my ramblings on tissue culture follow.
i hope it can help give a perspective on the amendment.
something is not right.
there is more than meets the eye.
Phil Tompkins wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks, again, Murray, for sounding the alert on the amendments.
> And I'm really glad that so many of you folks on the list are
> contacting your senators about the bill. This is so important.
>
> Now -- Brownback's amendment:
>
> > (b) Prohibition: It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly
> > attempt to create a human/animal hybrid by--
>
> > (1) combining a human gamete and an animal gamete; or
>
> > (2) conducting nuclear transfer cloning using a human egg or a
> > human somatic cell nucleus.
>
this is also a common procedure
leading to very useful methods of sorting out the nuclear vs cytoplasmic
effects...
and its been going on for years,
in 1980 there was a graduate student in the lab next to us at Tulane
that was using human nucleus in a hamster egg.
things have become a bit more sophisticated since then.
example:
on a multi-cellular level,
to produce a chimera blastosphere, you just
inject a cell into the collection of cells (early 8-16 cell embryo).
this takes a steady hand or manipulator and a good microscope,
and a lot of patience.
if you have a white haired mouse embryo and add a cell from a brown mouse,
the adult mottled mouse will have patches of brown.
instead of color, you could use different sexes to produce a chimera.
this may seem strange at first, but, it is a really useful technique
for studying and tracing what is going on during development.
[as an aside-- this has lead to related techniques--
in the case of neuro research, transplanting a male stem cell into a female
brain
would allow tracing where the cells migrate, or survival rate when
the histology of the tissue is done
and the transplant cells can be differentiated from host tissue.]
[restorative opposite sex bone marrow transplants for leukemia
or other forms of cancer, after chemo/radiologic therapy,
are monitored this way to determine graft survival.]
>
> Hmm.. Not quite what I expected. I'm confused.
i am too,
i wish i could know what Brownback is trying to do...
maybe it is just a ploy to appeal to some xenopobia,
that human and animal cells combined is unholy.
or, it is to block human cloning...
i think Dolly the sheep, started out with this technique.
but, no one is too concerned about sheep--
it is what is implied when the technique is extrapolated to humans.
however, there are specific guidelines already in place
(i think a worlwide ban) that officially forbids human cloning.
i think this amendment sounds innocuous enough, BUT,
it may eliminate access to a common procedure necessary
to study stem cells.
tissue culture and then animal studies are where most
of this kind research happens initially, thereby working out
the risky or unpredictable nature of research before clinical trials.
there is a path to be followed, detours take precious time.
> The original bill S2015 permits federally funding the extraction of
> stem cells from exess embryos created during in vitro fertilization
> and states the restrictions under which that would be carried out.
<<big snip>>
..........................................................................
Ray Strand
...on the edge of the prairie abyss ......................
..........................................................................
48/47 dx/40 ?onset
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The ultimate measure of a man
is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy
---Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..
