A leading stem cell researcher said it will be years -- maybe decades -- before breakthroughs by his team of scientists will benefit humans, but he expressed high hopes that they'll eventually help people with currently incurable ailments.
South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk was tired but elated Friday after returning from a trip to the US, where the prestigious journal Science published a review of his work, then to Britain, where he agreed to join forces with a researcher at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute to fight Lou Gherig's disease.
Hwang's team, who shocked the world last year by cloning a human embryo, has recently been credited with another major breakthrough -- creating the first embryonic stem cells that genetically match injured or sick patients.
The match means the stem cells, the building blocks of all bodily tissues, are unlikely to be rejected by the body's immune system. Researchers hope the cells can be used to repair damage from disease.
Other scientists have lauded the advances made by Hwang's team -- and their speed. But Hwang, a professor at Seoul National University, said the researchers were working methodically, especially due to ethical concerns.
"We already had the technological know-how last year, at the time of the human embryo cloning," Hwang told reporters at Incheon International Airport near Seoul. "But our team imposed a moratorium on our own, because there were ethical issues."
"In conducting the new process, we've abided by domestic law governing life ethics and the regulations of the Institutional Review Board," he said, without elaborating.
Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush on Friday expressed concern about human cloning research in South Korea.
"I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted," he said.
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the South Korean work amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of research.
"That represents exactly what we're opposed to," Duffy said.
Last year, Hwang's team cloned stem cells from one healthy woman. This year, they created 11 batches of stem cells that genetically match men or women with either spinal cord injuries, diabetes or a genetic immune disease.
"It means that we can create stem cells using the ... cells of patients regardless of sex and age," Hwang said.
Still, the researchers were cautious about giving a timeframe on when patients with incurable diseases might benefit.
"Some foreign researchers have said three to five decades, some have said in just several years," said Ahn Curie, a doctor of transplantation medicine at Seoul National University Hospital, and a member of Hwang's team. "We will work hard, but we don't want to raise false expectations."
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS