great move. here is more info on embryonic stem cells.
Embryonic Stem Cells
Embryonic stem cells, as their name implies, are taken from embryos. These cells are "pluripotent," or capable of differentiating into any cell type derived from the three embryonic germ layers (the three initial tissue layers arising in an embryo) -- mesoderm, endoderm, and ectoderm. Under the right conditions, human embryonic stem cells will proliferate indefinitely without specializing or differentiating into specific cell types, to form an embryonic stem cell line. Embryonic stem cells were first isolated in mice more than 20 years ago, but it was not until 1998 that James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin managed to derive and grow the first stable line of human cells.
The embryos from which these stem cells are derived form under two different conditions. Until very recently, these cells were always taken from surplus eggs left over from in vitro fertilization procedures and contributed with the informed consent of the donors. In vitro fertilization is a technique used to assist women who are experiencing difficulty in conceiving a child. A woman's eggs are removed from her ovary and then fertilized in a laboratory culture dish. The fertilized eggs are maintained in a laboratory dish and allowed to develop into pre-implantation embryos, or pre-embryos. A little over two days later, they are delivered to a healthy uterus to continue development.
Many times, surplus embryos remain after the in vitro procedure. These can be donated to other couples or discarded, but they can also be frozen and stored for future IVF attempts or donated for research. The best estimate, by the RAND Institute in May 2003, is that nearly 400,000 embryos are frozen and stored in the U.S. alone, with about 11,000 such embryos designated for research.
In February 2004, scientists in South Korea became the first to derive human stem cells from embryos using a second method called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) -- a procedure often referred to as therapeutic cloning. [See the Stem Cell Challenge for a detailed description of both the SCNT and IVF methods of obtaining stem cells.]
Whether the embryonic stem cells are isolated from surplus IVF embryos or through SCNT, the embryo is destroyed in the process. This fact is the root of the controversy over using these cells in research.
