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OftenBen  ·  3101 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Do we need an ethics of self-organizing tissue?

One of the doctors I work with has a project that's trying to understand the genetic basis for a specific disease. As part of that project, he has stem cell lines from lots of different families. When they aren't frozen, or being actively used in some test or application, they have to be 'cleaned' periodically ,because the cells, when kept in groups of over a few dozen, begin to differentiate into different kinds of tissue. The phrasing most commonly used is something to the effect of 'They are trying to become a human.

Not saying anything causal here, but I find it interesting that our tendency to anthropomorphize extends so far.