Embryonic Stem Cell Research Legalized in California

Stigmata669 writes "Against the wishes of the White House, it appears that Gov. Gray Davis has passed legislation to legalize embryonic stem cell research in California. The article sheds some light on the nature of this decision, and highlights the difference between this decision, and the continued ban on human cloning in California."

Comments

Christopher Reeve

[Alranor]

I think he summed this up very well when he said

"We've had a severe violation of the separation of church and state in the handling of what to do about this emerging technology,"

and

"There are religious groups - the Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe - who think it's a sin to have a blood transfusion. Well, what if the president for some reason decided to listen to them, instead of to the Catholics, which is the group he really listens to in making his decisions about embryonic stem cell research?" Reeve says. "Where would we be with blood transfusions?"

from The Guardian

Re:Christopher Reeve

[goldspider]

An interesting point, but Jehovah's Witnesses do not represent a particularly large segment of the American population or their beliefs.

Now if there were 100 million Jehova's Witnesses in America, this might be a relevant (and somewhat scary) comparison.

Now I agree tha we cannot let religious dogma interfere with potentially life-saving/enriching medicine, but until there is sufficient evidence that embryonic stem cells can actually produce what many scientists and doctors theorize they can, I will be suspicious of it.

Re:Christopher Reeve

[nanoakron]

I agree, but the scientific community must not be forbidden from seeking that knowledge.

It's like saying "I'm not going to let you research a cure for the common cold, but until you can prove that one exists, I won't believe you." And this is simply an illogical stance on such an important issue.

-Nano.

Re:Christopher Reeve

[Anonymous Coward]

Christopher is the consumate liberal here again. He proves that his very short sighted and generalizing cunning/wit will be used for anything that _HE_ believes _HE_ can personally benefit from... all under some guise of world wide or societal wide benefit.

Like with the Clinton 'affair' (or fiasco if you wish), in reality sex had nothing to do with anything but the initial sexual harrassment investigation. However, the cunning media and the sheep (or mass public if you prefer) swallowed the push to confuse the issue hook, line and sinker.

Religion has nothing to do with this. Now re-read that before you get upset, because at the surface even the liberals would agree to one interpretation of that. That would be the issue of 'separation of church and state' a statement that has been as bastardized and misquoted historically as much as "handguns are only for recognized militia" has been. It says in most religious and religio-philosophical texts that murder is 'bad.' Does that mean that the governent is being led by a bunch of religious zealots since they make murder a crime? What about theft? The issue here is not about the research or the benefits nor is it about the progress we can all hope to make or stall. The issue is _HOW_ that research is conducted so its effects will be demonstrated on others. Humans grown then killed (as in life processes stopped) for the "betterment of mankind"? That is exactly the attrocities that Hitler wrapped up in similar rhetoric. Awww, poor little mentally ill or retarded person... lets either kill you or hook you into horrid experiments... its for your own good.

It is sickening when human beings can cannabalize on others, yet do so while WILLFULLY blinding themselves to that fact. I wouldn't be surprised if the liberals create a national "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" day and walk around with their hands over their ears saying, "LALALALALALA"

The issue is not about science, it is about ethics and morals. While morals cannot be legislated realistically, neither can they be stomped on. If science can find other ways (and they have) to gather stem cells, then good for everyone.

Stop kidding yourself. Either admit that you believe that your life is worth more than that of anothers, and consequently envoke a "strongest will survive" and "the weak were made to serve the strong/rich/opportunists"... just admit that and get along with your life. Stop trying to justify and convince yourself that what this is, is anything but science justified murder. Religion has nothing to do with it. There are tons of obvious and researched facts available for those that enjoy the use of logic and reason. For those that would rather justify with fancy words, that are shallow at their core (and often VERY contradicting) then just continue to cover up your face and rock back and forth erradically, while chanting your mantra of "ignore the facts, concentrate on rhetoric."

Re:Christopher Reeve

[Jester99]

Now I agree tha we cannot let religious dogma interfere with potentially life-saving/enriching medicine, but until there is sufficient evidence that embryonic stem cells can actually produce what many scientists and doctors theorize they can, I will be suspicious of it.

You do realize the irony inherent in your statement, don't you?

Let me reduce it for you: "Until scientists research stem cells and prove that they're useful, I don't trust stem cell research to be a good thing."

You're setting them up for failure!

How can they prove to you that stem cell research is a good thing, if you don't let them research it ab initio?

If stem cell research yields some technology which itself is a bad thing (I don't know. Creates an army of mutant freaks.), then that Bad Thing (tm) should be banned. However, one flawed application of a technology -- and especially the hypothesis of such an application -- does not invalidate the use of the entire class of research centered around it.

Re:Christopher Reeve

[Citizen of Earth]

but until there is sufficient evidence that embryonic stem cells can actually produce what many scientists and doctors theorize they can, I will be suspicious of it.

Hopefully European/other scientests can produce this proof for you, while they leave America in the dust. With cryptography and legislation, America seems determined not to be a techological leader in the 21st century.

Politics

[evilviper]

What Dubya did, was merely to attempt to please the Church more than he otherwise could (he could issue an all-out ban), but as a previous slashdot story has shown, his decision was just the "middle-ground" front he wanted to show to the public, and try not to alienate either side. He said, researchers can't use federal money on stem cell research on embryos other than those already started. Through the back, he snuck in a clause that said, as long as the embryos were obtained using private money, the rest can be done with federal money. (Kind of like saying: You can't have sweatshops in the US, but go crazy in Mexico, and we'll even drop the tarrifs!)

As for Davis' move, he's always been on the left. He doesn't care about alienating the Catholic Church, since they're generally against him anyhow. I'm sure this was also a publicity grab. He's lost a lot of the support he used to have across the state, and he's facing a much closer election than he's faced in many years (against Bill Simon). If you are anywhere near CA, you can smell the mud as it flies through the air at either candidate. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is an issue that has been around for some time, and signing it now is absolutely perfect timing for suporting his campaign.

Re:Politics

[fridgerater]

There is another way of looking at the consequences of the ban on Federal funds for stem cell research. It gives private companies the exclusive opportunity to develop and probably PATENT methods to clone human tissues, organs, or body parts, if not entire humans. Talk about saving the gravy for private industry.

Rational Bias

[quitcherbitchen]

The ability to arrive at a sound moral decision plays on a delicate balance of faith and reason. Some people only know how to do one or the other and thus arrive on one side of the fence without understanding how other people can disagree.

The majority of the Slashdot community includes people who are able to think objectively and logically. So it's not surprising to see most of these arguments here. Perhaps we could apply that same reason and thought to the opposing view? There must be some reason why a mass of people would oppose stem cell research...

But I'm not the guy to answer that.

I still don't get it when people explain the existence of God with "just because."

The real issue...

[gillbates]

is not stem cell research, but in using unborn humans as a source for those stem cells. The church has no qualms about stem cell research so long as acquiring the stem cells does not mean killing an unborn human being.

What the Church really fears is a time in which humans will be "grown" for their organs - that is to provide healthy organs for sick people. Using embryonic stem cells for research is not a trivial step in that direction.

Re:The real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I can see their point -- sort-of. But that's just like opposing heart transplants because it might create a situation where people are killed -- or doctors too quick to pronounce them dead -- to get at their organs.
That is already happening (P.R. China). But to oppose transplants because of this goes a bit far.
Here we have 'human' embryo's -- in fact 2^n cell clusters, not even blastocysts yet -- sure, genetically they are as human as you and me and your little toe, but fysiologically they are just barely metazoan.
Yes, there is a slippery slope, and we just have to face up to it. They church does not and thus opposes even the killing of a fertilized ovum. Heck, if killing *potential* human life is murder, then with modern cloning techniques, tonsillectomy is genocide :-)

From the unpopular point of view . . .

[Belisarivs]

Not to engage in the dead-horse debate about abortion, it's important for people to realize there are *two* sides in the argument. Bush happens to be on the side the believes that a fetus has the spark of human life, and the rest of the position follows from that. If you want to argue whether or not that's the case, I don't want to hear it because it has nothing to do with the fact it's part of Bush's philosophy.

Now, having that point of view, how can people that would roundly condemn Nazi medical experiments blame Bush for taking a position that acknowledges the other side, but refuses to give support to medical experimentation that results from a practice he believes to be immoral? Or should morality be completely removed from politics?

Re: logically inconsistant

[Gallamine]

Your comment has a few flawed ideas.

1) While you commments about doing what you want with your body are partly correct, you miss the fact, that a) we're not talking about our bodies - we talking about the body of a human being. A child. A genetically identical to you and me life., and b) we can only do what we want with our bodies as long as it doesn't harm the rest of the society. Murdering our children has significant social impact.

2) There's nothing wrong with preserving our species, but the whole point of this debate is that we're killing children in order to preserve ourselves. We're eliminating new life in order to squeeze a few more years out of the old ones. Seems rather inconsistant to me.

Louis Pasteur prooved over 100 years ago that life doesn't come from non life. Life passes seemlessly from the mother and father into a child. Never does life stop and that zygote is just as human as you are (except that it wants to preserve life).

If you want to experiment why don't you donate your living body to be hacked apart in the name of science :)

Flame on!
-Gallamine

This can be read in another way

[mofolotopo]

Just like California's medical marijuana laws and their opposition by the federal government, this can also be seen as an issue of....drumroll please.... tate's rights. I see it as quite an interesting way to bring the issue of state's rights to the fore, as the people who normally bang on about state's rights all the time (conservatives) are exactly the people who will HATE these two laws. It's quite interesting to see how (for some of them) their belief in the sovereignty of the states completely evaporates when the states are doing something THEY don't like. I'd like to point out that I said SOME of them, as I know there are people out there on both sides of the political spectrum who honestly believe that states should have sovereignty in most issues that won't flip-flop in this situation. I'm just saying that I know for a fact that there are a LOT that have.

Things Anti-Research folks often say:

[MichaelPenne]

Things Anti- embryonic Stem cell research folks say:

Anti: But it's a human being! A microscopic brainless little human being and taking cells from it is murder!

Pro: No, it's a mass of generic totipotent cells. If it makes it into a mother's womb, it might (about 1/2 fail to implant) become twins, triplets, or it might merge with another blastula to form a single individual. Or it might fail to implant and be expelled as waste. If we start declaring that fertilized eggs are human beings, do we then investigate every woman who has an early miscarriage for suspicion of murder or neglect (too much excercise, coffee or stress can cause a zygote to fail to implant)?

Better to stick with our current definition of "human being": unique individual of the human species, rather than redefine human being to mean one or more or part of something that might become a human being if inserted in the right environment just to try and get a leg up in the battle agains the pro-choicers.

Anti: Adult stem cells are providing cures while the liberals want to waste money on embryonic work just to upset the religious!

Pro: Unipotent adult stem cells were discovered over fifty years ago, and only recently have treatments with them become safe and effective. Yet such treatments are frequently claimed by anti-embryonic stem cell folks to be proof that adult _pluripotent_ stem cells will be effective, even though no human trials have been conducted with adult pluripotent stem cells to justify this claim!

Sadly, one can easily make the claim that adult stem cell research is a good thing without lying about embryonic stem cells research and therapeutic cloning. I wonder why folks who are interested in ASCR seem to constantly have to attack ESCR and SCNT? Doesn't their field of interest hold enough promise without cutting down the others?

In an ideal world, where curing sick people came first, all three avenues would be fully explored for the best cures.

Often the above is accompanied by something like:

Anti: Adult stem cells are currently healing hearts from only a few injections!

Pro: One form of disease has been alieviated in one patient. There has been no widespread set of human trials to show this will work in all cases, nor has there been comparative studies to see if this one method is better than methods using SCNT or ESCR. There is no scientific reason not to explore multiple methods for treatment to find the best one for various different forms of disease. Surgury stops some cancers, taxol stops others. It would be rather silly and unscientific to say since surgery is 70% effective agains cancer A, we should not fund other forms of cancer research, wouldn't it?

Anti: This research will lead to growing children for body parts!

Pro: No, that is not at all likely, even aside from the moral implications, it would be impractical. Instead, the specific needed organ cells are grown in the numbers required from pluripotent stem cells and injected, or the organ itself is grown on a synthetic mesh. No serious researcher in the field of regenerativ medicine is proposing "growing a clone for replacement organs", one only hears such nonsense from bad sci-fi writers and religious nuts.

Anti: Stem cell therapy will be too expensive for ordinary people anyway!

Pro: This is pure speculation. Any new procedure is expensive, including adult pluripotent stem cell work and certainly killing a person's immune system and replacing it with marrow stem cells grown in the lab. Fund the research normally and demand that the research is made available for everyone.

The best thing about stem cell research is that it is about finding _cures_: new organs, new nerves, new brain tissue. Folks cured should be able to return to their lives, get back to work, etc. This is the ultimate dream of medicine: curing people of the ravages of disease and age, rather than just keeping sick folks alive for a few more years.

Re:Things Anti-Research folks often say:

[woodsma]

The question isn't individual human life, it's human life period. Just because a "group of cells" isn't differentiated doesn't mean that it therefore isn't human life that requires protection. "Clearly" becoming a human life is simply the point at which there can be no doubt (though some do, eg: late term abortion), it does not therefore mean that anything before that is not life, simply that it is unclear as to if it actually is. I contend that it is.

I don't personally know anybody who will ever take the position that a cell from a fully developed human can be catagorized as a human that deserves protection but it most certainly *is* human, though easily recognized as not viable. However, when a human being is soley comprised of a very small amount of undifferentiated cells I think it is proper to say that it is at the least a viable human, though it may become more than one, and like all humans may even die. I honestly don't see why that is brought up as an argument for the research, other than obviously some people belive human life begins at a different point that other people do, when, in fact, dispite all contrived definitions, we **really don't know for sure**.

I believe we should take an approach where we don't harm a life to heal another (keep it on this level, I don't mean that we can't inflict injury on a vuluntary subject to help heal another person, eg: kidney transplants, etc.), even if that life is new, small, vulnerable to failure, and uncertain.

As for brain activity, just because developed life clearly ends at the lack of brain activity, it does not therefore follow that developed life only begins at brain activity. The fact of the matter is, we don't really know when life begins. I belive we should take an extremely conservative approach to this unless/untill we can factually say otherwise (something that I don't belive can ever happen).

Note: spelling and grammar are not my strong points. Debate my argument if you want, not my spelling/grammar. Just a request...

Re:Things Anti-Research folks often say:

[MichaelPenne]

> The embryo is genetically distinct from the mother. It is then "its own owner", if you will. The rest of that paragraph talks of cells that truly are hers. She can do what she wants with them.

So you have no opposition to deriving stem cells from therapeutic cloning?

'States rights'

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show you. Conservatives belive in 'States' rights' when the state is conservative.

Fuck you, G.W.Unelected.

Why the bias here?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a scientist working in this field I must say: why has everyone taken this as being the Catholic church versus science again? What the Catholic church thinks is irrelevant.

The issue here is in creating a baby and then killing it for it's cells. This cruel concept is hidden by labels such as "embryonic stell-cell research". There is no rational argument one can put forth to make the statement that "this is not murder". Let's at least be honest with ourselves.

There is quite a bit that can be accomplished through cDNA analysis (which we have yet to scratch the surface), this research is unnecessary and horrid to anyone who has had children.