The last three decades have seen considerable progress in the development of culture media for ART and infertility treatment. Basic research on the metabolism of mammalian preimplantation embryos demonstrated the specific needs in the evolving stage of the embryo growing in vitro. Two different philosophies led to two different culture strategies for human preimplantation embryos: the 'back-to-...

Pluripotent Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) offer promising therapeutic potential for a number of fatal and otherwise untreatable diseases (National Institutes of Health, 1999). In 1998, privately funded research conducted at the University of Wisconsin by Dr. James Thomson yielded the first human stem cell line derived from early embryos donated by couples no longer needing them for procreativ...

Despite the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem (HES) cells, many people believe that HES cell research should be banned. The reason is that the present method of extracting HES cells involves the destruction of the embryo, which for many is the beginning of a person. This paper examines a number of compromise solutions such as parthenogenesis, the use of defective embryos, geneticall...

This essay is about the 1975 JEEM paper by Françoise Dieterlen-Lièvre (Dieterlen-Lièvre, 1975) and the studies that followed it, which indicated that the adult hematopoietic system in the avian embryo originates, not from the blood islands of the extraembryonic yolk sac as was then believed, but from the body of the embryo itself. Dieterlen-Lièvre's 1975 paper created a paradigm shift in hemato...

Background Traditionally, embryo incubation and assessment daily has been under a light microscope, these observations are inevitably restricted to specific times and considering that the development of the embryo is a dynamic process, several critical stages in between observations may go unnoticed. For this reason, the new technologies, time lapse monitoring, have focused on the research for ...

Objective One of the most controversial issues related to human embryo is to determine the moment when the embryo is considered as a human being and acquires a moral status. Although personhood and moral status are frequently touched upon in medical ethics, they are considered interdisciplinary as concepts shaping the debate in Medical Law (Fiqh) since their consequences are influential in the ...

interspecific or intergenus hybridization in sugarbeet (b. vulgaris l.) is usually failed due to non fertilization, embryo death or absence of connection between embryo and endosperm. consequently invitro embryo rescue technique is of value to save hybrid embryos before annihilation. sugar beet inter-specific crosses with wild species is impossible in classical breeding because of no chromosoma...

Mouse embryonic stem cells are continuous cell lines derived directly from the fetal founder tissue of the preimplantation embryo. They can be expanded in culture while retaining the functional attributes of pluripotent early embryo cells. In particular, they can participate fully in fetal development when reintroduced into the embryo. The capacity for multilineage differentiation is reproduced...

Human embryonic stem cell research can bring about major biomedical breakthroughs and thus contribute enormously to human welfare, yet it raises serious moral problems because it involves using human embryos for experiment. The "moral status of the human embryo" remains the core of such debates. Three different positions regarding the moral status of the human embryo can be categorised: the "al...

This article is a response to McLeod and Baylis (2007) who speculate on the dangers of requesting fresh 'spare' embryos from IVF patients for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, particularly when those embryos are good enough to be transferred back to the woman. They argue that these embryos should be frozen instead. We explore what is meant by 'spare' embryos. We then provide empirical ...