We may be decades away from eating meat that's been grown in a lab, but we should be starting to benefit from lab-grown skin in the very near future. Scientists at L'Oreal have invented a product called Episkin, which is basically a layer of skin cells grown from human "donor skin cells" in a Petri dish. These small amounts of skin can be used to test beauty products that would have otherwise been tested on animals. Episkin can tan, and can be made to "age" with high exposure to UV light.
The skin is being hailed as an important step in cruelty-free cosmetics, at least in Europe, where an animal beauty product-testing ban sets in 2009 (the practice is banned in the U.K. already). We'd like to think that lab-grown skin would be yet more useful: shouldn't Episkin be seen as an important step towards lab-grown (and therefore cruelty-free) pork crackling?
Episkin, via Treehugger
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By seanet1310 at 5:59 AM ON 08/02/07
This is great news for anyone who wants to shop crulty free
By jeffbiss at 10:40 AM ON 08/02/07
Not only cruelty-free testing is accomplished but it could become a means for growing replacement skin for burn victims. This is a great example of compassion providing solutions; you don't have to cause pain for vanity.
More research scientists should consider their victims first and find ways to perform experiments that do not cause pain and suffering. Whenever sentient living things are considered as "lab animals", the research scientist's maxim should be "do no harm".
By JediK8 at 3:33 PM ON 08/02/07
Wouldn't Lab grown skin have importance in other area's, not just in saving animals? If skin can be grown wouldn't it help in burn victims? couldn't they use the victims own skin to grown and replace that which has been ruined? it would replace the scars which would exist, or the taking of skin from other places of the body. We should be looking at other aplications to this.