A good thing or as bad thing ?

[youngmafbog]

Japanese scientists create eggs from skin cells.

Just what could be the repercussions of this?

http://news.sky.com/s...-eggs-from-skin-cells

With a 7bn and rapidly rising population do we really need this ?

[FredPuli43]

The individual does, the world taken as a whole doesn't. But we don't think that way. Who, in the UK, thinks '"We won't have a child now because there are already some 7 billion people and that figure is increasing" And why should they?

[rojash]

"Just what could be the repercussions of this? "

Omelettes for cannibals?

[LazyGun]

Stem cell therapy offers much more benefits that simply reproductive medicine - in fact, thats probably the least of its values.

The real value of this research ( first reported in 2006) is that it offers us a means of generating Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPS) that are not harvested from embryos or bone marrow donors.

There is a wide range of diseases that could benefit from stem cell therapy - Parkinsons Disease, Type 1 Diabetes, Burn Victims,, various cardiovascular diseases, Arthritis, Alzheimers.

Additionally, IPS could be used to grow replacement organs, immunologically identical to the host, opening up the whole field of organ transplantation - something currently restricted to organ availability and immune response.

Overall, a good thing....

[youngmafbog]

I agree Lazy that much good can come of it, and I am for it. What I do have reservations about it producing life. Next thing is designer babies and who knows what could happen in many generations to come, mutants, throwbacks ?

[jake-the-peg]

Designer babies?

Hmm

Do you count people wanting to have genetic conditions like cystic fibrosis weeded out ?

I dare say you'd be very keen for this if you'd become infertile and wanted children, I know I would!

The work is neither good or bad, that rather depends on the way it's implemented, the restrictions on how it's used.

This doesn't look like a simple technique, certainly not one that's likely to have any noticable impact on world population figures