It must be the change of season or something, but I seem to be starting a lot of OT threads these days. Here’s a link to a cool article for all you science buffs. Yeah, I chose my title mostly to attract attention, but it’s in there and its relevant.
This development could be really huge for all of us if it pans out. But what interests me is this angle: what a disappointment it would be for all the Brave New World types out there!
If anybody’s interested in links for religio/spiritual/philosophical killer antibodies, I’ve got those, too.
I only briefly glanced at the article, but it seems to me that they would have to prove that these new stem cells are really derived from the white blood cells they are talking about, and not from naturally occurring stem cells present in normal bone marrow; in other words, a contaminant. I wonder why they did not submit this article to Nature or Science rather than Current Medical Research and Opinion, or whether it failed to pass peer review in those kinds of journals.
I believe it’s already possible to cause stem cells to differentiate in culture, if memory serves.
I wonder why they did not submit this article to Nature or Science rather than Current Medical Research and Opinion, or whether it failed to pass peer review in those kinds of journals.
Well, I have no idea, naturally, of the relative weight of these journals. They’re all said to be peer reviewed, for what that’s worth. And I’ve never heard of NewScientist before, either, probably because I’m a scientific ignoramus. On the other hand, to give them the benefit of the doubt, some of the people who are quoted wouldn’t appear to be the type who would want to go out on a limb of this sort. Anyway, I just thought the whole thing was kinda cool.
I can’t really see why any sane person would be disappointed should this turn out not to be bunk.
It’s impossible to evaluate of course. Stem cells get to do specialist jobs by a process of differentiation. As far as we know reversion doesn’t occur in nature. Even if only a small degree of reversion could be made to occur, that would still have important practical ramifications. (Cells are actually more or less differentiated; cells often aren’t just pure stem cells, as in a zygote, or fully differentiated cells, as in typical functioning adult tissue.) But this article doesn’t even hint at a mechanism which would permit reversion to take place so how can we evaluate it?
