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To: ga medic
All of the embryos are destroyed once the stem cells are harvested.

Nope. Good guess, though.

That's the way it was in the past...but not now. First of all, as was pointed out, once the initial harvesting, there are no more embryos destroyed, but now, the blastocyst is unharmed.

Klimanskaya I, Chung Y, Becker S, Lu SJ, Lanza R. (2006). "Human embryonic stem cell lines derived from single blastomeres". Nature 444 (7118): 481–5. PMID 16929302 doi:10.1038/nature05142

The current attack on embryonic stem cell research is all a sham. It uses problems of the past to fool people into coughing up $, at the cost of compassion for the suffering.

Besides, many, many, many embryos are destroyed anyway (IVF)...it's a shame that no good can come from that loss.

115 posted on 02/03/2009 8:16:26 AM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: Gondring

I am all for the use of techniques that do not result in the destruction of the embryo. However, if this is the study that I am thinking of, the embryos were actually destroyed in this research, even though the method of extraction was not the cause of this destruction.

I wasn’t clear whether this was just an initial requirement, until the research reached a certain point, or whether the embryos were destroyed because they did not have an alternative for preserving them.

I was very excited about this research, because I don’t believe those who claim that there are no benefits to be derived from pluripotent stem cells. I believe they have tremendous potential for all kinds of cures, but there is much research to be done.

It is my great hope that pluripotent stem cell lines can one day be extracted from embryos without damaging the embryo in any way. I think we are several years away from such a possibility, but scientists should be working hard towards this possibility.


129 posted on 02/03/2009 8:44:36 AM PST by ga medic
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