Science is cool. Period.

Lauren at Feministe points to quite an interesting article about Japanese researchers who have found a way to harvest stem cells from human menstrual blood.

These stem cells could potentially be a source of specialized heart cells, which might be used to treat failing or damaged hearts…

At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology here, Dr. Shunichiro Miyoshi reported that he and his colleagues at Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, collected menstrual blood from six women and harvested stem cells that originated in the lining of the uterus, the endometrium.

They were able to obtain about thirty times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, Miyoshi told Reuters Health.
The stem cells must be harvested from younger patients, because they have a longer lifespan. How young, I'm not sure. Although, like Lauren, I could certainly use the extra income. Plus, being the deliberately childless heathen that I am, it would sure make me less crabby about my otherwise useless periods if I made some dough. Oh, and helped fix broken hearts. Sigh.

All snark aside, that's really, truly cool.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

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