Embryonic Stem Cell Alternative Researcher Doesn't Like Destroying Life

Life News ^ | December 11, 2007 | Steven Ertelt

[Coleus]

Kyoto, Japan (LifeNews.com) -- Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University made international headlines recently when he devised a new process that allows for the creation of embryonic stem cells without the destruction of human life. Now, Yamanaka says he was prompted to search for ethical alternatives by his own conscience.
Invited by a friend to take a look at a human embryo -- a unique human being -- under a microscope, Dr. Yamanaka had a moral spark that changed his career.

 

“When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” the father of two told the New York Times today.  The glimpse into the beginnings of human life motivated him to seek out alternatives to the destruction of human beings for their stem cells for research.

 

“I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way," he told the newspaper. As LifeNews.com reported last month, Yamanaka and a Wisconsin team, ironically headed by James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who discovered embryonic stem cells, both advanced a process called direct reprogramming.

 

The teams released studies in the medical journals Science and Cell that show how they were able to make adult stem cells revert to their embryonic form. The studies confirm that human skin cells (fibroblasts) can be used to make pluripotent stem cells sharing essentially all the features of human embryonic stem cells.  Pro-life groups have welcomed the findings because they represent another alternative to destroying human life to advance science.

 

Ultimately, Dr. Yamanaka says he has to have some reliance on embryonic stem cell research to advance his own work, but he hopes alternatives will eventually outpace the use of human embryos. “There is no way now to get around some use of embryos,” he said. “But my goal is to avoid using them.”

[Coleus]

Dolly creator Prof Ian Wilmut shuns cloning

Risk Taking Is in His Genes “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

 

The Code For Human Life

 

Ultimately, Dr. Yamanaka says he has to have some reliance on embryonic stem cell research to advance his own work, but he hopes alternatives will eventually outpace the use of human embryos.  >>

 

there is always hope he sees the light, fully.  He's on his way by admitting that an embryo is a human being but is still relying somewhat on ESCR.  Has he not read the literature?  There is another way, it's adult stem cell research with of score of 73 treatments

[Coleus]

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[Moral Hazard]

“He’s on his way by admitting that an embryo is a human being but is still relying somewhat on ESCR. Has he not read the literature? There is another way, it’s adult stem cell research with of score of 73 treatments “

Yeah, it’s a shame the man responsible for the greatest breakthrough in stem cell research hasn’t read the literature like you have.

[Coleus]

Yeah, it’s a shame the man responsible for the greatest breakthrough in stem cell research hasn’t read the literature like you have. >>

it certainly is a shame, there is no need to destroy human life. And for every Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, there are hundreds of other researchers curing disease through the development of adult/non-embryonic stem cell research. So far it’s a big ZERO for embryonic and a big 73 treatments for NON EMBRYONIC.

[Norman Bates]

I hope this will get traction. This is a great development for pro-lifers and believers in truly moral and ethical research.

[8mmMauser]

Pinged from Terri Dailies

8mm

[cpforlife.org]

“When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,”

Life begins at conception—NOT birth.
Birth is one day in the life of a person who is already nine months old.

Pro-Life PING

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[Das Outsider]

there is always hope he sees the light, fully. He's on his way by admitting that an embryo is a human being but is still relying somewhat on ESCR. Has he not read the literature? There is another way, it's adult stem cell research with of score of 73 treatments

That may be so, but I think Dr. Yamanaka is probably familiar with the literature. He and other professionals in the field are beginning to see that pluripotent cells really can be derived from adult human tissue in a way which makes them more useful than typical ESCR. This is a move towards greater ASCR, not the other way round.