Word: embryos
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...stirred them in with varying genetic cocktails made from a recipe list of 30 genes known to be important in development. When he hit on the right four genes and inserted them into the cells aboard retroviruses, he wiped the cells clean, reprogramming them and returning them to an embryo-like state without ever creating the embryo. Four genes, he told his audience, was all it took to undo a lifetime's worth of delicate genetic tapestry. No need for eggs, no need for embryos. Could it be that easy? Were the debate and controversy over embryonic stem cells...
...just two years ago that even the scientists leading this biological revolution marvel at the pace at which they are learning, and in some cases relearning, rules of development. Until recently, the field has revolved around either embryonic stem cells - a remarkably plastic class of cells extracted from an embryo that could turn into any of the body's 200 tissue types - or their more restricted adult cousins, cells taken from mature organs or skin that were limited to becoming only specific types of tissue. On Jan. 23, after nearly a decade of preparation, the Food and Drug Administration approved...
...ethics, in which he uses his keen sense of logic to provoke. When the class discussed the morality of embryonic-stem-cell research, Melton invited Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to present arguments against the field. Melton asked Doerflinger if he considered a day-old embryo and a 6-year-old to be moral equivalents; when Doerflinger responded yes, Melton countered by asking why society accepts the freezing of embryos but not the freezing of 6-year-olds...
...Fischel's procedure does not give as complete a look at a potential child, since it relies on only half the chromosomes that make up that profile. But it comes close enough that the work as a whole is being overseen by the U.K.'s Human Fertilization and Embryo Authority, a government watchdog group. The agency is generally supportive of the procedure and indeed has been looking for a way to reduce the incidence of multiple births among IVF families. Nonetheless, the fact that there is a moral cop on the beat gives some comfort to the procedure's critics...
...Mitchell Rosen, director of the Fertility Preservation Center and Reproductive Laboratories at the University of California at San Francisco, the inclusion of frozen-embryo data is notable. "The most unique part of the study is that frozen embryo transfers were considered unique treatments," he says. But Rosen says he would have liked to see the analysis go a step further, detailing which cycles involved frozen embryos and how long embryos were in culture before they were frozen, for example. (The longer embryos are in culture the fewer survive, but due to the selection process the odds of implantation are higher...