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dicindioha

A New Form of Stem-Cell Engineering Raises Ethical Questions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-synthetic-embryos-sheefs.html

ESCdevelopment ethics

shared by dicindioha on 24 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • researchers at Harvard Medical School said it was time to ponder a startling new prospect: synthetic embryos.
  • They are starting to assemble stem cells that can organize themselves into embryolike structures.
  • But in the future, they may develop into far more complex forms, the researchers said, such as a beating human heart connected to a rudimentary brain, all created from stem cells
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Whatever else, it is sure to unnerve most of us.
  • Scientists, for example, should never create a Sheef that feels pain.
  • Scientists began grappling with the ethics of lab-raised embryos more than four decades ago.
  • In 1979, a federal advisory board recommended that the cutoff should be 14 days.
  • The embryonic cells develop into three types, called germ layers. Each of those germ layers goes on to produce all the body’s tissues and organs.
  • This triggered communication by the cells, and they organized themselves into the arrangement found in an early mouse embryo.
  • Even if ethicists do manage to agree on certain limits, Paul S. Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, Davis, wondered how easy it would be for scientists to know if they had crossed them.
  • Spotting a primitive streak is easy. Determining whether a collection of neurons connected to other tissues in a dish can feel pain is not.
  • dicindioha on 24 Mar 17
     
    Scientists wonder about the response in terms of ethics to their new idea and possibility of synthetic embryos. They might be able to grow into structures that could help in the human body, but to what extent would they stop growing, or would they feel pain? Are we creating life?... just to destroy it?
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