by Robert Lanza (Editor), Irving Weissman (Editor), James Thomson (Editor), Roger Pedersen (Editor), Brigid Hogan (Editor), John Gearhart (Editor), Helen Blau (Editor), Douglas Melton (Editor), Malcolm Moore (Editor), Catherine Verfaillie (Editor), E. Donnall Thomas (Editor), Michael West (Editor) New discoveries in the field of stem cell research have frequently appeared in the news and in …

For the first time, an experimental treatment made from human embryonic stem cells has shown evidence of helping someone, partially restoring sight to two people suffering from slowly progressing forms of blindness. Although the purpose of the experiment was to test the safety of stem cells injected into the eye, both patients “had measurable improvement …

A cover story on Robert Lanza in U.S. News and World Report summarized his remarkable life with these words: “[He] is the living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in the movie ‘Good Will Hunting.’ Growing up underprivileged in Stoughton, Mass., south of Boston, the young preteen caught the attention of Harvard Medical …

This abridgment is based on “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe,” by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman, published by BenBella Books. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, …

The First Clone Scientists have finally cloned a human embryo. The breakthrough promises cures for terrible diseases. Here’s the inside story: By Joannie Fischer, U.S. News & World Report Robert Lanza is the living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in the movie Good Will Hunting. Growing up underprivileged in Stoughton, Mass., south …

Description Development proceeds from clusters of self-renewing stem cells to beautiful networks of differentiated cells. How stem cells acquire instructions for differentiation from their developmental landscape remains a mystery. When these instructions are revealed, stem cell-based therapies may transform medicine, providing a source of replacement cells and tissues for patients with chronic diseases. This beautiful …

Whether defying the dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine so he could publish a book on world health or challenging the titans of cosmology, Robert Lanza has never followed the script. It’s no wonder, then, that this renegade doctor would lead the charge into medicine’s most controversial turf: the creation of cloned …

Stem cells raise the prospect of regenerating failing body parts and curing diseases that have so far defied drug-based treatment. Patients are buoyed by reports of the cells’ near-miraculous properties, but many of the most publicized scientific studies have subsequently been refuted, and other data have been distorted in debates over the propriety of deriving …

Uninformed visitors to Robert Lanza’s home, a wooden building on a 10-acre private island in Clinton, Massachusetts, might assume he was an eccentric antiquarian, obsessed with his trove of prehistoric relics. And, in part, this is true. For the past 20 years Lanza, 58, has lived alone, surrounded by a collection of dinosaur fossils, but …

You’ve laughed and cried. And you may even fall in love and grow old with someone, only to be ripped apart in the end by death and disease. The universe leaves you dead or grieving with a hole in you as big as infinity. Can life really be reduced to the laws of physics, or …