Transplanting lab grown organs...

Had to make reference to this:

British scientists grow human liver in a laboratory

By FIONA MacRAE, Science Reporter Last updated at 12:32pm on 31st October 2006

Comments Reader comments (22)

Dr Nico Forraz

British scientists have grown the world's first artificial liver from stem cells in a breakthrough that will one day provide entire organs for transplant.

The technique that created the 'mini-liver', currently the size of a one pence piece, will be developed to create a full-size functioning liver.

Described as a 'Eureka moment' by the Newcastle University researchers, the tissue was created from blood taken from babies' umbilical cords just a few minutes after birth.

As it stands, the mini organ can be used to test new drugs, preventing disasters such as the recent 'Elephant Man' drug trial. Using lab-grown liver tissue would also reduce the number of animal experiments.

Within five years, pieces of artificial tissue could be used to repair livers damaged by injury, disease, alcohol abuse and paracetamol overdose.

And then, in just 15 years' time, entire liver transplants could take place using organs grown in a lab.

The development provides fresh hope for the hundreds of Britons in dire need of a new liver each year.

There are currently 336 patients waiting for a liver transplant - the type of operation performed on George Best. However, in 2004, 72 people died waiting for a suitable donor.

The liver tissue is created from stem cells - blank cells capable of developing into different types of tissue - found in blood from the umbilical cord.

Working in collaboration with experts from the US, the Newcastle scientists succeeded in separating out the stem cells from blood removed from the umbilical cord minutes after birth.

They are then placed in a 'bioreactor' - a piece of electrical equipment developed by NASA to mimic the effects of weightlessness. Inside this, the freedom from the force of gravity allows them to multiply more quickly than usual.

Then, various hormones and chemicals are added to coax the stem cells into turning into liver tissue.

So far, tiny pieces of tissue, less than an inch in diameter have been created.

However, in time, it should be possible to create larger and larger pieces of tissue, eventually creating sections capable of being transplanted into sick patients.

The Newcastle scientists believe that within two years the tissue could be used to test new drugs.

Currently, new drugs are tested in the test tube, before being tried out first on animals and then on humans.

However, the procedure is not foolproof, as was made painfully clear by the Northwick Park drugs trial earlier this year in which six healthy young volunteers were left fighting for their lives.

Using lab-grown human tissue could iron out any difficulties before new drugs are given to humans.

Colin McGuckin is professor of regenerative medicine at Newcastle University. He said: "We take the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood and make small mini-livers.

"We then give them to pharmaceutical companies and they can use them to test new drugs on.

"It could prevent the situation that happened earlier this year when those six patients had a massive reaction to the drugs they were testing."

Using mini-livers could also cut down on the number of animal experiments.

Within five years, the artificial liver could be used to directly benefit people's health.

The researchers envisage sections of artificial liver being used to keep patients needing liver transplants alive - in much the same way as a dialysis machine is used to treat kidney failure.

This technique would take advantage of the liver's remarkable ability to quickly regenerate itself.

The patient would be hooked up to an artificial liver which would take over all the functions usually carried out by their own liver.

With several 'dialysis' sessions a day over a period of several months, the patient's own liver would be afforded enough resting time to regenerate and repair any damage.

Alternatively, vital months could be bought in search for a suitable donor for transplant.

It is hoped that within 15 years, it will be possible to create sections of liver suitable for transplant into the body of those whose livers have been damaged beyond repair.

In many cases, this would replace the need for an entire liver transplant.

However, it would then be several more years before whole livers could be created in a lab for transplant.

While other researchers have created liver cells from stem cells from embryos, the Newcastle team are the first to create sizeable sections of tissue from stem cells from the umbilical cord.

They believe their technique is better suited to growing larger sections of tissue.

Use of cord stem cells is also more ethically acceptable than the use of embryonic stem cells - a process that leads to the death of the embryo.

The Newcastle researchers foresee a time when cord blood from millions of babies born each year is banked, creating a worldwide donor register for liver dialysis and transplant.

Computerised registers could then be created to match the cord blood with tissue type or immune system of patients with liver problems.

Already used to treat leukaemia, more than 11,000 British parents have so far chosen frozen their children's cord blood in a dozen such banks around the UK.

Prof McGuckin said: "One hundred million children are born around the world every year - that is 100 million different tissue types.

"With that number of children being born every year, we should be able to find a tissue for me and you and every other person who doesn't have stem cells banked."

Co-researcher Dr Nico Forraz said: "Our dream is that every metropolitan city would have such a bank.

"If you could type the blood all, you would have to do is dial it up on your computer and fly it from Bristol to Newcastle or even Newcastle to Kuala Lumpur."

The breakthrough has been welcomed by liver experts. However, they caution much more work is needed before the research is transferred from the lab to the operating theatre.

Professor Nagy Habib, of London's Hammersmith Hospital, said: "The stem cell is going to change the way we deliver treatment. However, it won't happen tomorrow."

Alison Rogers, Chief Executive of the British Liver Trust, said: "Stem cell technology represents a huge leap forward in treating many diseases. "With liver disease in particular it has the potential for tremendous advances."

A spokesman for UK Transplant, which runs the country's organ donor register, said: "There is lots going on in research that may have benefits for transplant patients.

"But, in the here and now, the obvious way to help these people is by more people adding their names to the organ donor register and to make their wishes known to their family."

The reader comments on that page are so typical of the responses one would expect - and they forcast what I do as well - meat to eat grown in labs - saves the animals from the cruel life and death of being grown to be killed... grown to be experimented on... it and saves the expense of treating animals well and speeds up trials...

My novel expands on all of these things, creating a world where this is everyday, and the debates go on... and the question of who/what do we have a right to hurt in order to help another is still being mulled over.

Cloaking, veils, camera's and privacy

The conflict between security and privacy is one of the utmost concerns for people in our world today. It sometimes seems like the only way to stop criminals who want to murder and exploit is to spy on everyone and sort through to find them. Be it through camera's on the corners, wire taps on phones or emails we are faced with a challenge of balancing our desire for safety and to support the governmental security forces we pay taxes to protect us and our innate mistrust of their corruption and political motivations.

Earlier I posted an article about camera's going up on the corners of cities, and my belief is that this is going to happen more and more inside homes and schools etc. and I thought before of how it might be possible to protect people from the camera's through cloaking devices that make us nothing more than a blur to hide identity. The cloaking technology is not something I fully understand the science of, but here is an article about one form of cloak:

Scientists create first cloaking device

LOS ANGELES, Oct.19 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have created the first cloaking device to demonstrate the theory of hiding an object from electromagnetic radiation.

The cloak deflects microwave beams so they flow around an inside object with little distortion, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all, a group of researchers reported in the Oct.19 online advance edition of the journal Science.

Cloaks that render objects essentially invisible to microwaves could have a variety of wireless communications or radar applications, according to the team led by scientists at the U.S. Duke University.

The first device is far from perfect in that it is barely 8-cm wide and can only reduce back scatter and forward scatter, the researchers said. But the achievement represents "one of the most elaborate metamaterial structures yet designed and produced," they wrote in the Science paper.

It also represents the most comprehensive approach to invisibility yet realized, with the potential to hide objects of any size or material property, they added.

But how would these cloaks be affordable to everyone? They wouldn't. And so something else has struck me as a possibility - the veil. Right now certain sects of Islam require/encourage women to where berka's that cover their face for religious modesty. The debate right now is as to how much veiled women can/should participate in cultures where nobody else is wearing them. Turkey, a country with a majority of Muslims doesn't even permit the complete veil, for they see it as a symbol that divides people. On the other hand, many Middle Eastern countries require it by law so that women MUST wear the veil. European countries, who like to be politically correct, yet are finding themselves threatened by extreme Islamic terrorists have not been able to decide what to do about it yet...

And then, add to it the paparazzi who follow stars and make their lives hell anytime they go out in public. People who become the fascniation of the public such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can't go anywhere... and if video blogging starts to generate income for private individuals, their invaded privacy the rate of stalkers and interest in people who can't afford the protection is going to grow. I have seen first hand at conventions the scary way that obsessed fans lose all sense of reality when they see someone famous. And the way they will track people down... In a society where the potential to track someone's every movement by camera is all around, the safety of individuals who sky rocket to fame through their fad video blog would be a major concern.

As I watch all of this happen, and think about my novel, it strikes me that during the era of which my story takes place, that instead of an expensive cloaking device, or in addition to it, the veil might be a privacy solution. It might start out that more and more women would be wearing burka's in some places, and celebrities who want to move around in these places could do so by wearing plain black veils and blend in with the population. And as more and more places allow such veils for religious reasons, to prevent it for other reasons would be discrimination, and as more people began wearing them, it could become a popular way of traveling in secret.

The other complication I would throw in there is that some people might decide they would rather be filmed all the time. With the false accusations and sensationalized media convictions such as in the Duke Lacross Team Rape Accusation the only proof some people can have to avoid jail or clear their name (often the more important of the two) is to have PROOF they were somewhere else at the time. Nobody takes anyone's word for anything anymore, and people are more apt to believe what they want to believe than ever before.

So not EVERYONE would wear a veil, but it would be an option... and cloaks would be a better options to be worn with or without a veil, because it would hide people from the video camera's, but through a code, an individual might be able to de-blur themselves. Of course then there would be the piracy of codes.

All of this is very complicated, but so is life! :)

Now, I'm off to write... I'm editing up chapter 5 today and the story has really been smushed together so that the plot is happening at a much faster rate. I would love to finish this chapter by the end of this weekend- that is my goal.

So if my beta readers are reading this - hopefully you'll find out what happens next soon!!

Bio-Engineering

Here are some sci - non-fi articles that I find useful as reference material.

Ears on Mice

Gene Therapy delivery using an ultra sonic pulse


Gene therapy cures one disease, delivers another

The things that we can do now, or are working towards, are so freaky that it's really, really difficult to come up with something that is new!!

Corporate Control of Internet Content

Found this interesting:
.Robert Cox: When will the right recognize the cost of conceding Web 2.0?

Here is an excerpt:

Enter Fox News pundit, author and top-rated blogger Michelle Malkin. Last week she received notice from YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service, that her video had been deemed “offensive.” The result? Her account was terminated and her videos deleted.

YouTube refused to say why her videos were “offensive” and there was no avenue available to challenge the decision. Today, her videos are gone and her voice is suppressed on the most important video “node” on the Internet.

Some might note that Malkin can still host her videos elsewhere. Of course she can, but that would fail to understand the powerful forces of “network externalities” at play online. There is no Avis to eBay’s Hertz for good reason: Once an online network is fully catalyzed, there is no reason to join an alternative network. If you want to get the most money for your Beanie Baby collection, you are going to want access to the most potential bidders — and that means eBay.

YouTube is poised to become the eBay of video file sharing. If you want the biggest audience for your video, you want access to the most potential viewers — and that means YouTube.

Google understands this dynamic, which is why the company announced Monday that it will purchase YouTube — a company that has never made a dime — for $1.65 billion. YouTube fits very well within the Google online media portfolio. The company already owns Blogger.com, the most popular blog hosting site online, and Google News, which in two short years has become one of the top news sites in the world.

Don’t think it matters? Consider that, according to USA Today, 98 percent of the money donated to political parties by Google employees — “Google Millionaires” — went to Democrats.

But it’s not just Google’s media and financial muscle that benefits the left. Liberals run the leading blog search engine — Technorati. They run the leading blog software manufacturer — Six Apart. They invented two of the most important blogging technologies — Podcasting and RSS. The list goes on and on.

This is leading up to the kind of world I invision in my novel... Where some people, in order to get free goodies (services, benefits, basic needs etc) sign up to work for corporations in corporate cities and end up having the content censored of anything they get for 'free'... and they have to pay for independant news and programs and services... which struggle to survive.

People used to think big corporations were controlled by conservatives... and for the most part, they are, but the article above mentions a liberal corporation - which IMO shows that people who want freedom, truth and democracy will HAVE to go independant from the main political parties. I just don't know if there will be enough of us to organize effectively to prevent all media sources from being corrupted so badly by bias that there is no way to know what the facts are.

DNA Chimera for medical research...

I've been sick and so have my kids, so I haven't been writing - which is very frustrating... I've got so many ideas going and I was just starting to get organized...

But tomorrow I should be back into the laptop to work on Chapter 5...

meanwhile, I saw this today and had to post it...

It's happening, just as I have predicted. Scientists are making Chimera in order to experiment on the embryo's. How long will it be before they let them grow to Fetus, or to actually be born? Not too much longer... And I need to write my book before it stops being a futuristic sci-fi novel. *L*

Link to Article below

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Scientists to create 'frankenbunny' in big research leap
05.10.06

Rabbit research: Experiments could day one cure Alzheimer's

Scientists are planning to create a "frankenrabbit" by fusing together human cells with a rabbit egg.

It is hoped the "chimeric" embryos, which would be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit, could lead to breakthroughs in stem cell research which could one day cure diseases such as Alzheimer's or spinal cord injury.

The embryos will allow scientists to perfect stem cell creation techniques without using human eggs.

"If we learn how to do this with animal eggs, we should be able to have more success with human eggs, and I'd much rather know that if we were going to ask women to donate eggs that we were very likely to get stem cells as a result," said Chris Shaw, at the Institute of Psychiatry.

"We know this is a huge challenge after Dr Hwang in South Korea failed to get stem cells despite having 2,000 human eggs."

Teams in London, Edinburgh and Newcastle are to submit application to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority this month, requesting licences to create embryos that will be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit or cow.

The HFEA is encouraging the applications after legal advice. The embryos will be allowed to grow for only 14 days, at which point they will be cells smaller than a pinhead.