"Now that it has become possible to culture human embryos to the 14-day limit and perhaps beyond, the time is right for the scientific community to educate the public about the potential benefits and to work with regulators on ethical consensus to guide this important research."For background, read Embryo-killing Essential for Life, Scientists Say
-- Amy Wilkerson, Rockefeller University
"The question has to be: 'Are there any limits to what we will do to human beings in order to gain scientific knowledge?' And then who counts as a human being?"
-- Daniel Sulmasy, University of Chicago
Also read Government Wants 'Defective Babies' to Harvest Organs
And read Genetic Scientists Worshiped as Creators of Life
-- From "Advance In Human Embryo Research Rekindles Ethical Debate" by Rob Stein, All Things Considered, WBEZ NPR (National Public Radio) 5/4/16
Zernicka-Goetz says being able to go past the previous limit is "extremely important" from a scientific point of view.
That's because the seventh day of development is the time when the human embryo becomes embedded within the body of the mother — when it becomes implanted in the womb.
Scientists had thought embryos could only keep developing if they were safely in the womb and receiving instructions from the mother's body.
But the embryos in the studies implanted in the dish as they would in the womb. Then they started organizing themselves into the very early stages of different complex organs and tissues and structures in the body, the researchers report.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Why this lab-grown human embryo has reignited an old ethical debate" by Patrick Monahan, Science Magazine 5/4/16
It’s easy to obey a rule when you don’t have the means to break it. For decades, many countries have permitted human embryos to be studied in the laboratory only up to 14 days after their creation by in vitro fertilization. But—as far as anyone knows—no researcher has ever come close to the limit. The point of implantation, when the embryo attaches to the uterus about 7 days after fertilization, has been an almost insurmountable barrier for researchers culturing human embryos.
Now, two teams report growing human embryos about a week past that point.
. . . Both groups initially removed each embryo’s outer membrane and grew the embryos in two different types of culture media, the first containing fetal bovine serum. Together, that allowed embryos to “implant” onto a plastic substrate, which was transparent, enabling the researchers to take images of what followed.
After normal implantation, part of a mammalian embryo reorganizes itself into what will become the placenta and the yolk sac. This is also the stage at which many developmental defects originate. The lab-grown human embryos hit all of the bases expected of one implanted on a uterus. They developed the right shape and generated various cell types, even though they lacked the structure and nutrition that maternal tissues would normally supply. As Harvard University stem cell researcher George Daley puts it, “The embryo is somewhat on autopilot.”
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Human embryos grown in lab for longer than ever before" by Sara Reardon, Nature - International weekly journal of science 5/4/16
The work, reported this week in Nature and Nature Cell Biology, also raises the possibility that scientists could soon culture embryos to an even more advanced stage. Doing so would raise ethical, as well as technical, challenges. . . .
The ability to grow an embryo in vitro for 13 days raises ethical and policy considerations. At least 12 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, bar scientists from working with embryos older than 14 days. The US government introduced the limit in 1979, on the basis that 14 days marks the beginning of gastrulation in humans. It is also around the latest point at which an embryo can split into identical twins. After this time, the logic goes, a unique individual comes into being.
[However, these new] achievements in the lab may be grounds for re-examining the limit, says George Daley, a stem-cell researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston in Massachusetts. He says that it is somewhat arbitrary. Such a debate would be complex and heated, and it could reach beyond researchers working directly with human embryos. If scientists succeed in growing stem cells into embryo-like structures, it could be difficult to determine whether the structures count as embryos, and thus are subject to the 14-day rule. . . .
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "New method allows first look at key stage of human development, embryo implantation" Source: Rockefeller University, posted at Science Daily 5/4/16
Despite significant biomedical advances in recent decades, the very earliest events of human development -- those that occur during a critical window just after fertilization -- have remained an unobservable mystery, until now.
New research from scientists at The Rockefeller University shows, for the first time, molecular and cellular processes in human development that occur up to day 14 after fertilization. Published in Nature on May 4, the breakthrough system is the first in which the process of implantation has successfully been replicated in an experimental setting, outside of the uterus. This novel technique vastly expands the ability to answer basic questions about our own development, as well as to understand early pregnancy loss.
Perhaps most importantly, this new method opens the door to a wide variety of studies, never before possible, on the molecular events that occur during the very earliest stages of human development.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
Also read 3-Parent Babies are Ethical: Experts to Obama FDA
