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Article: Stemming disease.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 5, 1992
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In "SLEEPER", a futuristic comedy, the fate of the world depends on Woody Allen destroying the last remaining piece (the nose, actually) of a despot known as "The Leader", so that evil scientists can never recreate him. He succeeds. The world is saved.
For how much longer will such a story seem absurd? Science cannot yet reproduce a human being from a single body part, let alone from a single cell. But researchers at SyStemix, a biotechnology firm in Palo Alto, California, have brought these ideas closer to reality. They claim to have purified a type of cell-a so-called "stem cell"--from which they can grow an entire organ, albeit a rather special one: the ...