Hey, remember when there was this huge argument between people suffering from various terrible diseases and fundamentalist religious people in the ’00s over stem cells and whether or not they were “moral”, which we are totally not going to get into, and was ridiculous anyway since it was mostly theory at that point?
Yeah, prepare for that to get all fired up again, because we just had a major breakthrough in the field.
Kang Zhang at the University of California San Diego has figured out how basically to make viable neurons of any sort out of stem cells. Essentially it involves using chemicals to encourage the cells to differentiate to a certain point, then slamming on the brakes until the doctor decides what cells are needed. Also, they don’t give you cancer, so that’s nice.
Basically what this means is that now we’ve got enough neurons grown from stem cells to start testing. It also means you should avoid any sort of “news opinion” program for the next month or so, lest your brain explode from the sheer stupidity.
[ via the uncontroversial PhysOrg ]