“Latest Stem Cells News”

Italy’s Constitutional Court relaxed parts of a law on artificial procreation that had imposed strict rules for fertility treatments.
The judges struck down as unconstitutional one of the most contested sections of the 2004 law, which said only three embryos could be created at one time, and all had to be implanted in the patient’s womb, a court spokesman said.

The judges also introduced stronger wording to ensure that embryos are implanted only if it doesn’t endanger the woman’s health, said spokesman Giovanni Gattarino.
The issue had been put before the constitutional judges by lower administrative and civil courts, which have been considering cases brought against the law by several couples, Gattarino said.

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(CBS) This week, British researchers announced another extraordinary breakthrough in medical research. They have taken stem cells from an embryo and created human sperm.

It’s very exciting, said the man who led the team. They have heads, they have tails, and they move. They have all the essential qualities for creating life. The aim, we are told, is to revolutionize the treatment of infertility.

But this discovery has created some interesting dilemmas. Sperm could be produced from female stem cells. That would mean women would no longer need men to create babies. It could also be theoretically used to produce an unlimited supply of babies from one stem cell line — millions of babies who are exactly the same. Will it happen? Probably not. Could it happen? Almost certainly, yes.

One of the opponents of this kind of research called it an example of man at his maddest. There are those who doubt the claims made by these researchers, but the truth is, it is only one of a remarkable series of medical breakthroughs involving stem cells. What these and other researchers are doing is ripping up the codes of law and morality by which we conduct our lives. The pace of discovery has left our legislators floundering.

And to make the whole matter more alarming, the pace of that change is increasing. Take these fine shining teeth, for instance — currently being rebuilt by a top man down the road with the aid of bone implants and titanium bolts. High tech – I said to my dental surgeon. It will soon be out of date, he replied. In future we will grow you nice new teeth from stem cells.

In fact, he said, some people are already trying it. But the rats they are using tend to grow the right teeth in the wrong places. So not quite suitable for me yet.

Stem cells, he said, can grow into anything — not just your teeth, but any failing organ. Think of it. Heart attack? Have a new heart. Kidneys in trouble? Here’s some more. Maybe when the treatments are perfected I will be able to live forever, as will you. Me — here — forever? I suspect for you the proposition does not attract. As a matter of fact it does not do much for me either.

from CBS

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Researchers believe that they can produce new eggs in infertile women even if the ovaries are damaged or the woman has passed the usual age of conception.

The technique involves transplanting stem cells into the ovaries and could work on the one in 10 women who suffer from infertility as well as those who want children late in life.

Until recently it was assumed that a woman was born with a finite lifetime store of around two million egg-producing follicles and no more could be produced.
By puberty this number has already fallen to about 400,000, and at the menopause too few eggs remain to permit fertility.

But four years ago scientists in the USA showed it was possible to obtain stem cells from the ovaries of adult women that could be grown into mature egg cells.

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