Recycled

The Skin Factory

Harvesting tissue from older human embryos.

Scientists reported today that a “biological bandage” grown from fetal skin tissuehealed second- and third-degree burns in children. Last month, William Saletan explained why we could get faster medical benefits from fetal and advanced embryonic tissue than from embryonic stem cells. “An embryo cloned from one of your cells would need just six or seven weeks to grow many of the tissues you need,” Saletan reported. “We already condone harvesting of cells from cloned human embryos for the first two weeks. Why stop there?”