This is wonderful news. New technology not only saves us from the moral abyss of commoditizing human life and promises us an easier, cheaper way to save levels through the reprogramming of mature human cells.
Researchers Create Stem Cells Without Destroying Embryos.
Two separate teams of researchers say they have sidestepped the cloning method and reprogrammed mature human cells into a primordial, embryonic-like state. Those cells were then transformed into other tissue types, such as heart cells. The long-term hope is that such freshly-created tissue may, for example, be used to heal a heart-attack patient.
Unlike cloning, "the wonderful thing about this approach is that it's easy. You're going to see lots and lots of labs give it a try," predicts Robert Blelloch, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has performed his own reprogramming experiments.
Even Professor Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly, the famous cloned sheep, now shuns cloning.
he has decided not to pursue a licence to clone human embryos, which he was awarded just two years ago, as part of a drive to find new treatments for the devastating degenerative condition, Motor Neuron disease.
Prof Wilmut, who works at Edinburgh University, believes a rival method pioneered in Japan has better potential for making human embryonic cells which can be used to grow a patient's own cells and tissues for a vast range of treatments, from treating strokes to heart attacks and Parkinson's, and will be less controversial than the Dolly method, known as "nuclear transfer
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Most of his motivation is practical but he admits the Japanese approach is also "easier to accept socially."