Cord Blood Stem Cells Information

If ordinary skin can be turned into stem cells why do we need embrionic stem cells?

Why give an unborn baby a death sentence if there are better alterNatives? Isn't the ethical choice to explore the alternatives? Alan Boyle, “Skin Cells Made to Mimic Stem Cells,” msnbc.com, November 20, 2007. Back Junying Yu et al., “Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Somatic Cells,” Sciencexpress, November 20, 2007. Back Kazutoshi Takahashi et al., “Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors,” Cell 131 (2007):1–12. Back

Public Comments

1. i dont think thats saying that you can turn skin cells into stem cells, it only says "skins cells made to mimic stem cells". last i heard it was not possible to take a cell that has been differentiated to go back to being a stem cell. i dont know though, maybe theyre successfully working on that.
2. I believe your talking about the recent discovery - but they're still not sure that the "ordinary skin into stem cell" technique works yet - there is still a great deal of research to do regarding it. Probably how it works is a modification of the signaling pathways leading to differentiation - but as the article says - there may be a chance of the cell being oncogenic (cancerous). As for the ethics of stem cells... thats an entire different debate. Certainly this new technique would 'bypass' many of the ethical problems associated with culturing stem cells from embryos - but until its perfected - embryonic stem cells may still be used and is ethically debatable For more info refer to the book: Health Care Ethics In Canada - Chapter 8 - Research Involing Humans - Pg 331 - Article by Soren Holm "going to the roots of the stem cell controversy"
3. I dont know about ordinary skin cells, but I do know stem cells can be collected and is collected and used from a babys cord blood and placenta after birth, and adults peripheal blood stream with no harm. These methods have been used for a while, and are used when harvesting cells for a stem cell/bone marrow transplant (they rarely take actual marrow anymore, rather they harvest stem cells from the blood (it is a type of white blood cell) and cord blood/placenta)