[asa] Ethical Considerations in Recent Nature Stem Cell Paper

A recent paper in Nature
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7118/abs/nature05142.html
) caused quite a stir by claiming that embryonic stem cell lines could
be created from a single blastomere obviating a need for an embryo
being destroyed. It was later discovered that during the experiment
embryos were indeed destroyed because they extracted multiple
blastomeres from the embryo rather than one at a time. Nature just
published a revised paper and an addendum to the report in their
current print edition. Here's the result from addendum table number 1.

Number of embryos used: 16
Number of blastomeres retrieved: 91
Number of blastomeres divided: 53
Number of outgrowths:28
Number of ES cell-like outgrowths: 19
Number of ES stem cell lines: 2

According to the addendum, the blastomeres were cultured in the same
medium as the parent embryo. Diffusable factors from the other
blastomeres may have increased the possibility of survival of the
resultant ES lines. It appears the breathless press announcements of
an ethical way of extracting embryonic stem cells may have been
overstated.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Nov 22 15:52:07 2006