Note I said EMBRYONIC Stem Cell Research controversy, not just plain Stem cell (which includes the use of adult stem cells or stem cells of a child who has been born, without damage to the donator).

Here are some new wrinkles in the controversy that I don't think I've seen discussed here yet:

Methods to extract stem cells from embryos without destroying said embryos. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/stemcells.html)

Korean scientist resigns admid questions over his ethics working with stem cells (http://www.chillicothegazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051212/OPINION01/512120318/1014)

Personally I was quite hopeful that methods of harnassing the science of stell cells to benefit mankind without destroying human embryos would be a reality, but I am amazed at how quickly it is coming about. I hope that public officials, policy makers and voters who had a problem with the previous destructive methods for ethical/religious reasons (myself included) will see the difference and encourage further research to help people.

Thoughts? I figured I'd start a new thread for this, rather than continue our old discussion (http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=154215), since this is new information.

Discuss!

The question remains what to do with the embryos. Some cures are going to require that cloned embryos be used - and there are still massive technical barriers to carrying a cloned human to term (not to mention a few ethical ones).

I saw in an article recently, that they reckon that they should be able to get enough stem cells to heal 1/3rd of the britich population from just 10 embryos..
.. sorry, nothing contructive to contribute, i just remember thinking that was interesting.

I'm a little confused about the scale of things though.

Britain's national stem cell bank should receive its first deposit of stem cell lines next year. The bank will be run jointly by the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC). It will hold existing and new adult, fetal, and embryonic stem cell lines in liquid nitrogen storage. The cells will be available to researchers in the UK and other countries once their research is granted approval by a steering committee. Academic researchers will have to pay a nominal fee for the lines, although commercial ventures will have to front the full economic cost. At least 70 stem cell lines are currently in existence and it is hoped that samples of all of these lines will be stored in the bank.

Yikes, looks like he made the whole thing up (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051223/ap_on_sc/skorea_stem_cell) (or at least throws all his work into question)...

The plot thickens!

Maybe the medical companies are threatening the University of Seoul to falsify his research. Why? Because the stem cells would be so effective as to cost the corporations billions if not trillions of dollars from all the cured diseases...

Well, this is a shame. Hopefully the scientists in the West are nearly approaching discovering the real thing, but I imagine it's still going to take a few decades.

One interesting side note: Notice how fast the scientific community works when it smells a rat. Contrary to the claims of creationists and other pseudo-scientists, the scientific community doesn't try to make cover-ups - unlike certain clerical institutions I could think of. This investigation should serve as a pointed reminder to scientists as well as laymen that fraud is one thing the international scientific community does not take lightly.