[ExI] Stem cell breakthrough

[Anders Sandberg]

While stem cells and regenerative medicine are promising, it is important not to oversell them as a panacea. Translational science is a valley of death for promising ideas: remember when interferon was going to cure cancer? Growing new organs are not that easy, and if you need surgery to connect them to the body you are going to do risky cutting and anaesthesia. Killing cancer cells with bacteria and viruses requires you to master the immune system (guess why phage therapy is not widely used?) 
Bodies are messy, complex environments that rarely are modular enough to allow magic bullets or neat replacement. Health is worth the effort, but the stretch between "awesome in the lab" to "in a clinic near you" is very long. Just saying. 

Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University


William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> , 30/1/2014 8:20 PM:
What stem cells will eventually do is to replace defective cells in our organs so we can keep them and not have to replace them.  We will have an all new heart that was created inside our own body, not grown in a lab. As for cancers, we will create bacteria and viruses in the lab that will go everywhere our blood goes and kill cancer cells.  (That is, until we can redesign the immune system to do this automatically.)  bill
 

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 12:27 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
 

You could replace organs if you knew how to make them, which may rule out replacing the brain...at first, anyway. 

And then there are issues which do not narrow down to single organ replacement, such as cancer or most diseases. 

But the big issue is going to be making it affordable.  Health care already has major problems there. On Jan 30, 2014 3:10 AM, "Henry Rivera" <hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu> wrote:
  Have you heard about this?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25917270
If we are able to mass produce stem cells, and there is no religious opposition about embryos at play, shouldn't we be able to replace/refresh all our organs including our skin indefinitely? Is this the soon-to-come viable route to longevity if not immortality?! Someone here has thought about this before, I'm sure. School me please. Thanks in advance.  -Henry
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