Synthetic Blood Claim

Synthetic blood that successfully mimics the qualities of real blood cells like these could be a boon for medicine and markets.

Image: MedicalRF.com/Getty

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Will bloodmobiles soon be a thing of the past, like vacuum-tube televisions and glass milk bottles delivered daily?

More important: Will the use of embryonic stem cells, which became a heated issue during the 2004 presidential election, finally produce a breakout product? One that will squelch the controversy for all but a few die-hards who still prefer their milk in glass bottles?

Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced the breakthrough a few days ago. Working with scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and the University of Chicago, A.C.T.'s team says it has developed a method for making potentially unlimited and scalable supplies of synthetic blood from embryonic stem cells.

The findings are published in Blood, a scientific journal. A.C.T.'s chief scientific officer Robert Lanza led the team.

If the claim holds up to scrutiny, it would be a huge boon for humankind, which until now has had to collectively open its veins to provide tons of this basic stuff of life for people who need extra blood because of injuries, surgeries, or disease.

The discovery also would remove the danger of blood being tainted by pathogens that cause hepatitis, H.I.V., and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, among other viruses and bacteria.

But will this promise become reality?

Advanced Cell Technology has made incredible claims before. Under recently departed C.E.O. Michael West—whom some critics compared with the circus promoter P.T. Barnum—the company routinely asserted that stem-cell therapies were likely to reverse the aging process and grow replacement body parts, while most scientists were talking a more cautious line.

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