Question: Will scientists, using stem cells from an early developing feotus ever be able to create complete organs instead of small groups of cells?

Simon Langley-Evans answered on 20 Nov 2013:

Stem cells from developing embryos have the property of being pluripotent, which means they can potentially be pushed to become any type of cell we want them to. I think that we probably one day soon would be able to engineer any tissue or organ that we want to. There is already a lot that can be done.

The big ethical question is whether it is the right thing to do. Should we use human embryos in this way. Most people think that it is morally wrong to destroy human life in this way. There may be some alternatives to this. I have heard some people talking about work where they can take a stem cell from the skin and trick it into reverting back to the same state as an embryonic stem cell. It can then be given the signal to form a new type of cell. Maybe a patient with diabetes could be treated by taking some skin from them and growing new pancreatic cells from those skin cells. That way we wouldn’t need to use embryos at all.