Something coming back into the news,"Cloning stem cells".

[Lady Freedom Returns]

New techniques that are being used are showing better results with Human stem cells, but they bring up old arguments on ethics.

Cloning stem cells: What does it mean?
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

(CNN) -- A human embryo, containing about a couple hundred cells, is smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. Scientists need strong microscopes to see these precursors to life, and to take from them stem cells, which have the potential to become any cell in the body.

Earlier this week a breakthrough in this field was announced. A group of researchers published in the journal Cell proof that they had created embryonic stem cells through cloning. The scientists produced embryos using human skin cells, and then used the embryos to produce stem cell lines.

"It is an incredibly powerful approach with potential to generate almost any tissue in the body, genetically identical to the patient," said Jeff Karp, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Creating an embryo just from an egg and a skin cell seems like magic, but just how practical would the subsequent stem cells be? And does it actually amount to cloning?

Read more and see videos @ http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/18/health/stem-cells-cloning/index.html?hpt=hp_c4