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MEDICAL RESEARCHERS from Japan and Britain have won the Nobel Prize in medicine for work in cell programming, a frontier that has raised dreams of replacement tissue for people crippled by disease.
Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and Sir John Gurdon of Britain found that adult cells can be transformed back to an infant state called stem cells, the key ingredient in the vision of regenerative medicine.
“Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop,” the Nobel jury declared. “By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.”
Among those who acclaimed the award were Britain’s Royal Society, Ian Wilmut, “father” of Dolly the cloned sheep, and a leading ethicist, who said it eased a storm about the use of embryonic cells.
Stem cells are precursor cells which differentiate into the various organs of the body. They have stirred huge excitement, with hopes that they can be coaxed into growing into replacement tissue for victims of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other diseases.
Gurdon, 79, said he was grateful but also surprised by the honour, since his main research was done more than 40 years ago.
In 1962, he discovered that the DNA code in the nucleus of an adult frog cell held all the information to develop into every kind of cell. This meant that an adult cell could in essence be reprogrammed.
His landmark discovery was initially met with scepticism, as the journey from immature to specialised cell was previously deemed irreversible.
“I’m amazed and immensely grateful and astonished that they should recognise work done such a long time ago,” Gurdon told Swedish Radio. ”Of course I’m extremely grateful to be recognised with Shinya Yamanaka who’s done this wonderful work.”
“It is particularly pleasing to see how purely basic research, originally aimed at testing the genetic identity of different cell types in the body, has turned out to have clear human health prospects,” he later told reporters in London.
Based at Cambridge University, Gurdon is fond of recalling that his school tutor told him when he was 15 that it would be a “total waste of time” to pursue a career in science, and credits his mother with encouraging him to follow his passion.
More than four decades later, in 2006, Yamanaka, now 50, discovered how mature cells in mice could be turned back to their youthful state using a batch of reprogramming genes.
The advantage of this would be to avert the need to use stem cells taken from early-stage embryos. These are hugely versatile but have stirred ethical controversy.
“This is not only a giant leap for science, it is a giant leap for mankind. Yamanaka and Gurdon have shown how science can be done ethically,” a professor of practical ethics at the University of Oxford, Julian Savulescu, told the Science Media Centre in London.
Yamanaka “deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics,” he said.
Yamanaka, a professor at Kyoto University, has pointedly warned of the ethical controversies of science.
“We should limit the application of technology to treatment or what can make patients happier,” he has said. “We may be able to generate new life (with this technique), so we are presented with another ethical issue.”
Stem-cell research is still at a very early stage, and only a tiny number of human trials have taken place. In the field of so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, for which Yamanaka was singled out for the Nobel, work is still only in the lab.
He was modest about the honour on Monday, telling reporters he was “just an obscure researcher” who planned to carry on his research. ”I really feel that I have to realise a medical application and contribute to society as soon as possible,” he said.
The pair had been among the frontrunners for a Nobel after they won the prestigious Lasker Prize in 2009 and Yamanaka shared the €1.2 million Millennium Technology Prize earlier this year with a software engineer.
Because of the economic crisis, the Nobel Foundation has slashed its prize sum to eight million Swedish kronor (€930,000) per award, down from the 10 million kronor (€1.16 million) awarded since 2001.
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“The home of the braaaaaaave, and the land, of the…… Incarcerated”
1% of the American population!
Beggars belief. But their prison system is outsourced to private firms so there is profit in prisons.
Silly comment. There’s the same incentive in the Public sector to prolong useless, bloated and inefficient services. The Private sector doesn’t try or sentence the prisoners. The Private sector is far more efficient.
It’s clear you’ve read nothing about private prisons William – a silly comment. Like most alliances between the public (legal) and private (prison) sectors, it’s one open to serious corruption. It’s not the sole existence of private prisons that’s wrong, it’s the relationship between them and public sector officials and how they lobby to have tougher laws and minimum sentencing. So, yes, you’re correct they don’t sentence prisoners directly, but they play their role in creating the laws that put them there in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-donnelly/private-prisons_b_1097667.html
Your link hadn’t a shred of evidence there was any corruption. Claiming that somehow there are more prisoners because the prisons are private is just conspiracy theory nonsense. Are doctors and private hospitals spreading Cancer? ……………….. Funnily enough – yes says the conspiracy theory nutters.
You’re getting desperate trying to take down my point by suggesting it’s a conspiracy theory. And if you can’t spot the clear potential for corruption in the opening paragraph you’ve obviously dug yourself in very deep.
Only the conservative right seem to have few/no problems with private prisons since they conform to their corporatism bias. Even the libertarian right recognises there are major issues.
But you’re probably a lost cause.
Lobbying of politicians and financial support for their campaigns occurs in all countries. Knowing that doesn’t create a corrupt conspiracy. Your logic is flawed and your argument contains not a shred of evidence of corruption. That makes you a conspiracy theory nutter.
The very idea that elected politicians take a few thousand dollars for their political campaigns and then purposely try and get more people into prison and for longer on the back of that donation is a theory for the deeply deluded and it’s probably more to do with your hatred of the US than anything else.
So any critic of private prisons is a hater of the US? You got your list of go-to aspersions beside you?
“Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the private prison industry.”
=
“conspiracy theory nutter”
Your quote from the link as I’ve already said doesn’t offer a shred of evidence for anything. Industries give politicians campaign donations. So? It’s not alone illegal but regarded as patriotic.
Gov. Jindal presumably was elected by the majority of the people of Louisiana, a poor state I might add, and gets donations from businesses, so what? You can’t extrapolate from that he wants more prisoners in jail to boost the private prison sector because he gets a donation. YOU have to prove a link. I’ve already said it’s absurd that someone getting a €20,000 donation for TV adds etc.. would then try and get longer and more sentences for prisoners because of that.
Your “logic” is standard fare for conspiracy theory nutters.
It’s not alone NOT illegal
Don’t mind William, he doesn’t like evidence even when it hits him right in the face. He’s also proven incapable of connecting very simple dots and using critical thinking. He’s the perfect subject for propaganda experiments.
William – you seem to think that politicians are a separate breed of human immune from the influence of money on their decision making. The idea that people and companies give money to politicians out of a sense of patriotism (a sentiment that doesn’t encourage logical thinking as it is) is absolutely absurd.
Companies explicitly donate political money to influence decisions and policy. That is the point of lobbying. They want favourable politicians in office. That’s not a conspiracy.
Here’s more ‘conspiracy’ literature on top of that from earlier.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/lpr_15.htm
The point is that you don’t view politicians receiving money from vested interests and their decisions being apparently favourable to those vested interests as corruption. Instead, you call it ‘patriotism’. And call me a conspiracy theorist. I obviously won’t convince you but I think most people recognise the potential problem. Hence the regular calls during general elections for more transparency and greater regulation of political donations. But that’s just part of the ‘conspiracy’, eh?
@William, there is a huge difference between illegal/legal and right/wrong.
Also conspiracy theorist is to open minded as terrorist is to freedom fighter. It is a label created to silence. Not asking questions and accepting things as they are enables the truly evil in our society to prosper. Embrace the ability to think for yourself.
Yeah. Like the BP oil well blowout. Only 5,000 gallons per day, they said.
That’s much more efficient than the hundreds of thousands of barrels per day that was actually leaking.
Private sector is very efficient.
Pay the CEO 12,000 times the wage of the average worker—because he does 12,000 times as much work, right?
Funny shite people think about the efficient private sector.
William, you honestly believe that “patriotic” corporations make massive contributions to politicians and expect nothing in return?
That they do it out of “patriotism”?
And you’re calling other people “nutters”?
YOU have to prove the conspiracy. That’s the way logic works, everything else is just BS.
Crossing a busy road while blindfolded is dangerous and puts you at risk of death. I don’t need to prove that do I?
The first paragraph alone is very misleading …’Currently there are 2.2 million prisoners in America. That is 1.6 million more than in Russia, 2.1 million more than the UK and 600,000 more than China’
a) are there any reliable figures for Russia and China?
b) Actual numbers are no real indicator, percentage of population would be …
It reminds me of a line in Escape to Victory where the German Commandant says that Germany doesn’t recognise Poles and Czechs as prisoners of war “they’re in labour camps. Officially they don’t exist”.
Russia and China only too happy to adopt a similar stance – if they don’t call someone a prisoner they aren’t counted as one.
Creative accounting at its finest.
Two morons desperately trying to deny reality due to a lack of braincells.
China executes people for non-murder offences, so they’re not in prison. China harvests organs from executed prisoners. Do you think China and Russia have an Innocence Project? I suspect that neither China or Russia are much concerned about ordinary crime, they’re both very corrupt. Even in Portugal a policeman told a friend, “We’re here to protect the state, not you”. You can’t compare totally different societies with each other and draw simple conclusions. There’s lies, damned lies and statistics.
China and Russia? Or you just a dick?
Yeah. It’s not so bad I beat my wife and put her in the hospital….my cousin KILLED his wife!
William, you’re a sketch.
Let’s get to the point, William. Why are you so opposed to people freeing innocent citizens from prison?
What is the harm in that? You certainly seem to have a chip on your shoulder about the Innocence Project. What, exactly is it that they do that you find so disagreeable. And leave fecking China and Russia out of it, since they’re not relevant.
Go ahead, William. Tell us why innocent people should be forced to serve their sentences.
Why don’t you learn to read seamus? I think the Innocence Project is an excellent idea.
Worked with the Innocence Project last summer in Washington, D.C. It’s an incredible project and virtually every case I worked on was appalling. What struck me most was, when an exoneree was released from prison, some after 10/15 years, how non-bitter they all were. Literally I thought they’d want to kill the people who put them in prison. But unfailingly they were so philosophical and thankful. Much bigger people than I could ever be. A very worthwhile project.
Sorcha that’s fantastic! I am a member over five years! Shame it’s only in the US.
I wish people would realise that not everyone on death row is guilty.
The people that are now free deserve serious amounts of money,although nothing could repay them.
To date 317 people are free because they did not do the crime they were put on death row for. Imagine that happened you.
Nobody knows how many innocent people died.
Blackstones formulation means not one should have!
This is why the death penalty needs to be banned for this reason alone.
GCD Law school has a branch of the innocence project directly affiliated with the us one. When I was studying law my peers worked on Irish cases and did us placement too. You should look into it. I think If u are not a student there you need to be a barrister or solicitor to offer your pro bono services
Ok so the US justice system has a few flaws. What country’s doesn’t? Some of Ireland’s judicial mistakes are embarrassing.
True but then again Ireland happily does not have the death sentence…..
That’s nonsense with no basis in fact.
Barry Scheck is a brilliant lawyer – does a lot of pro bono work. Even appeared for O J Simpson.
Indeed, he exposed how the prosecution were grossly distorting what the forensic evidence actually was. The prosecution repeatedly referred to DNA and blood evidence “matching” Simpson which was totally misleading as some of it would have “matched” 10% of the human race i.e. a Black African Male. Plus he exposed the LAPD as a crowd of cheats and chancers who blatantly fiddled with the evidence.
Barry scheck I think also defended Louise wardward in Boston in 1997 I think.
I firmly believe OJ Simpsons son killed her anyway! He just took the rap.
If people took the time to read about the innocence project maybe they would change their mind.
The problem is that is has become like the military industrial complex. There are so many people employed by the current system and so much money involved that its impossible to change anything for the better.
How come that same excuse can’t be applied to other countries then? There are paid police, lawyers and judges in every country.
But there are not for-profit prisons.
The for profit prison industry provides boilerplate legislation for state government to pass, which they do as it’s a business that brings jobs to their electoral disctricts, madatory sentencing for minor offences and multiple counts. Next thing you know you have millions of prisoners incarcerated in conditions designed only to extract maximum profit from the funding they get from the taxpayer rather than any actual policy goal (like preventing recidivism by allowing them to learn employable skills for example) and you have an insane spiral defended by the delusional ideologically pure like yourself.
Privatization is the big problem of America’s prison system. The prison service is a big business like everything else in that country. Local county’s are given quotas for the number of prisoners incarcerated, so many inmates are sent in on life term for trivial nonviolent offences such as personal narcotics possession.
These private prisons produce anything from military uniforms to electronic components for drones that kill innocent families in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The majority of inmates are also black Slave labour is alive and well in the United States in 2014.
The police, prosecutors and judges are not privatized, they catch and sentence so your point is invalid.
Without being racist, the majority of crminals are black,which has inevitable consequences
3/4 of black people in prison are there for drug offences. Who’s fault is that?
It’s pretty well documented that in instances of cocaine posession, blacks are sentenced to longer terms for the same amount of drugs than their white counterparts. I didn’t make this up:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=128
In answer to your “Who’s fault is that?” It appears to be a result of the venerable “War on Drugs”.
They need to stop the death penalty until they reform their prison system
I worked with a man named Bernard Baron who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His eventual release is due to work by The Innocence Project. One of the most inspirational men I ever had the pleasure of meeting. Google his story, a heartbreaking and inspiring read.
Looks like they play the system to get guilty men free.
No, they simply use DNA evidence – which doesn’t lie.
Eh David, do you just read the title and the take a wild stab at a response???
David, how about admitting that you know nothing about this subject?
“Land of the free”
A lot of federal penitentiary’s are located in well to do areas, the prison population counts on the census so the local authorities are allocated resources and funding based on population. Also the county jails make money of the prisoners by having them work, they transfer the prisoners wherever a prison runs short of labour. Only the federal prisons are paid by the taxpayer, the rest are run by private companies.
Have watched the Documentaries – The Innocence Project. They really do fantastic work. Great to see it getting more publicity.
Leave them deal with it themselves. It’s none of our business. Fools worry about yanks.
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