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Scientists have grown an entity that closely resembles an early human embryo, without using sperm, eggs or a womb. The Weizmann Institute team say their "embryo model", made using stem cells, looks like a textbook example of a real 14-day-old embryo. It even released hormones that turned a pregnancy test positive in the lab. (snip) Instead of a sperm and egg, the starting material was naive stem cells which were reprogrammed to gain the potential to become any type of tissue in the body. (snip) "Some will welcome this - but others won't like it," Prof Lovell-Badge says.

Last week, the birth of the first three-parent baby in the UK was reported in the Guardian.

Once you fatigue people enough with the strategies of 1984, they are set up for the medicalization of society. Which is the brain stuff. The altering of the human brain with drugs and other approaches. Genes, perhaps. A brain‐machine linkup. Creating a different perception of reality. Externally applied electromagnetic fields. In which people will feel happy even though they are slaves. You see, in 1984 it’s really all about hysteria. The people are being driven into the wall with lies about wars and lies about enemies and lies about political structure, and the control over individuals is very harsh, and...

Scientists announced this week that they successfully created the first monkey-pig hybrid, in a controversial research project teeming with ethical issues and concerning questions. Chinese scientists at the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing announced the birth of the first pig-monkey chimeras. The researchers modified monkey cells and laced them with a fluorescent protein that allowed them to trace the cells and the cells they produce. The scientists then obtained embryonic cells from the genetically modified cells and injected those monkey cells into pig embryos days after creating them in the lab. Some 4,000 monkey-pig...

You may have heard about the Italian Neurosurgeon, Sergio Canavero, who plans to carry out the world’s first human head transplant next year. Having secured a volunteer for the operation, the professor has just unveiled a virtual reality system that will hopefully “prepare patients for life in a new body,” an experience that could cause unexpected psychological reactions. Professor Canavero is determined to perform the operation in 2017 on wheelchair user Valery Spiridonov, who runs an educational software company in Russia and suffers from the muscle-wasting Werdnig-Hoffman disease. Assuming the complex transplant take place, Spiridonov will have his head nearly...

ENTREPRENEUR Josh Bocanegra says his new company Humai area aiming to bring the dead back to life Entrepreneur Josh Bocanegra attracted a lot of attention when he announced his new artificial intelligence company Humai. Why? Because he claims that by 2045, they'll be able to resurrect the dead.

Great Britain has voted to allow the world’s first “three-parent” in vitro fertilization. The new technique uses the DNA of three people to prevent mothers from passing mitochondrial diseases on to their baby. The new treatment that was allowed by the British Parliament on Tuesday is known as “three-parent” in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor. In Britain’s House of Commons on Tuesday, health minister Jane Ellison started the debate on mitochondrial donation by urging support for this change. “This is a...

The most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider, has not yet created any black holes as some have feared, researchers say. Even if this atom smasher does create black holes, there is no danger of those black holes destroying Earth, added scientists of the new study published online March 5 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Woolly mammoths are coming back, say cloning scientists In what sounds like it could be the plot for the next Jurassic Park movie, a team of scientists in Siberia says there's a 'high chance' that they will be able to clone a woolly mammoth. The breakthrough comes as a result of last year's discovery of an incredibly well-preserved mammoth carcass, frozen in the permafrost of Siberia's Malolyakhovskiy island. The scientists estimate that the animal is about 43,000 years old, and was 50-60 years old when it died in distress after getting stuck in the ice. In the ten months since...

Making Babies with 3 Genetic Parents Gets FDA Hearing A reproductive technology that taps three parents’ DNA as a way to eliminate hereditary diseases could reach clinical trials if the Food and Drug Administration gives the go-ahead. Reproductive technologies that marry DNA from three individuals will receive a trial in the court of public opinion this week. Such technologies may hold promise for averting certain genetically inherited diseases passed down via mutations to mitochondria, the cell’s battery pack. Scientists have already had successes with this type of reproductive approach in monkeys and in human embryos, and are now eager to...

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three...

–The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced today that test results of plant samples from an Oregon farm indicate the presence of genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-resistant wheat plants. Further testing by USDA laboratories indicates the presence of the same GE glyphosate-resistant wheat variety that Monsanto was authorized to field test in 16 states from 1998 to 2005. APHIS launched a formal investigation after being notified by an Oregon State University scientist that initial tests of wheat samples from an Oregon farm indicated the possible presence of GE glyphosate-resistant wheat plants. There are no...

A German plastic surgeon has told how he built himself the perfect wife after wedding a "dowdy" woman "for her potential". Reza Vossough sculpted his 33-year-old bride Cany with eight surgeries to change her chest, thighs, eyes and face, The Sun newspaper reports. In pictures: Plastic surgery obsessions"It's almost like being God — you have the ability to change nature," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "When I first met Cany, she had physical deficiencies, but I could see there was something there ... she had big hips and big thighs, so we made corrections, then did a little bit...

Women who say they don't need a man may well be right – after human sperm was created in the lab. The breakthrough could give hope to infertile couples and men left unable to have children after having cancer treatment. But don't worry guys, the scientists who created the sperm using stem cells don't plan to take you out of the baby-making process just yet. 'While we can understand some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced in a dish and we have no intention of doing this,' said researcher Prof Karim Nayernia. 'The...

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama will soon issue an executive order lifting an eight-year ban embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, a senior adviser said on Sunday. "We're going to be doing something on that soon, I think. The president is considering that right now," Obama adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday." In 2001, Bush limited federal funding for stem cell research only to human embryonic stem cell lines that already existed. It was a gesture to his conservative Christian supporters who regard embryonic stem cell research as destroying potential life,...

Scientists have detailed a significant proportion of the genes found in the extinct Tasmanian "tiger". The international team extracted the hereditary information from the hair of preserved animal remains held in Swedish and US museums. The information has allowed scientists to confirm the tiger's evolutionary relationship to other marsupials. The study, reported in the journal Genome Research, may also give pointers as to why some animals die out. The two tigers examined had near-identical DNA, suggesting there was very little genetic diversity in the species when it went over the edge. I want to learn as much as I can...

Imagine a world without men: Lauren Bacall but no Bogie, Hillary Clinton but no Bill, no Starsky or Hutch. This isn't just an unlikely sci-fi scenario. This could be reality, according to Bryan Sykes, an eminent professor of genetics at Oxford University and author of "Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men." "The Y chromosome is deteriorating and will, in my belief, disappear," Sykes told me. A world-renowned authority on genetic material, Sykes is called upon to investigate DNA evidence from crime scenes. His team of researchers is currently compiling a DNA family tree for our species. Y Chromosome 'Fatally Flawed'...

For the first time, scientists have completely transformed a species of bacteria into another species by transplanting its complete set of DNA. The achievement marks a significant step toward the construction of synthetic life, with applications including the production of clean fuel in as little as a decade.

Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacteria into another. Craig Venter likened the process to 'changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software' In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species. This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process. The team that carried...

'DR. DEATH' TO BE RELEASED AP May 27, 2007 -- LANSING, Mich. - Jack Kevorkian is due to be released from prison Friday, after having served more than eight years of a 10-to-25-year sentence. The retired pathologist, who waged a defiant campaign to help profoundly ailing people commit suicide, was convicted in the assisted death of a Michigan man.