August 16, 2000

There are some VERY interesting things going on in science these days, like this news article from the BBC News: Scientists claim world cloning first. Apparently, a team in Australia has cloned a mouse and harvested embryonic stem cells from the mouse and transplanted them back to the original in order to prove that it could be done. The interesting bit of this is that recent studies have shown the possibility of creating specific cells, such as nerve cells from stem cells. As this article points out, these two techniques together may mean treatments for Alzheimers disease in the future. And at the rate that biotechnology is ramping up, I think that it will be a very few years before this type of application becomes a reality. As I grow older and have more problems, I appreciate more and more the solutions that people like this are working on.

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