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Is this the end of the debate for human embryo research?
Two landmark papers published this week have demonstrated that stem cells (“Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells”) capable of developing into a wide range of different tissues can be made from human skin cells. It has been claimed in some quarters that this breakthrough will end the debate about the use of embryonic stem cells. This news…
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Hands off my non-existent furniture!
The BBC recently reported that a Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing €4,000 worth of virtual furniture from virtual hotel rooms in Habbo Hotel, a social networking website.
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It is 10 O’clock, do you know what your cells are?
BBC File On 4 recently learned that “millions of pounds of charity donations and taxpayers’ money have been wasted on worthless cancer studies”. Labs have been using contaminated cell lines – rather than experimenting on the cancer cells they thought they had researchers have been studying other kinds of cancers or even mice cells. Perhaps…
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Imaging the Political Brain
In an interesting study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2006 but widely circulated earlier, Drew Westen and his colleagues at Emory University used fMRI to image the brains of committed Democrats and Republicans before the 2004 Presidential election. Although the subject matter was topical, the aim of the study was not to…
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Wilmut Gives Up Cloning
Despite the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem (HES) cells, many people believe that HES cell research should be banned, because the present method of extracting HES cells involves the destruction of the embryo, which for many is the beginning of a person. Elsewhere, I have argued for a compromise solution, what I call the…
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Lie-detection using functional MRI
Scientific American last week reported that psychiatrist Sean Spence and collaborators at the University of Sheffield are developing a lie-detection test based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. Using fMRI, Spence and colleagues are able to monitor blood flow to certain areas of the brain’s prefrontal cortex that are implicated in the regulation of…
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Good drug, bad drug?
News The Lancet has published two articles on the efficacy and safety of the anti-obesity drug Acomplia. This has been widely reported in the news as showing that patients using the drug have well over double the risk of depression and anxiety. This comes on top of US studies linking Acomplia to suicidal thoughts. Commentary…
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Reproductive Cloning Reconsidered
News The first successful cloning of primates makes the headlines in the scientific press today.(See also yesterday’s contribution by Dominic Wilkinson to this blog.) The researchers were successful in cloning a primate embryo by inserting a skin cell of a grown-up rhesus macaque into an egg of the same species which had the DNA removed.…
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Clone human embryos not monkey embryos
Research published today in the scientific journal Nature reports the first successful cloning of primates, and derivation of embryonic stem cells. This announcement brings us a significant step closer to therapeutic cloning in humans. The team at Oregon Health and State University used somatic cell nuclear transfer in Rhesus monkeys, the same technique that was…
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Home medical diagnosis
The earlier we can diagnose serious illnesses, the more we can do to cure them. Many advances have been made in diagnosis over the last century, but a serious bottleneck has remained. The patients need to come to a medical practitioner in order to be diagnosed and this means that they need to wait for…