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Can you harvest embryonic stem cells without abortions?
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Of course. You can in vitro fertilize an egg with a sperm and have it go to the point in development where you have embryonic stem cells. And by the time most people have abortions, the embryo or fetus cells have begun differentiation - for ES cells you need to go earlier. Under the right conditions, ES cells can proliferate on and on, a process called 'self-renewal'.
One can also combine someone else's ES cell or an egg with a nucleus from one of your own cells, to have all the differentiated cells be of the same genetic code as yours. If it works, it would get around problems of donor rejection. Unfortunately, this technology, known to science as somatic nuclear transfer, is often called 'cloning'.
Hybrid Mode
