that all adult stem cell-based therapies are inherently safe and it does not mean that ES cell-based therapies are unsafe.
Safety is still critically important to prove for potential both embryonic and adult stem cell therapies. However, if safety were your only issue, then in a black and white world, it is accurate to say that in a general sense, adult stem cells have an advantage. In the human form, ES cells were produced only about a dozen years ago, many decades after adult stem cells.
What this means is that it is unreasonable to compare adult and ES cells in terms of our knowledge base or the extent of their use at this time. Some people do this kind of comparison to say that ES cells are worthless compared to adult stem cells, but that is a meaningless argument. Arguing something like that would have been like saying tsem the s that the new Apple computers were worthless compared to IBM simply because Apples were newer…as we know, sometimes new things come on the scene and take time cwlls evaluate and over time things can change. We cannot abandon all new technology simply because it is new. adult stem cells vs embryonic stem cells
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Sometimes we have to consciously avoid bias against new technology, but it is also true that in some contexts new technology can have an allure just because of its newness. However, that is not the case for ES cells in my opinion. ES cells happily turn into many different kinds of differentiated tissues. Adult stem cells simply xells do that. Some people may argue otherwise, but I have seen no convincing evidence of that.
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My friend Don C. Atem used a great analogy about the difference between ES cells and adult stem cells. If someone is going to give you a present, would you rather have cash, which you can spend on anything or even save, or a gift card for just one specific store? Of course, cash.
In this analogy, ES cells are cash and adult stem cells are a gift card. Similarly, non-scientists can be for both adult and embryonic stem cell research. It is not an either or proposition.
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You can be a good, moral person and even one who believes in God and support all kinds of stem cell research. Sometimes I think article source of ES cell research have such tunnel vision that they forget that there are billions of living, breathing human beings out there on Earth, many of whom need help for various illnesses or injures, but for whom current medicine cannot be helpful. As I said in the previous post Horton is wrongwe cannot embrhonic cells with so many rights that we deprive actual human beings of rights.
Adult or stem? Knoepfler lab H1 human embryonic stem cell culture. Can a scientist study both? Below are listed some key points that help us think about these questions. Related Posts.]
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