'Embryo-safe' stem cell extraction doesn't work

There was a great deal of publicity last month about a method of extracting embryonic stem cells which supposedly didn't kill the embryos. Everybody on all sides of the controversy was excited.

Unfortunately, though, it turns out that it didn't work after all. The embroyos from which the cells were taken didn't survive.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Undoubtedly, the 'press release' results touted the high-end promise. The WSJ (subscription only, sorry, no link) says that ACT has reason to believe that their claim is a reasonable extrapolation from their current data. (Sep 5, pg A15 if you can access it).

It is an unfortunate reality of our stock-price-based research that promise must sometimes be hyperbolized. This does not excuse ACT, but neither does it undermine the potential of the research.

I hope that we can keep an open mind about this hopefully positive development.

Scott H
Nobody would be more delighted if the "development" in question (which even Public Radio, in its initial story, pointed out had never actually been shown to be safe for the embroyos, and could not be without normal children being born from them) turned out to work, Scott. I know of no pro-life person who would not do cartwheels.

The problem at this stage is that so far, the embroyos have all died.

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