Source: Wall Street Journal
Date: June 7, 2007
Summary:
The Wall Street Journal reports on an advance in turning mature skin cells into cells with traits similar to embryonic stem cells that could end the ethical debate over embryonic stem cell research:
"Scientists have created embryonic stem cells without using eggs or destroying embryos, an advance that may sidestep the knottiest ethical dilemmas that have slowed stem-cell research. In experiments on mice, four independent teams pulled off a feat that is the biological equivalent of turning back time: They returned mature cells -- such as those from skin -- to a primordial, embryonic state. Further experiments showed that those reprogrammed cells had the same properties as true embryonic stem cells, such as the ability to turn into muscle, heart, nerve and other tissue types -- no matter what kind of mature cell they had started as."
