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When Pigs Fly by DarkSyde Thu Nov 22, 2007 at 12:32:28 AM PST Let's say you were trying to teach a pig to behave like a prize winning sheep dog in a herding contest. Pigs being pigs and sheep being sheep, this is challenging to say the least. But even without the benefit of a piglet named babe and a secret code word, if you were extraordinarily patient, you might after awhile get the animals to cooperate and mimic a few of the maneuvers. A couple of things go without saying: you'd have to know what it is the sheep dog does. It would be damn helpful to have experience working with animals, particularly sheep and dogs. Which brings us to the latest fascinating announcement in stem cell research and the obligatory right-wing spin. Via The Scientific Activist: NYT -- The discovery that skin cells can be reprogrammed to mimic embryonic stem cells is likely to transform the sticky political debate ... "This is very much in accord with the president's vision from the get-go," said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush ... "I don't think there's any doubt that the president's drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition." Mr. Spinmeister neglected to mention a few key facts in his apologetic zeal to lay the wreath of discovery at the feet of George Bush. To make a a skin cell behave like an embryonic stem cell, a couple of things go without saying: you'd have to know what an embryonic stem cell does. It would be damn helpful to have worked with human cells, particularly skin cells and embryonic stem cells. And that might be an obstacle if you happened to live in a country where having the latter is an expensive, over regulated pain in the ass specifically because of the unpopular policy of a certain unpopular President. Which may explain in part why this breakthrough occurred in Japan. PZ Myers -- It's going to take more work on embryonic stem cells to figure out how to take any cell from your body, and cleanly and elegantly switch it to a stem cell state ... Or we can just sit back and let the Japanese and Europeans and Koreans do it for us. Just keep in mind that ceding the research to others means giving them a head start on the development of all the subsequent breakthroughs ... The technique also involves procedures taken from somatic nuclear cell transfer. That could be spun by shameless political operatives as the first step in cloning replicants which will, of course, turn on their arrogant secular makers and teach them a righteous lesson for daring to play God. But my question is a little more practical: This kind of progress is virtually impossible without ongoing, side-by-side research produced from embryonic stem lines. Any chance the right-wing will grudgingly accept the critical role of embryonic stem cell research in this breakthrough and recognize that our current policy directly hampers US scientists from carrying it further? Maybe. And maybe that pig can learn how to fly like a bird, too. :: Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn