Next steps in human cloning: cloned blastocysts

Darkfrog submitted, created time 11 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

A team in California claims to have performed in truth what disgraced Seoul U. researcher Woo Suk Hwang had faked: Stegeman company of La Jolla CA claims the creation of a cloned blastocyst from which a tailored cell line can be made. They started with an adult patient's own cells, in this case, a man's fibroblasts.

The article doesn't explicitly say, but since this is a blastocyst, I am assuming that it went through a totipotent state. The pro-life crowd would consider this morally objectionable

6 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: cloningl human cloning stem cells politics stem cell research therapeutic cloning reproductive cloning human ova ova Woo Suk Hwang human eggs

Flash-freezing changes the face of fertility, but not by much

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 1 week (www.nytimes.com)

This article is as much about politics and attitude as it is about the new flash-freezing method, called vitrification, that allows women to preserve their genetic material without settling on a sperm donor or real-life partner first. The scientists in this article claim that the flash-freezing of unfertilized human ova, a relatively new process that improves the survival rate over conventional freezing, will "emancipate women as much as the birth control pill did in 1960

3 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: Egg Freezing human ova Birth Control Pill politics feminism women womens health fertility families human reproduction marriage human evolutionary biology sociology science and culture

Disgraced cloner Woo Suk Hwang attempts a comeback

jane2007 submitted, created time 1 year 2 weeks (www.nature.com)

In January 2006, Woo Suk Hwang’s apparent breakthrough articles announcing the first cloned human embryonic stem cells were shown to be fabrications. It was the biggest scientific scandal in recent history, and one might have thought his scientific career was over.But on 17 December an official said that Hwang had applied for a new licence for this type of work. Work continues to be published under Hwang's name.The Korean science ministry is expected to make a decision on the application by April 2008.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: politics bioethics cloned animals cloning clones stem cell research human ova ova Woo Suk Hwang Korea stem cells ethics human embryonic stem cells