Embryo

IN MEXICO...the charred remains of a medical clinic hold a clue to an experiment that can change the world. IN LOS ANGELES...a famous model, desperate to have a baby of her own, sends a detective to track down a legend...and a doctor missing for twenty years. IN BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI...a little boy plays with matchs and smiles. IN A SECRET LOCATION...the radical procedure begins, leading to a scientific miracle ...or the beginning of a nightmare. What does the next step in high-tech reporduction hold for humankind? In a tale as real as tomorrow's headlines, a rich, successful woman takes a desperate gamble to have a child. A young lawyer discovers a fatal flaw in an unethical experiment. And a new life begins -- a life that could signal a revolution in modern medicine...or the end of us all.

Recent scientific breakthroughs, celebrity patient advocates, and conflicting religious beliefs have come together to bring the state of stem cell researchâ€"specifically embryonic stem cell researchâ€"into the political crosshairs. President Bush's watershed policy statement allows federal funding for embryonic stem cell research but only on a limited number of stem cell lines. Millions of Americans could be affected by the continuing political debate among policymakers and the public. Stem Cells and the Future of Regenerative Medicine provides a deeper exploration of the biological, ethical, and funding questions prompted by the therapeutic potential of undifferentiated human cells. In terms accessible to lay readers, the book summarizes what we know about adult and embryonic stem cells and discusses how to go about the transition from mouse studies to research that has therapeutic implications for people. Perhaps most important, Stem Cells and the Future of Regenerative Medicine also provides an overview of the moral and ethical problems that arise from the use of embryonic stem cells. This timely book compares the impact of public and private research funding and discusses approaches to appropriate research oversight. Based on the insights of leading scientists, ethicists, and other authorities, the book offers authoritative recommendations regarding the use of existing stem cell lines versus new lines in research, the important role of the federal government in this field of research, and other fundamental issues.

Draws on current scientific research and moral philosophy to shed new light on the debate over abortion and stem-cell research, and maintains that, from the moment of conception, embryos are entitled to the full protection of the law.

This book is about the development of the animal embryo starting from the fertilised egg. The emphasis is on the problem of pattern formation: how cells in different regions of the embryo become programmed to form the various structures of the body in the correct relative positions.

The Human Embryo in vitro explores the ways in which UK law engages with embryonic processes under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended), the intellectual basis of which has not been reconsidered for almost thirty years. McMillan argues that in regulating 'the embryo' – that is, a processual liminal entity in itself - the law is regulating for uncertainty. This book offers a fuller understanding of how complex biological processes of development and growth can be better aligned with a legal framework that purports to pay respect to the embryo while also allowing its destruction. To do so it employs an anthropological concept, liminality, which is itself concerned with revealing the dynamics of process. The implications of this for contemporary regulation of artificial reproduction are fully explored, and recommendations are offered for international regimes on how they can better align biological reality with social policy and law.

Recent advances in techniques and understanding in the fields of genetics, embryology and reproductive biology have opened up new ways to treat a wide range of medical problems. They range from new options for infertility treatment and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to stem-cell-based therapies for debilitating diseases. Since all these approaches involve the manipulation of human gametes, embryos or embryonic cells, and could also permit more contentious uses, they have stimulated a controversial debate as to what aims are desirable and to what extent experiments on human embryos are morally permissible, if permissible at all. The situation is further complicated by the fact that scientific projects are increasingly realized through international co-operation and that patients are increasingly ready to seek morally contentious medical treatment wherever it is available and thus to bypass national legislation. In view of this situation the Europäische Akademie assembled a temporary interdisciplinary project group in which scientists from universities and non-university research organizations in Europe working on the relevant subjects were brought together and charged with establishing a knowledge base and providing suggestions for long-term solutions that would be acceptable for society. Presented here are the results of this project, ranging from a discussion of the theoretical and practical possibilities in human-embryo experimentation and its alternatives in research on adult stem cells, a comparison of the situations and prospects of regulation of embryo research in Europe, a survey of European public attitudes, and a philosophical analysis of the arguments and argumentative strategies used in the debate.

The book considers signaling events from the zygote embryo through to the blastocyst with relevant data from embryonic stem (ES) cells, including dialogue with the extracellular environment and with the maternal tract during the implantation process. Application of the knowledge described to improve the success of human and animal assisted conception is considered where appropriate, but the focus is largely on fundamental rather than applied cell/molecular biology, as this is the area that has historically been neglected. While the general features of metabolism during preimplantation development are well established, especially in terms of nutrient requirements, uptake and fate, remarkably little is known about early embryo signaling events, intracellular or intercellular, between individual embryos in vitro or with the female reproductive tract in vivo. This contrasts with the wealth of information on cell signaling in somatic cells and tissues, as a glance at any textbook of biochemistry illustrates. This lack of information is such that our understanding of the molecular cell biology of early embryos -- a prerequisite to defining the mechanisms which regulate development at this critical stage of the life cycle -- is seriously incomplete. This volume is the first to address this issue by describing the current state of knowledge on cell signaling during mammalian early embryo development and highlighting priority areas for research.

Thanks to enormous scientific efforts of the last decades, in vitro fertilization (IVF) and in vitro production (IVP) have now been introduced successfully in the practice of human infertility treatment and cattle breeding programs. This comprehensive book allows us to bridge the knowledge from both biomedical and veterinary fields of research. For the first time, studies concerning the human embryo as well as embryos from domestic species are brought together. The central theme of the book is "the assessment of mammalian embryo quality". In 15 chapters, written by well-known scientists, different aspects of the assessment of mammalian embryo quality are summarized. Non-invasive and invasive techniques to evaluate embryo quality are separated in two parts. In addition the book is provided with appendices on practical aspects and, thus, the book should be present in each laboratory for IVF and IVP.