Stem cells from your testes and mother’s breast milk trade
Next Attraction: For men: Replace your heart with cells from your balls. For women: Sell your breast milk and earn a fotune.
Human testes could be a source of embryonic-like stem cells, providing a way to grow tissue to repair the body without having to destroy or create embryos.
German researchers have discovered that cells from the testes of adult mice that normally turn into sperm can be transformed into different types of tissue, including liver, heart, muscle, skin, pancreas and nerve cells.
Dr Gerd Hasenfuss, of Georg-August University in Gottingen, said his team had begun studying the cells from testes in men and he was optimistic of getting similar results.
If the findings are repeated in people, the cells could produce tissue that was a perfect match for a patient “without the ethical and immunological problems associated with human embryonic stem cells”, he said. [source]
This is not a joke.
The nation’s largest nonprofit milk banks distributed 745,329 ounces last year – double the amount in 2000 – at a cost of $2.6 million.
Prolacta Bioscience, a for-profit company, in August started marketing a breast-milk concentrate for $48 an ounce.
And some mothers are selling their own milk on the Internet for $1 to $2.50 an ounce – more than a third less than milk from the big banks.
Since January, one popular Web site has listed more than 100 human-milk advertisements. [source]