The Jewish View on Stem Cells – Jewish & Israel News

By Eric Fingerhut · March 9, 2009 · Edit

We’ve got statements from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, National Jewish Democratic Council and National Council for Jewish Women on Obama’s stem cell order — and they all like it.

First, the JCPA:

President Obama’s executive order lifting restrictions on stem cells gives scientists and researchers additional tools to help find cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other disorders and diseases, says a leading Jewish advocacy organization.

In a White House ceremony today, President Obama signed an executive order lifting restrictions on federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) welcomed the president’s action, calling the new policy a small victory for those working to find cures for such otherwise incurable conditions which affect millions of Americans each year.

Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), who attended today’s signing ceremony, made the following statement after the White House ceremony:

“As Jews, we place a strong value on the preservation of life and as our nation has advanced medically we have inched closer to discovering the root, cause and cure for many medical disorders that afflict a countless number of individuals. We do not know how close we are to discovering any cures, but with the new stem cell policy the administration put in place today, scientists and researchers will have additional tools to aid their work.”…..

via Some more stem cell reaction | Capital J | JTA – Jewish & Israel News.

If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck…it’s not a duck!

donald-duck

When does an adult stem cell look like an embryonic stem cell and act like an embryonic stem cell but isn’t an adult stem cell?

When it’s an Induced pluripotent stem cell.

Induced pluripotent stem cells[1], commonly abbreviated as iPS cells or iPSCs, are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell, typically an adult somatic cell, by inducing a “forced” expression of certain genes.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are believed to be identical to natural pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells in many respects, such as the expression of certain stem cell genes and proteins, chromatin methylation patterns, doubling time, embryoid body formation, teratoma formation, viable chimera formation, and potency and differentiability, but the full extent of their relation to natural pluripotent stem cells is still being assessed.

IPSCs were first produced in 2006 from mouse cells and in 2007 from human cells. This has been cited as an important advancement in stem cell research, as it may allow researchers to obtain pluripotent stem cells, which are important in research and potentially have therapeutic uses, without the controversial use of embryos.

via Induced pluripotent stem cell – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.