[OPINION]  Embryo cloning claptrap - is there no limit to public gullibility?
        
            By David van Gend, 
                The National Forum (Australia)
             | 05. 02. 2007
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            It is one of the unhappier jobs of a doctor to tell a patient she is a victim of false hope. But somebody has to do it, and guide her back to reality and any genuine hope for treatment.
  We have read of the Brisbane woman who flew to India to receive injections of "embryonic stem cells" into her spinal injury.
  To any medically trained person, this story carries the highest suspicion of fraud. Nowhere in the world has an embryonic stem cell ever been injected into a human, for the very serious reason that they cause tumours when injected into animals. Yet some obscure Indian doctor, whose work is not only inherently absurd - claiming to treat Alzheimer's, which is the very litmus test of stem cell absurdity - and which breaks the cardinal rule of medical research - that experimental treatment must be judged by medical peers before being used on humans - is treated with seriousness by our media.
  If only the media could show judgment in what they get excited about. Yes, the first published trial...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Deni Ellis Béchard,  The Washington Post | 10.07.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            In 1949, when John Gurdon was a 16-year-old boarding school student at Eton College in England, his teacher described his biology studies as “disastrous” and his scientific ambitions as “ridiculous.”
“If he can’t learn simple biological facts,” his term report...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By John H. Evans, Craig Callender, Neal K. Devaraj, Farren J. Isaacs, and Gregory E. Kaebnick,  Issues in Science and Technology | 07.04.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            
The controversy around a ban on “mirror life” should lead to a more nuanced public conversation about how to manage the benefits and risks of precursor biotechnologies.
About five years ago, the five of us formed a discussion group to...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
    
    
            Riquet Mammoth Kakao (c.1920) 
by Ludwig Hohlwein, Public Domain via Flickr
Colossal, the de-extinction company, scored headlines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) recently by announcing that they had created mice! Not just any mice, not even colossal mice, but genetically engineered, normal-size “woolly mice” that are the result of editing seven genes in mouse embryos. This Colossal presented as an important step toward making a specimen of charismatic megafauna – a...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Antonio Regalado,  MIT Technology Review | 05.06.2024
                                                        
     
    
    
            It was a cool morning at the beef teaching unit in Gainesville, Florida, and cow number #307 was bucking in her metal cradle as the arm of a student perched on a stool disappeared into her cervix. The arm held...