cell culture
palmd | January 31, 2010This is a special shout out to the doctors and scientists out there. Everything we do in our fields has repercussions, often unexpected ones. Because of this, we strive to practice ethically to help prevent or minimize negative repercussions.
This discussion comes up specifically as an epiphenomenon of the release of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (my full review can be found here.) How one reacts to this book would, I suppose, depend on your perspective. A neighbor of the Lacks's might react quite differently than a 22 year old doctoral student. And that's really the point.
This…
ddobbs | October 26, 2009In a disturbing post at ScienceInsider, Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink explain why the swine flu vaccine is running so late. Or at least they try to explain why it's so late. For while all the suppliers are running into problems, we're not allowed to know what they are.
The delays are substantial and critical. They leave us naked as the flu spreads through the country. The flu has now killed 1000 people, over 100 of them children. Even as this happens, the delivery dates keep moving back and the delivery amounts keep shrinking. As recently as a month ago, the CDC was telling us that we'd…
cwilcox | January 23, 2009Japanese scientists announced on Jan 22nd that they had made a huge breakthrough in fabricating human organs. Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology successfully created a doll made of living cells.
The doll is about 1-inch tall and 5 mm wide, and is made from fully functioning cells. Scientists first created a mould for the doll's shape, then seeded it with 100,000 cell capsules - tiny 0.1 mm balls of collagen coated with cells which then were allowed to grow. The final result is a fully living structure that retains the cellular abilities for at least a day when suspended in…