Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns

When scientists grow human embryos for lab research, they end their experiments at the 14-day mark. Until now, these internationally accepted guidelines (and the laws formed around them) have been largely self-regulating: The record for in-vitro gestation was just nine days, and most labs struggled to keep embryos alive longer then a week.

Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns Bigstock-Laboratory-Fertilization-Of-Eg-51452554

Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns Bigstock-Laboratory-Fertilization-Of-Eg-51452554

But now a pair of research teams from the Rockefeller University and the University of Cambridge have both kept embryos alive nearly twice as long. And since they had to terminate their experiments preemptively to avoid going past the 14-day line, there's no telling how long they could have watched the development of their cultured human embryos. The resulting studies — which have sweeping ethical implications — were published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Cell Biology.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/05/05/scientists-double-life-expectancy-for-embryos-in-petri-dishes-raising-ethical-concerns/

Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns

Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns

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