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China Ahead in Stem-Cell Research
Andrew writes: "New Scientist is reporting (for free) on the WSJ's China clones human embryos story: "Chinese scientists are claiming a great leap forward in human cloning - the creation of dozens of cloned embryos advanced enough to harvest embryonic stem cells."" The lengthy Wall Street Journal story is also on MSNBC.
But where are they going to put all these extra people?
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
I find it also interesting how the one main country with whom the United States has mixed in civil rights with trade agreements is the country that may end up further along in this line of research. Of course, one could say that Hitler had learned a lot through research as well. How far can we allow our morality to stretch to further the advancement of the human race?
Briefly (I'm at work) this is exactly why the U.S. shouldn't ban this research. It's bloody inevitable. Our government is caving to a few screaming fundamentalists over one of the most important medical advances in history.
Who's going to pursue this more ethically? The Chinese, who've been alleged to use prisons as organ factories, or us?
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
A nation allows more "freedom" to its corporations than its dissenting individuals? It's called Capitalism.
Property is theft.
The next man on the moon will be chinese too. They have a plan for manned mission in the near future.
Our science fiction always assumes that space colonization and the "future" will be dominated by western ideals, but as things are trending now, the future looks brighter for asia.
So in the future when you look at the packaging your replacement organs come in it will say...
"Made in China"
Column A
This is yet another reason why China scares me. Anyone upset over the American jingoism since 9/11 and during the Olympics should be blown away by the scope of Chinese nationalism, to say nothing of their singularly ass backwards system of medicine, politics, human rights, spam filtering, etc..
Column B
Kudos for this country for pushing the scientific frontiers of medical benefits to mankind. This forward-thinking is yet another sign of the benefits of not being caught up in corrupt fundamenalist political wackos. But since China's rich cultural heritage spanks the USA in longevity by about, oh, a factor of ten, it shouldn't be surprising where they're headed - it's only a matter of time before this technically advanced economic powerhouse dominates the globe.
Of course they are ahead of us. We are a democracy and any substantial protest brings us to a screeching halt. (Think: nuclear power)
And as a totalitarian state, not particularly worried about ethics, foreign opinion, or foetuses, they have a very large source of research material.
But I expected better from many of you. They aren't doing this to increase their population. They aren't even doing this for stem cell research per se. They have plenty of stem cells from their very aggressive population control program. No, what they want is money. They want to clone embryos to sell to us squeamish westerners. They have to develop the technique of cloning them, so they can clone the stem cell lines we hypocritically approve of, then sell them back to us. What a wacky world we live in!
And apparently, so are the people of China, who if current trends continue will soon have cures for all kinds of diseases which will continue to kill and cripple Americans.
Well. Actually, we're not arguing about socialism vs. capitalism; we're arguing about socialism (the government controls the economy) vs. fascism (the government chooses a few large corporations to control the economy, and everyone else can go to hell.) China is getting steadily less socialist because socialism generally doesn't work very well; the US is sliding into fascism because that's what capitalism tends to become if We The People don't pay attention. Real capitalism is an infinitely better choice than either, but right now nobody seems to have the will or interest to maintain it. News flash: capitalism is hard work.
What does all this have to do with science? Simple. Science flourishes in a zeitgeist of free inquiry and skepticism. Neither socialist bureaucrats nor fascist oligarchs are friendly to such a zeitgeist, because it threatens their power. Both socialism and fascism tend to be profoundly conservative, in a sense that has little to do with the traditional left-right dichotomy. It's a sad irony that Communist China is doing a better job of breaking the stranglehold of that kind of conservatism than the US is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The biggest problem with /. is that some very smart people who know a lot about one specific field, think they're qualified to comment (and +mod) on things they know nothing about.