A New Form of Stem-Cell Engineering Raises Ethical Questions - The New York Times - 0 views
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researchers at Harvard Medical School said it was time to ponder a startling new prospect: synthetic embryos.
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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
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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.
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This triggered communication by the cells, and they organized themselves into the arrangement found in an early mouse embryo.
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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.
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Spotting a primitive streak is easy. Determining whether a collection of neurons connected to other tissues in a dish can feel pain is not.
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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?