Stem cell news

Captain’s Log, Stardate 11.30.2005

Stem-cell funding still mired in courts

I’m sad for the drain on California’s budget, but I’m also glad the judge didn’t just summarily dismiss the lawsuits challenging the stem cell institute. I don’t object to adult stem cells, but these days, most people think embryonic when they hear the term “stem cells.” Embryonic stem cells are made when scientists kill a baby—an embryo—in order to harvest their inner-most cells, called “pluripotent” cells.

Business biology

This disappoints me. Neaves doesn’t believe that a blastocyst is a human being.

As a biologist and a Christian, I know that something amazing happens the second an egg receives a full complement of DNA, even though it’s just a single cell.

Whether it’s made in a woman’s womb, in a Petri dish, or “cooked up” with a blanked egg cell and a skin cell, it forms life as soon as that egg cell has two chromosomes. When that cell divides, no matter if there’s 2 cells or 64, there’s life at work that we as scientists can’t even adequately explain, all coming from that one cell.

I can’t help but believe that one cell has life, given by God, which makes it a human being. Even though it’s just one cell.

I think I will need to brush up on my developmental biochemistry. I’ll get back to this topic later.

Writing: The major revisions are done, now there’s just the line edits!