Is there anyone here on FR who believes non-embryonic stem cells will eventually lead to a cure for diabetes? This is not a firebomb question....I really want to know.
Which type? ... Even successful embryo stem cell therapy won't cure both in a best day. But to kill a living human for body parts is cannibalism, didn't you know?
We are already treating diabetes with transplants obtained from cadavers and there has been at least one report of live-donor transplants of the Beta cells that produce insulin. There is strong evidence that there are endogenous stem cells even in insulin dependent diabetics and we hope to find the trigger needed to stimulate them to grow and produce insulin.
And, I believe that we have only glimpsed the possibilities of placental and umbilical cord (non-embryonic) stem cells. If we can stimulate a cell made up of donor DNA and an enucleated oocyte (cloning by SCNT) to divide and differentiate into just the cells and just the amounts that we want without creating a tumor, then my imagination says that we can de-differentiate somatic cells, without returning the cells to any point that could conceivably be "a whole organism at the earliest stage of life."