Stem Cells
The last three decades have been quite a ride in the world of stem cells. Since they were first isolated in mice in 1981, they’ve rocked the global scientific community with their potential healing abilities—and also sparked massive political and religious debate.
Scientists have been getting results with microRNAs, which have been used to successfully differentiate stem cells, and have even managed to re-start dead animal hearts using cell transplantation. Meanwhile, for women, the stem cells in your menstrual blood may come in handy for your health down the road—though exactly how handy remains to be seen.
And while the longterm political and religious furor over stem cells continues to rage on, the ongoing development of embryonic stem cell-like cells raise scientists’ hopes for miracle cures that would make even the Pope happy.
Bioengineered Meat
Meat is in trouble. Between inhumane farming practices, an increase in livestock-borne diseases, and the problems inherent in generating enough beef, pork, and chicken to feed an ever-growing population, a carnivorous future isn’t looking rosy. So leave it to scientists to begin developing lab-grown meat, created from cells of living animals. The “lab meat movement” has made “glacial progress” in the past few years, to the point where PETA has offered a $1 million prize to the first scientist/s who can “produce commercially viable quantities” of it by 2012. After that, all that’s left is finding a way to rid consumers of the “ick factor.”
Cloning
On the human end, cloning and controversy have gone hand in hand. After a scandal involving a fake cloned human embryo in 2006, the real deal may have finally been achieved. But that hasn’t stopped the widespread calls for a ban.
But when it comes to animals, it’s been the more the merrier since Dolly hit the scene in 1997. The FDA has now decreed that cloned cows are safe to eat, and soon, for the bargain price of around $100,000, you can have your beloved spaniel or retriever cloned as well.
Engineering New Life
Can life be created and manipulated synthetically, and enabled to do things that Mother Nature never could have imagined? Scientists have certainly been game to find out. From fabricating a malaria drug by mashing genes from different species into a single microbe to manufacturing a bacterium’s complete genome and then transferring it to another species, bioengineers have been revolutionizing the field—and raising some concern as to whether their work could be harnessed for harm as well as good.
The Mind/Machine Connection
Controlling machines with your mind is no longer a sci-fi stunt—recent studies have transformed it into a reality. Researchers at Brown took the first giant leap toward a human-electronics connection, enabling a quadriplegic to control a prosthetic hand with only his mind. Their work has now been duplicated in an even more sophisticated test—this time with monkeys.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
[…] that can be used for research on diseases from Down’s syndrome to Parkinson’s. And any protesters can relax: They’re all adult stem […]
December 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Big Pharma, Big Bio and Big Agri all have one common goal . . . to control the worlds food.
If scientists where writing policies instead of politicians we would be investing in renewable natural resources instead of racing to replace everything natural with something synthetic. No one should be allowed to play God with our biosphere. We have already been given the means to solve our problems. Industrialized farming techniques have failed, empirical medicine has failed and genetic determinism is a pseudo-science.
Shifting back to a permaculture based agricultural model and micro-farming has shown successful. Epigenetics is the new biology of nurturing cell health using food as medicine to restore healthy gene expression and as you may already know GMO products trigger toxic reactions and wreck havoc on the indigenous flora . . . the future meat eaters will have to shift to plant protein like hemp, spirulina and sprouted seeds for abundant health.
Combining ancient wisdom with new science is the solution-NOT the globalization of corporate megalopolies driven by greed . . . this is the end of the Chemical Dark Ages, they should NOT receive any more funding, specially any bail-out like they’re asking for.
We can nurture natural stem cell growth by providing functional target nutrients . Stem cells are part of the healing process of the body. By working with the body’s inner healing processes and using Complementary Alternative Medicines (Food, Herbs and Minerals) mankind can cure all disease through epigenetic science holistically.
Disease is NOT a drug deficiency . . . it’s primarily under-nutrition and under-education.