Now this is interesting:Your seven-year-old's baby tooth may be worth a lot more than the quarter the tooth fairy left under the pillow. Scientists have discovered that the pulp inside deciduous teeth is a treasure trove of fast-growing stem cells. Naturally-shed choppers could thus provide an easily accessible new source of these sought-after cells for clinical studies of stem-cell transplantation and tissue engineering.
The kicker is under the fold.
Alert the presses! If this is true, we no longer have to have this fight over whether it's immoral to get stem cells from already aborted fetuses! We can just use baby teeth! I hope the news media picks this up soon so we can have one less thing to fight over!
Wait, the article's from 2003. April 23, 2003, to be exact. Want to know how weird this is? Do a Google News Search for baby teeth stem cell or something similar, see what happens. I got 2 results, and neither was about this story. It's 2 years old. Nothing. Now, do a search for just stem cell, and see what you get. Tons of hits. Many of them, like this one, are about the conflict over embryonic stem cells. I want to think there's another explanation, but I honestly think that the reason the baby teeth story hasn't been spread is because it's not controversial. It actually REMOVES a controversy from the spotlight.
That's not good for ratings.
Would someone please prove me wrong?