Shame on the tooth fairy for hoarding centuries' worth of people's teeth! Guess she (or he?) was right on the money all this time. A recent discovery made by Japanese scientists may finally break all ethical obstacles of stem cell research. Instead of cultivating the stem cells from human embryos, the team has found that suitable cells extracted from teeth may be used to develop and grow other types of cells in a laboratory. It's the modern world's wonder cure, baby! Open wiiiiiide.

First, there were test tube babies. Now comes test tube blood! Scientists have managed to create test tubes upon test tubes of the rare type O-negative blood using those magic stem cells we hear so much about. Vampires need not risk getting staked just to get some ever food again!

Are you a man or are you a mouse? The lines blur - scientists have found a way to grow human blood vessels in mice using the closest thing you can get to stem cells without all the ethical hullabaloo, progenitor cells. Story in the full article.

No matter how pesky rats may seem in our homes, we can't deny how helpful they are in our fight with diseases. After being studied to cure liver cirrhosis, rats are now pivotal once again in the research against Parkinson's disease. More details after the jump.

Researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have found out that cloning is a useful technique when they treated mice with Parkinson's Disease. This is the first time animals have been treated with their own cloned cells. More details of their research in the full article.

Imagine, if you will, a man who accidentally cut off the tip of his finger, nail, skin, bone, and all. After sprinkling some special white powder on it, all the parts grew back after a month. Magic? No. It's the cutting edge (pun intended) in stem cell research. The holy grail of medicine in powder form. Full story and a mini-documentary in the full article.

If being shown evidence that cigarette smoking can lead to cancer isn't enough to convince you that the habit is bad, perhaps this piece of news will. Researchers have found that smoking delays your skeleton from healing. This leads to fractures that heal slower, greater chances of re-injury, and even chronic pain and downright disability. More in the full article.

Here's an intriguing science story with a bit of a twist. It seems that a 15 year-old Australian girl switched blood types as an effect of a liver transplant she received when she was nine. According to the report, the girl "had changed blood types and that her immune system had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new liver migrated to her bone marrow."

More on this amazing development after the jump!

Despite what critics say, stem cell research is continuously moving forward and setting milestones that aim to benefit humankind in the future. The latest update is for people afflicted by dystrophy.

The study was conducted in UT Southwestern Medical Center and used a mouse as its subject. See the full details of the research by clicking the "read more" link below.

A man recently claimed to have cloned himself for stem cell research. A Californian company seems to have taken it a step further by claiming to have made five human embryos using cloning technology with the intention of harvesting them for stem cells. Details in the full article.