Writing is going well... back up to 12 chapters!
Everyone keeps asking me how many chapters do I have left to write, and I keep telling them, "I have no clue!" But what I do know is that the story arch is about 1/3 of the way through and the plot keeps changing - in nuance only.
I'm finding keeping continuity and consistancy to be the most challenging at this point. My characters are very nailed down in my mind, but to get the plot to go where I want to go AND keep them in character, I keep having to alter things a bit.
All in all, I'm having a BLAST because I enjoy the characters and even when I have to write a scene 2-4x I'm enjoying every minute of it because I love spending time with them... and it's always worth while to get it 'right' and not just settle with something.
On the science side of things - just saw this (sorry, still haven't figured out the html on this blog):
By the time my novel takes place, the Delphi Center no longer uses chimera as doners for moral reasons associated with the rights of animals... they have the advantage in their time of an alternate solution of merely growing the organ in a lab instead of needing to kill something. That is how they make 'meat' as well. But not everyone uses or CAN use the Delphi Center's technology, and some of this is still going on.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% humanBy CLAUDIA JOSEPH Last updated at 21:26pm on 24th March 2007
Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.
He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.
The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.
"We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,' said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.
"We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don't just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails."
At present 7,168 patients are waiting for an organ transplant in Britain alone, and two thirds of them are expected to die before an organ becomes available.
Scientists at King's College, London, and the North East Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle have now applied to the HFEA, the Government's fertility watchdog, for permission to start work on the chimeras.
But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.
Dr Patrick Dixon, an international lecturer on biological trends, warned: "Many silent viruses could create a biological nightmare in humans. Mutant animal viruses are a real threat, as we have seen with HIV."
Animal rights activists fear that if the cells get mixed together, they could end up with cellular fusion, creating a hybrid which would have the features and characteristics of both man and sheep. But Prof Zanjani said: "Transplanting the cells into foetal sheep at this early stage does not result in fusion at all."
I'm finding keeping continuity and consistancy to be the most challenging at this point. My characters are very nailed down in my mind, but to get the plot to go where I want to go AND keep them in character, I keep having to alter things a bit.
All in all, I'm having a BLAST because I enjoy the characters and even when I have to write a scene 2-4x I'm enjoying every minute of it because I love spending time with them... and it's always worth while to get it 'right' and not just settle with something.
On the science side of things - just saw this (sorry, still haven't figured out the html on this blog):
By the time my novel takes place, the Delphi Center no longer uses chimera as doners for moral reasons associated with the rights of animals... they have the advantage in their time of an alternate solution of merely growing the organ in a lab instead of needing to kill something. That is how they make 'meat' as well. But not everyone uses or CAN use the Delphi Center's technology, and some of this is still going on.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% humanBy CLAUDIA JOSEPH Last updated at 21:26pm on 24th March 2007
Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.
He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.
The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.
"We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,' said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.
"We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don't just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails."
At present 7,168 patients are waiting for an organ transplant in Britain alone, and two thirds of them are expected to die before an organ becomes available.
Scientists at King's College, London, and the North East Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle have now applied to the HFEA, the Government's fertility watchdog, for permission to start work on the chimeras.
But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.
Dr Patrick Dixon, an international lecturer on biological trends, warned: "Many silent viruses could create a biological nightmare in humans. Mutant animal viruses are a real threat, as we have seen with HIV."
Animal rights activists fear that if the cells get mixed together, they could end up with cellular fusion, creating a hybrid which would have the features and characteristics of both man and sheep. But Prof Zanjani said: "Transplanting the cells into foetal sheep at this early stage does not result in fusion at all."
posted by Julia | 10:21 PM
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