Skin Cells become Stem Cells
Lincoln Cannon
20 November 2007 (updated 4 September 2024)
Big news today from biotech scientists: researchers have successfully converted human skin cells into stem cells. This process can be used to produce almost any other type of cell and thereby fix numerous problems in the human body.
This advance is particularly important because it should help resolve the ethical controversy that has been raging around the use of embryonic stem cells. With fewer antagonists, hopefully financing will improve, thereby accelerating development and adoption of technologies that leverage this knowledge.
In Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near, he predicted based on current trends that a biotech revolution would occur within the next decade. Today’s announcement is an important step toward facilitating that revolution.