[ExI] Stem cell breakthrough

[William Flynn Wallace]

Agreed - but it's all theoretically possible now.  My view of engineers and
other tech people is that is they know it can be done they will eventually
find a way.  I don't have to tell this crowd that  human beings are
tinkers, endlessly worrying at something until they get what they want.
And has there ever been a scientific theory  that has not been turned over
in one way or another by this tinkering?  Or at least altered, like
Newton's?


On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> 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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