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More significantly for shoppers, the commission ruled out labelling food from the offspring of cloned animals claiming it would be unenforceable.

"This requires that parentage information for every food producing animal is conveyed through the food production chain," said the commission.

"This becomes more complicated and therefore costly with every generation between the clone and the animal, reproductive material and the food.

"For official controls, checking the accuracy of statements on labels would require in particular for food from offspring and descendant meticulous investigation into the accompanying documentation."

Because there are no restrictions on importing semen which has come from a cloned animal, it is likely that tens of thousands of pigs and cows in Europe are offspring of cloned stud animals from America.

In 2008, America's food safety authorities "concluded that meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day".

The EU imports 300,000 to 500,000 tons of beef every year, much of it comes from the US and Argentina, which authorise cloning for commercial purposes, usually for producing semen for artificial insemination leading to herds composed of the offspring of clones.

The proposals for an EU directive will "ban the use of the cloning technique for farm animals and the imports of these animal clones".

"The marketing of food from animal clones will also be prohibited," said the commission.

Animal welfare and consumer campaigners have expressed their disappointment with the failure to introduce an immediate ban.

"The proposals do not go far enough. As they do not ensure that a ban on the import and sale of animal clones, their offspring and food products from animal clones and their offspring as well as semen and embryos from animal clones is introduced immediately across the EU," said Reineke Hameleers, the director of Eurogroup for Animals.

"We urge the EU to stand firm and prevent the sale and import of food from cloned animals and their offspring, respecting the wishes of Europe's citizens by properly amending the proposed legislation quickly."

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Meat from cloned animals need not be labelled, EC says

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More significantly for shoppers, the commission ruled out labelling food from the offspring of cloned animals claiming it would be unenforceable. "This requires that parentage information for every food producing animal is conveyed through the food production chain," said the commission.

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Modern day ark The first stem cells from endangered species have been created by a team of US scientists, a breakthrough that could potentially save dozens of animals teetering on the brink of extinction.

"The best way to manage extinction is to preserve species and habitats but that is not always working," says Oliver Ryder, director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo and co-leader of the study, said in a statement.

"Stem cell technology provides some level of hope that they won't have to become extinct even though they have been completely eliminated from their habitat."

That is the case for the northern white rhinoceros, one of the first two animals included in Ryder's new 'stem cell zoo'.

Only seven specimens remain in existence, all in captivity and two in San Diego.

The researchers also isolated stem cells from a critically threatened primate called a drill, genetically a close cousin to humans.

In captivity, drills often suffer from diabetes, a disease scientists are seeking to treat in humans using stem cell-based therapies.

Ryder's team had already collected skin cells and other tissue samples from more than 800 species, stored in a 'Frozen Zoo', by 2006.

That is when he contacted Dr Jeanne Loring, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute in nearby La Jolla and the study's other lead researcher, about the possibility of using the bank to generate and store stem cells.

Lessons from human research

At the time, scientists seeking to use stem cells to cure human disease had not yet found a reliable technique for turning normal adult cells into stem cells that can give rise to nearly any type of tissue or cell in the body.

Today, however, this process, called induced pluripotency, is routinely achieved by inserting certain genes into normal cells.

At first, Ryder and Loring tried to use genes from animals closely related to the target species in order to trigger the transformation, but the experiments failed.

Through trial and error, however, they discovered to their amazement that the same genes that induce pluripotency in humans also worked for the drill and the rhino.

The process is inefficient, only producing a few stemcells at a time, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Methods. But it was still enough to start the 'stem cell zoo'.

Creating sperm and eggs

Perhaps the greatest potential for helping endangered species, beyond disease treatment, is new reproductive strategies.

If adult stem cells can become a sperm or egg cell, for example, scientists could then use skin cells from long-dead animals in the Frozen Zoo to produce the male and female starter kit for new life.

Induced sperm cells could be combined with the eggs from living animals through in vitro fertilisation.

Alternatively, both eggs and sperm might be generated from stem cells, with the resulting embryos implanted in live host animals, a process the researchers said would likely be much more reliable that cloning techniques.

"I think that work would be a lot easier ethically with endangered species than with humans," says Loring.

"I suspect some people working in this area would love to have our cells for experiments."

Such techniques would also help boost genetic diversity by reaching beyond the small number of living individuals of a dwindling species, she explained.

Even if the remaining northern white rhinos reproduced, which hasn't happened in many years, the tiny gene pool could easily lead to unhealthy animals.

Tags: endangered-and-protected-species, animals, stem-cells, genetics

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Modern day ark The first stem cells from endangered species have been created by a team of US scientists, a breakthrough that could potentially save dozens of animals teetering on the brink of extinction.

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By administering a combination of three genes, researchers have managed to convert one type of adult mouse cell into another type. The new approach builds on information gleaned from developmental studies of embryonic stem cells (see story #16) and one day may be used to create healthy replacements for harmed or diseased tissue.

Douglas Melton, codirector of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues study both the stem cells that develop into the pancreas and its insulin-producing cells and the genes that guide those cells' development.

Instead of trying to coax stem cells to differentiate into pancreatic cells, Melton focused on identifying transcription factors, proteins that bind to DNA and turn genes on and off. He and his collaborators found that three transcription factors, when targeted to the pancreas of a living mouse, converted fully formed, non-insulin-producing pancreatic cells into cells that were functionally identical to insulin-producing cells-no stem cells required.

Melton believes that this direct reprogramming could eventually be used to help stimulate insulin production in people with type 2 diabetes or could even be applied to neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases.

"Why should you have to take a cell and turn it all the way back to the beginning, erase all its memory, when you are still left with the problem of telling it how to become a new type of cell?" Melton asks.

"I like to think of this as a new way of providing cells in regenerative medicine."

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#17: Cell Reprogramming Could Help Cure Diabetes-and Other Diseases

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By administering a combination of three genes, researchers have managed to convert one type of adult mouse cell into another type. The new approach builds on information gleaned from developmental studies of embryonic stem cells (see story #16) and one day may be used to create healthy replacements for harmed or diseased tissue.

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Liver Buds to the Rescue

Some 16,000 ailing Americans are waiting to receive a liver transplant. But due to a shortage of viable livers, it's likely that fewer than 7,000 transplants will be performed in 2013. In Japan, where the shortage is worse, the number of people in need of new livers is 10 times as great as the number of deceased donors who could provide one.

That gap motivated stem cell biologist Takanori Takebe and his colleagues at the Department of Regenerative Medicine at Yokohama City University in Japan to find an alternate solution. This year they succeeded in generating mini-livers, or liver buds, from stem cells that were taken from human skin and reprogrammed to an embryonic state. (Embryonic stem cells are notable because they can morph into virtually any cell type in the body.)

When mixed with two other types of cells, the fabricated primitive liver cells organized themselves into three-dimensional structures, complete with blood vessels. In effect, Takebe's team re-created the process by which a human embryo begins to form a functioning liver.

Transplanted into a mouse, the human liver buds, about 5 millimeters long, exhibited many functions of the mature organ, such as metabolizing sugars and drugs. When the scientists disabled the mouse's own liver, the human buds kept the animal alive for two months. A person with liver failure would require an infusion of "tens of thousands" of liver buds, Takebe says.

Until the buds can be generated from the skin of each individual patient, recipients will have to rely on immune-suppressing drugs to avoid rejection, just as they would with the transplant of an entire organ. Replacement liver buds might be available to human patients in a decade or less. - Jeff Wheelwright

Growing Brain Organoids

Scientists can't yet grow spare parts of the human brain to fix neurological injuries or defects, but they have recently used stem cells to create brain organoids, formations of cells that mimic some of the brain's regions. A team led by neuroscientist Jürgen Knoblich of Austria's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology developed the organoids to help them simulate disease.

Two types of stem cells were used to produce the mini-brains: embryonic cells and adult cells that had been reprogrammed to a starter state. The cells were put into a special culture and then suspended in a gel and stimulated by nutrients, all geared to turn them into neurons like those found in the cortex.

The neurons literally "self-organized," according to Knoblich, and after several weeks formed three-dimensional structures about one-tenth of an inch in diameter.

"If you zoom out and look at the whole, it's not a brain," Knoblich says. "But our cultures contain individual brain regions that have a functional relationship with one another." Besides the dorsal cortex, researchers were able to grow, among other regions, parts of the ventral forebrain, which makes neurons that connect to the cortex, and the choroid plexus, which generates spinal fluid.

In their most impressive experiment, the scientists derived organoids from the skin cells of a person affected by microcephaly. This genetic disorder causes a drastic reduction in brain size and stature. The microcephalic organoids were smaller than the organoids grown from healthy people, apparently because the patient's stem cells had divided too early and became depleted.

"What our organoids are good for is to model the development of the brain and to study anything that causes a defect in development," Knoblich says. For example, by taking neural stem cells from a patient with schizophrenia, researchers might turn back the clock and track the onset of the condition in an organoid. Knowing how schizophrenia starts might help prevent it. - Jeff Wheelwright

Human Stem Cells Made From Eggs

It was 1996 when biologists first fused a mammalian skin cell with an egg cell, cloning Dolly the sheep. That was the start of the race to make a human embryo the same way. The method, called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), replaces the DNA in an egg cell's nucleus with the genetic material from the nucleus of a skin cell, then tricks the egg cell to start dividing as if it had been fertilized with sperm.

The result: an embryo that is an almost perfect genetic copy of the skin cell donor. In humans, the goal of SCNT is "nonreproductive cloning" - making embryos, then removing stem cells from the embryo and cultivating them to grow into tissues that could cure diseases, replace organs and heal injuries.

But getting eggs to act like embryos turned out to be far more difficult in humans than in sheep. It wasn't until 2013 that Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University finally made SCNT work in humans, through careful tweaking and fine-tuning based on experiments with more than 1,000 rhesus monkey eggs. His final protocol requires a few dozen steps.

"It's a very complex procedure," he says. Among Mitalipov's secrets: stimulating reprogramming activity by priming the eggs with caffeine and by precisely dosing them with chemicals that coil and uncoil DNA's twisted strands, and applying a gentle electric jolt to get the egg to begin dividing. (An embryo created this way will not develop into a fetus.)

There are now other methods to make stem cells, but those made via SCNT have unique value because they are genetic copies of the living person who donated the skin cells (other methods either use foreign cells or involve genetic reprogramming). Thus, replacement tissues made from them shouldn't trigger the immune system rejection that dooms many transplants.

Making purpose-built tissues may be far in the future, because figuring out the exact recipes to turn cells into functioning bone, heart or spinal cord will take time. But Mitalipov's triumph has big near-term benefits in giving researchers a new tool to understand all the details of how stem cells grow, divide and differentiate, says Larry Goldstein, director of the University of California San Diego Stem Cell Program: "It's great science." - Kat McGowan

[This article originally appeared in print as "Stem Cell Future."]

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Scientists Make Progress in Growing Organs From Stem Cells

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Some 16,000 ailing Americans are waiting to receive a liver transplant. But due to a shortage of viable livers, it's likely that fewer than 7,000 transplants will be performed in 2013. In Japan, where the shortage is worse, the number of people in need of new livers is 10 times as great as the number of deceased donors who could provide one.

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Breeding two highly endangered animals or subspecies through conventional mating is a difficult and often futile undertaking. For instance, the last birth of an endangered northern white rhinoceros was in 2000. As a radical alternative, biologist Jeanne Loring at the Scripps Research Institute is attempting to transform frozen skin cells from threatened species into eggs and sperm. In theory, new embryos then could be created by combining converted egg or sperm cells with natural ones, or by combining eggs with sperm cells derived from different donor animals.

Last year Loring transformed skin cells from the drill, a silver-bearded African monkey, into a pluripotent stem cell that can form many different tissue types. She did the same with cells from the northern white rhinoceros, a subspecies believed to be extinct in the wild. "It took a couple years to get conditions right," Loring says. "We had to change the delivery virus for the rhino."

The next step, transforming the stem cells into egg and sperm cells, could take years more, but Loring is convinced the results will be worth it. "People will be able to make fertile embryos and implant them into surrogate mothers," she says. This will in turn introduce much-needed diversity into the gene pool as scientists attempt to rebuild decimated populations.

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#43: Skin Cells Could Help Revive Rare Species

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Breeding two highly endangered animals or subspecies through conventional mating is a difficult and often futile undertaking. For instance, the last birth of an endangered northern white rhinoceros was in 2000. As a radical alternative, biologist Jeanne Loring at the Scripps Research Institute is attempting to transform frozen skin cells from threatened species into eggs and sperm.

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Newspaper article on a girl with 3 parents

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Newspaper article on a girl with 3 parents

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With diagrams of the biological process. For further reading and links to journal articles : http://www.gsnv.org.au/news-and-research/genetics-in-the-media/three-parent-ivf-why-the-controversy.aspx

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Alana Saarinen loves playing golf and the piano, listening to music and hanging out with friends. In those respects, she's like many teenagers around the world. Except she's not, because every cell in Alana's body isn't like mine and yours - Alana is one of a few people in the world who have DNA from three people.

"A lot of people say I have facial features from my mum, my eyes look like my dad... I have some traits from them and my personality is the same too," says Alana.

"I also have DNA from a third lady. But I wouldn't consider her a third parent, I just have some of her mitochondria."

Mitochondria are often called the cell's factories. They are the bits that create the energy all of our cells need to work, and keep the body functioning. But they also contain a little bit of DNA.

Alana Saarinen is one of only 30 to 50 people in the world who have some mitochondria, and therefore a bit of DNA, from a third person. She was conceived through a pioneering infertility treatment in the USA which was later banned.

But soon there could be more people like Alana, with three genetic parents, because the UK is looking to legalise a new, similar technique which would use a donor's mitochondria to try to eliminate debilitating genetic diseases. It is called mitochondrial replacement and if Parliament votes to let this happen, the UK would become the only country in the world to allow children with three people's DNA to be born.

The structure of a cell

Nucleus: Where the majority of our DNA is held - this determines how we look and our personality

Mitochondria: Often described as the cell's factories, these create the energy to make the cell function

Cytoplasm: The jelly like substance that contains the nucleus and mitochondria

Alana was born through an infertility treatment called cytoplasmic transfer.

Her mum, Sharon Saarinen, had been trying to have a baby for 10 years through numerous IVF procedures.

"I felt worthless. I felt guilty that I couldn't give my husband a child. When you want a biological child but you can't have one, you're distraught. You can't sleep, it's 24-7, constantly on your mind," she says.

Cytoplasmic transfer was pioneered in the late 1990s by a clinical embryologist Dr Jacques Cohen and his team at the St Barnabus Institute in New Jersey, US.

"We felt that there was a chance that there was some element, some structure in the cytoplasm that didn't function optimally. One of the major candidates that could have been involved here are structures called mitochondria," he says.

Cohen transferred a bit of a donor woman's cytoplasm, containing mitochondria, to Sharon Saarinen's egg. It was then fertilised with her husband's sperm. As a little bit of mitochondria was transferred, some DNA from the donor was in the embryo.

Seventeen babies were born at Cohen's clinic, as a result of cytoplasmic transfer, who could have had DNA from three people.

But there was concern about some of the babies.

"There was one early miscarriage, considering there were twelve pregnancies that is an expected number," says Cohen.

He and his team believed that miscarriage occurred because the foetus was missing an X chromosome.

"Then there was another twin pregnancy, where one [of the twins] was considered entirely normal and the other had a missing X chromosome.

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"So that's two out of the small group of foetuses that was obtained from this procedure. This did worry us and we reported that in the literature and in our ethical and review board that oversees these procedures," he says.

At the time of birth, the other babies were all fine. A year or two later, another of the children was found to have "early signs of pervasive early developmental disorder which is a range of cognitive diseases which also includes autism." Cohen told me.

He says it's difficult to know if the abnormalities happened by chance or because of the procedure.

Other clinics copied the technique and Cohen estimates that around 30 to 50 children worldwide were born who could have DNA from three people as a result.

But in 2002 the American regulator, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) asked clinics to stop doing cytoplasmic transfer due to safety and ethical concerns. All of them did.

"There was a reaction from scientists, ethicists, the public at large, I think most of it was supportive, some of it was critical - I think this is normal, every time an experiment is done in medicine there is a reaction - what are the risks here?" says Cohen.

At the time, some were concerned because they felt this was germ line genetic modification. What "germ line" means is that a child like Alana would pass her unusual genetic code down to her children. And their children, would pass it to their children and so on.

Because we inherit our mitochondria only from our mothers, only female children would pass their unusual genetic code on. Crossing the germ line as it is known has never been done before so very little is known about what the outcome could be.

Due to a lack of funding, Cohen says, it hasn't been possible to find out about how any of the children like Alana who were born from cytoplasmic transfer are doing. But the St Barnabus Institute is now starting a follow up study to check their progress.

Sharon Saarinen says her daughter Alana is a healthy, typical teenager

"I couldn't ask for a better child. She is an intelligent, beautiful girl inside and out, she loves math and science ... she does really well in school. She helps me around the house... when she's not texting!"

"She has always been healthy. Never anything more than a basic cold, or a flu every now and then. No health problems at all."

The health of the children, like Alana, born from cytoplasmic transfer is under scrutiny now because of the UK's decision to consider legalising mitochondrial replacement, where the mitochondria of a donor woman will be used to create a child.

It would not be available for people with fertility problems but for those who carry diseases of the mitochondria and would otherwise pass down these genetic abnormalities to their children.

Exactly how it is done still needs to be determined as there are two ways of doing the procedure, depending on when the eggs are fertilised.

Eggs from a mother with unhealthy mitochondria and a donor with healthy mitochondria are collected

The nucleus, containing the majority of the genetic material, is removed from both eggs. The donor nucleus is destroyed

The mother's nucleus is inserted into the donor egg - it now has healthy mitochondria. The egg is then fertilised by the father's sperm

Both the mother's and donor's eggs are fertilised with the father's sperm to create two embryos

The pronuclei, the nuclei during the process of fertilisation, contain the majority of the genetic material. They are removed from both embryos. The donor's is destroyed

A healthy embryo is created by putting the parents' pronuclei into the donor embryo

"Mitochondrial diseases tend to involve tissues or organs which are heavily dependent on energy," says Prof Doug Turnbull from The University of Newcastle. He has treated people with mitochondrial disease for decades and is one of those who has developed these new techniques to try to cure these debilitating diseases.

"The conditions can therefore involve the heart, the brain or sometimes the skeletal muscle," he says.

"People can have very bad heart problems which can cause the heart to fail eventually, they can be very weak and require respirators or be in a wheelchair. With the brain, they can get epilepsy, strokes and eventually severe dementia."

Turnbull estimates that around 1 in 3000-5000 people in the UK have a mitochondrial disease. "We can treat the symptoms. We can improve the quality and length of peoples' lives but we can't cure them."

The mitochondria carry some DNA, around 13 "important genes" says Turnbull.

That compares to the "23,000 important genes" in the nucleus where most of our DNA is held. This is the DNA that determines our traits and personality.

"We're not trying to create some characteristic that makes this person a stronger person or [someone who] will have blonde hair. We're trying to prevent disease and I think that is the only justification for doing this," he says.

Sharon Bernardi, from Sunderland in the North of England, is someone who mitochondrial replacement could have helped.

Bernardi has lost seven children to mitochondrial disease.

I have to slip back into reality and think don't be silly, Edward's not there. He's not in his room
Sharon Bernardi

"I have babies in three different cemeteries," she told us in her sitting room, surrounded by photographs of all her children.

"That is not the way you plan your life when you're trying to have a family. I have lovely photos and lovely memories but obviously that's all I have got now."

The doctors didn't know why Bernardi's babies kept passing away only hours after they were born. So that's why she kept trying, hoping she would have a healthy child.

With her fourth child, Edward, at first everything seemed different. He was healthy until he was about four and a half. But it was then that he was diagnosed with Leigh's disease, a type of mitochondrial disease, and his health deteriorated throughout the years.

"From the age of 20 Edward [found] getting around more difficult. He started to get new symptoms - spasms. He'd start screaming... four, five, six hours at a time. His muscles used to tense up, his hands, his face. It was like dystonic spasms - a really bad spasm. [For] eight hours he'd be in pain, screaming. His face would twist up and his hands would get really stiff. It was hard to see."

Edward Bernardi passed away three years ago, when he was 21.

"My life was totally for Edward. Even now sometimes if I have gone to sleep, I still wake up, and think, 'It's very quiet.' I have to slip back into reality and think, 'Don't be silly, Edward's not there. He's not in his room'."

"Without a heartbeat I would have gone for this [mitochondrial replacement]. I hope this is a new option. I hope people take it seriously and it's approved.

"I don't want my son to have just died for nothing. I want him to have made a difference."

"His life was robbed at 21. We're trying to stop this. People have to understand this is a life disease. We're trying not to pass it on to children and make it better for future families."

But some people believe this technique could set us on a slippery slope towards genetically modified humans.

"These regulations would authorise the crossing of a rubicon for the first time. It would authorise germ line therapy... to alter the genes of an individual. This is something defined by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as effectively constituting eugenics," says British MP Fiona Bruce who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group.

There have been few episodes I'm aware of in the history of assisted reproduction that have had to be stopped because of hazard
Professor Braude, Kings College London

"We will have approved a technique and what that technique could be used for in the future who knows. We're opening a Pandora's box."

The regulator in the UK, the HFEA or Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, has held three independent reviews to scrutinise the safety of this technique. The conclusions were that mitochondrial replacement is "not unsafe".

That means "it would be reasonable, with some additional experiments, to take it into clinical practice if all circumstances are fulfilled" says Peter Braude, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Kings College London. He sat on all three HFEA scientific reviews.

"In any move from science to clinical practice there is a leap of faith - it has to be done," he says.

He adds that many of the concerns being raised now about this are the same as the ones cited in the early days of IVF. The UK has for decades been a leader in assisted reproduction science and is where the world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978.

"The headlines then were 'playing God' and 'genetically modified humans'," says Braude.

"There have been few episodes I'm aware of in the history of assisted reproduction that have had to be stopped because of hazard. It's all gone pretty swimmingly as far as I'm aware."

Braude says that mitochondrial replacement has gone through much more scrutiny than previous, now well established, assisted reproduction techniques did, such as IVF.

"Whereas the original techniques were used with only [experiments from] mice, rabbits, lab animals... the big difference here is we also have issue of human embryos and this work has been tested in macaque monkeys in primates. All those were very useful, reassuring... hence why we came to the conclusion that this is not unsafe."

The experiments done on macaque monkeys were done in Oregon, US and the monkeys are now five years old and seem to be healthy.

Braude also points out that having a third person's DNA in your system is "nothing particularly new".

"Think about bone marrow transplants, let's say unfortunately you have leukaemia and you have to have your bone marrow radiated for the cancer to be killed and then it is replaced by bone marrow from someone else - say me. Effectively from that time onwards, you will have circulating in your body DNA from me. You won't be related to me, you may be grateful to me, but you will have DNA from a third person circulating in your body."

What is different, say critics, about mitochondrial replacement, is that DNA from the donor will be passed down future generations.

Dr Ted Morrow, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Sussex, and colleagues have carried out mitochondrial replacement experiments on other animals. He raised safety concerns about mitochondrial replacement to the scientific reviews.

"For mice, there were changes in cognitive ability... to learn and do things using their brain. In fruit flies and seed beetles there were changes in male fertility, changes in ageing, a range of different traits were effected in various experiments," he says.

I'm a scientist but I'm not a pro-lifer. I think this is a genuine safety concern - that's it
Ted Morrow, University of Sussex

The HFEA's scientific reviews dismissed Morrow's findings as not relevant to humans because they were done on inbred animals.

Morrow stands by his research and says the scientific panels should not have dismissed his findings so quickly.

It is Morrow's evidence that critics such as Fiona Bruce cite when saying this technique is not safe enough.

She has called a debate in the House of Commons today to discuss mitochondrial replacement. She does not believe there has been enough debate about what the UK is proposing to do. "The technique itself could allow the child to inherit untried untested medical complications," she says.

Morrow says that all the coverage of his research has been "a rather odd experience".

"In the press it's sometimes portrayed that the scientists think this, and the pro-life group this. I'm a scientist but I'm not a pro-lifer. I think this is a genuine safety concern - that's it."

Alana and Sharon Saarinen have been watching the debate in the UK with interest.

"I wish I could meet her, the donor, to tell her I am so grateful for what she did for us. How can you thank someone for giving you a life? That's impossible," says Sharon.
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Alana agrees with her mum. "I think it would be nice to thank her. But I wouldn't want to have a relationship or connection with her. The DNA I have of her is just so small."

"I know she might have another person's mitochondria, [but] look what a great person she turned out to be, and healthy. Just because she'll pass it on to her children it won't bother me in the least. I know it was the right thing to do. I have the living proof every day to see how great it turned out."

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Alana Saarinen loves playing golf and the piano, listening to music and hanging out with friends. In those respects, she's like many teenagers around the world. Except she's not, because every cell in Alana's body isn't like mine and yours - Alana is one of a few people in the world who have DNA from three people.

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This article goes through the history of spinal cord injuries and their treatment

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This article goes through the history of spinal cord injuries and their treatment

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Really interesting and a little gruesome

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Mouse models of spinal cord injury and stem cell transplantation

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Spinal cord injury is one of the most devastating neurologic conditions that mostly affects young, and otherwise healthy, patients. Following the prim...

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Journal article on cloning endangered species

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Journal article on cloning endangered species

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From here you could possibly look into using egg cell donors from closely related species?

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If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to reset your password

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Example of a digram of biological process

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Example of a digram of biological process

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Cloning cattle using Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer

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Ethics and reprogramming: ethical questions after the discovery of iPS cells | Eurostemcell

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Can we decide today whether iPS cells could or should replace embryonic stem cells? And would using only iPS cells resolve all ethical dilemmas about this research? To answer these questions, we need to consider both current scientific understanding and moral aspects of the issues: Are there any ethically relevant differences between iPS cells and embryonic stem cells?

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Regenerative medicine in animals more advanced than humans

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Regenerative medicine in animals more advanced than humans

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- could also look at race horse industry (lots of money, advanced research, less ethical concerns?)

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Updated October 09, 2011 01:49:35

Australian vets say they are having great success treating arthritic dogs with stem cells and researchers developing arthritis treatments for humans are taking a keen interest in the technique.

The trouble is that some dog owners feel their four-legged friends are getting better treatment than they are.

Melbourne vet Ray Ferguson has had a particular interest in treating arthritic dogs for about 30 years.

At first he was sceptical of the benefits of canine stem cell treatment, but he has now treated about 40 dogs.

"For individual joints where a dog has one bad knee or one bad elbow, the treatments are very simple," he said.

"A very, very light anaesthetic and we pop an injection of the stem cells straight into the joint and it's all over in about five minutes."

Dr Ferguson says the stem cells come from donor dogs.

"These largely come from dogs that are being de-sexed, they're all young dogs so we've got young, vibrant cells," he said.

Dr Ferguson says preliminary trials involved dogs with skin disease and joint disease being injected with stem cells as well, but the arthritic dogs responded best of all.

"Particularly in the early trials I did five dogs, one of which was my own that had I would say incurable lameness, persistent lameness," he said.

"They all responded and those five dogs are all sound today. That's amazing."

The stem cell treatment costs between $1,500 and $3,000.

Dr Ferguson says he tells dog owners the stem cell treatment works best on younger dogs but dogs up to about 10 years of age are also responding well.

"I have to point out to them, look I'm not offering a fountain of youth. This isn't going to turn an old dog into young dog," he said.

"But it's just a wonderful, adjunctive therapy to have to everything else that we've got."

Humans 'getting jealous'

Professor Richard Boyd is the director of Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories at Monash University.

He says the stem cell treatment of dogs is helping researchers understand the effect similar treatment would have on humans.

"Their lives are constrained into 10 or 15 years and that reflects a human going from up to 70 or 80 years," he said.

"So the conditions which are generative which a dog gets in 10 years like arthritic hips and joints is very similar to what ageing humans get.

"So we can treat these dogs and improve their health using these stem cells. But it has a double-edged advantage of being able to say to our clinicians, look we've done now 8,000 animals.

"This is a basic very good basis to being able to treat humans."

Professor Boyd says the dogs may actually be getting the better and more innovative treatment than a lot of Australians.

"The retired senior who's taking the rejuvenated dog for a walk is now getting jealous," he said.

"But I think that what we will see certainly soon is that this is sort of like the winter of stem cell research, it's now becoming the spring of stem cell therapy.

"So hopefully we'll get a retired senior and a retired dog both walking briskly along the beach."

Topics: arthritis, diseases-and-disorders, health, veterinary-medicine, animal-science, stem-cells, science-and-technology, australia

First posted October 08, 2011 14:46:40

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Updated October 09, 2011 01:49:35 Australian vets say they are having great success treating arthritic dogs with stem cells and researchers developing arthritis treatments for humans are taking a keen interest in the technique. The trouble is that some dog owners feel their four-legged friends are getting better treatment than they are.

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Overview of Stem Cells and ethical, social and legal 

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Overview of Stem Cells and ethical, social and legal 

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A good place to start

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Regulations and policies change frequently to keep up with the pace of research, as well as to reflect the views of different political parties. Here President Obama signs an executive order on stem cells, reversing some limits on federal research funding. (White House photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Governments around the globe have passed legislation to regulate stem cell research. In the United States, laws prohibit the creation of embryos for research purposes. Scientists instead receive "leftover" embryos from fertility clinics with consent from donors. Most people agree that these guidelines are appropriate.

Disagreements surface, however, when political parties debate about how to fund stem cell research. The federal government allocates billions of dollars each year to biomedical research. But should taxpayer dollars be used to fund embryo and stem cell research when some believe it to be unethical? Legislators have had the unique challenge of encouraging advances in science and medicine while preserving a respect for life.

U.S. President Bush, for example, limited federal funding to a study of 70 or so hES cell lines back in 2001. While this did slow the destruction of human embryos, many believe the restrictions set back the progress of stem cell research.

President Obama overturned Bush's stem cell policy in 2009 to expand the number of stem cell lines available to researchers. Policy-makers are now grappling with a new question: Should the laws that govern other types of pluripotent stem cells differ from those for hES cells? If so, what new legislation is needed?

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Governments around the globe have passed legislation to regulate stem cell research. In the United States, laws prohibit the creation of embryos for research purposes. Scientists instead receive "leftover" embryos from fertility clinics with consent from donors. Most people agree that these guidelines are appropriate.

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Journal article on Reproductive Technologies

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Journal article on Reproductive Technologies

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Ethical, Legal and Social issues

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The Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Impacted by Modern Assisted Reproductive Technologies

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Obstetrics and Gynecology International is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal that publishes original research articles, review articles, and clinical studies in all areas of obstetrics & gynecology.

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Clinical Trials for Regenerative Medicine

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Clinical Trials for Regenerative Medicine

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Stem Cell Clinical Trials - Stem Cells Australia

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This site also provides a good summary on the ethical issues that might be raised by stem cells, cloning and reproductive technologies

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Crimes Act 1900 Guardianship and Management of Property Act 1991 Human Cloning and Embryo Research Act 2004 Human Rights Act 2004 Human Rights Commission Act 2005 Medical Treatment Act 1994 Medical Treatment (Health Directions) Act 2006 Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 Parentage Act 2004 Powers of Attorney Act 2006 Transplantation and Anatomy Act 1978

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Catalyst video on the biological process of growing meat in a lab and the pro's and cons.

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Sausages could soon be grown in a laboratory Maryanne Demasi uncovers how Dutch scientists are creating slaughter-free meat