Thursday, September 25, 2003

Stupid stem cell tricks

Drudge pointed to this article:
Embryonic stem cells have been encouraged to grow into sperm cells for the first time, Japanese scientists report.
At least they said "embryonic" which hopefully would give people a clue that they're not the only game in town.

But notice the priorities. We've heard so much about the potential of embryonic stem cells, and they want to use them for what? Yeah, that's a high priority. Why not generate appendixes while you're at it?

Of course appendixes aren't the worst or most useless things you could make out of embryonic stem cells - cancer would be worse. But that's been done - one of the problems with embryonic stem cells vs. those harvested from adults is that the embryonic ones are more likely to cause tumors. Somehow that never makes it into the coverage or the diatribes against Bush's policies.

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