Word: vitro
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...course we are watching this field with great interest," says Dr. Steven Gutman, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics...
Each month, thousands of infertile couples undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) must make the same agonizing, emotionally exhausting decision: to give up or continue with an expensive and physically difficult procedure, even after previous IVF cycles have failed...
...your mark. Get set. Let the ethical dilemma begin! Last Monday, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) announced a $1 million prize for the commercial development of in vitro meat—meat that is grown from stem cells in a laboratory. Of course, offering prize money to entice entrepreneurs is not a novel idea. The Ansari X prize, eventually awarded to Space Ship One, provided $10 million to develop private space flight. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded prizes to develop autonomous ground vehicles. Even Google has offered...
...technology to produce in vitro meat is almost in place, says Mironov, but "there are bottlenecks" in the process - namely scale and cost. Given the current technology, it would cost $1 million to turn out a 250g piece of beef. The problem boils down to producing a cell-culture medium in large enough quantities at a low enough price (it's the same problem facing tissue engineers who are attempting to grow artificial organs for human transplant). So, two weeks ago, an international group of experts assembled in Norway for the first In Vitro Meat Consortium symposium to talk about...
Doable, yes, but not by 2012. It will take at least five to 10 years of research, followed by an extensive approval process, to ensure that any in vitro meat produced is fit for human consumption. Though PETA's competition may not produce a winner soon, the hope among scientists is that it will create interest and funding. As for selling fake meat to the public, that's another matter. But then, in an era of artificial hearts and over-the-counter genetic tests, perhaps even meat from a test tube has a future...