Extropy Institute has issued a statement that it agrees with prominent bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan about the “disturbing composition” of the recently formed President’s Council on Bioethics. In an opinion piece on the MSNBC site, Caplan characterized the new body as a “Council of Clones” that will provide president Bush “the advice he wants to hear.”
“Marching in lock step with Kass, his cognitive clones… read more

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new detection technology on the nanometer scale that could lead to the next generation of proteomic arrays and new methods for diagnosing infectious diseases and biological weapons.
The researchers utilize a process invented at Northwestern’s Institute for Nanotechnology called Dip-Pen Nanolithography to make arrays of proteins with features more than 1,000 times smaller than those used in conventional arrays. This leads to nanoarrays… read more

Scientists may be close to an elusive goal of creating artificial blood, a breakthrough that could ease shortages and save countless lives.

Biopure Corp. in Cambridge, Mass., has produced artificial hemoglobin from the red blood cells of cows. It has been cleared for use in the Republic of South Africa and is awaiting Food and Drug Administration review of its phase III clinical trials in the United States. U.S.… read more

Japanese researchers who cloned a dozen mice reported on Sunday that virtually all of the animals died early, a report that casts more doubts on the safety of cloning.
The mice had abnormal livers, lungs and perhaps some immune system anomalies, the team reported.

They also noted that clones may be born
“old.” Some clones have shortened telomeres, which are a kind of cap on the chromosome, the structures… read more

Transplants of mouse stem cells into the brains of patients with Huntington’s Chorea could help slow the associated dementia and loss of coordination, says UK company ReNeuron.
Huntington’s is caused by an inherited genetic mutation, which leads to a destruction of cells in a part of the brain called the striatum. ReNeuron has transplanted cells from its mouse neural stem cell line into monkeys designed to act as models of… read more

Doctors are developing artificial wombs in which embryos can grow outside a woman’s body. The work has been hailed as a breakthrough in treating the childless. The research is headed by Dr. Hung-Ching Liu of Cornell University’s Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility. Liu’s work involves removing cells from the endometrium, the lining of the womb.

After this Liu and her colleagues grew layers of these cells on scaffolds… read more

Bioengineered skin — grown in the lab using small samples of human cells — offers an alternative to animal testing.
Proponents argue that tissue models provide both ethical and scientific advantages. Scientists don’t have to extrapolate human responses from animal-derived data and test results are easier to reproduce from lab to lab.

While limited, bio-engineered models are finding a niche as tools to screen out drugs likely to fail… read more