Slashdot Mirror
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."
People seem to think that their bodies do not belong to them, for some strange reason. (to me.)
;)
It's like it's against some spiritual and holy sacrament to give blood to another person, consider donating organs, or even contemplate growing body parts from cells for various medical reasons.
What's wrong with prolonging our species a little bit to ensure a healthy future?
As an aside, I find it striking that as I read the days's news lately, and discussions about humanity's future, I can't help but recall tidbits from Star Trek's "Universe" and where we would be if not for the fertile imaginations of people who thought outside the box.
Call it what you will, but ideas and experiments in moderation are not unholy, in my eyes at least.
And with that, please have a nice day.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal
http://www.beosjournal.org
user@host$ diff
As this article will probably have attracted some researchers with an interest in neural repair, this seems like a good opportunity to ask the following questions:
What's the state of the art when it comes to replacing brain tissue ? Are there any reasons to believe that newly added neurons can or cannot migrate to correct sites, achieve the correct functional state, and make the appropriate connections ?
You ? You don't kill your own cells, they die when their time's up, they're programmed for this. If they refuse to die, then it's called a cancer and you eventually die.
If this technology can bring eternal life, or even just extended longevity, then it will. You can count on human greed (the more greed the more money, and the more money the more power to defy whoever stands against these researches).
Human cloning hasn't got much to do with stem cell treatments, apart from being a convenient way to produce stem cells that are 100% compatible with the donor/client.
/me jumps over the other side of the fence....
Its also just as easy to say "in theory".
---- disclaimer
I'm of the type that thinks both "just because" and "in theory" statements are worthless. Provide logical support [e.g. lemmas, collaries, etc..] and you shall establish a valid line of thought.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Just as a counter to your statement a fetus and an embryo are not the same. Morality and politics should not be mutually exclusive although many religious advocates, and those who pander to them, would like to belive that morality is synonomous with religion, in that being agnostic or impartial is the same as amoral, which is clearly not the case. Along this train of thought the idea that Abortion up to full-term is legal while using cells from discarded embryonic tissue should not be legal is hypocritical, not amoral.
so good for Bush and the Witch-hunter general, they pander to conservative populations of people for votes, they aren't scientists, and neither are the vast majority of government policymakers. i don't have a problem with peoples' beliefs, but when these beliefs are held by policymakers who, quite frankly don't know anything about the nature of that which they are controlling, and it impacts people who do-then i have a problem.
Just think of all the bullshit legislation being kicked around regarding intellectual property, fair use, and other slashdot-type material, you know what?-it's the same damn thing, just a different medium.
"there are *two* sides to every arguement" (if there were less then there wouldn't be an arguement now would there be?). This commonly used phrase simply promotes the borderline personality-type debate that far too many people engage. there are (almost) always more than two sides, most real questions don't have simple "yes" and "no" answers. While the research community is almost always concerned with the ethics of their work and the question is "how much" or where to draw the line, conservative simpletons tend to answer with "no, never" or "yes, always" and back it up with "just because" or "because it's always been that way." this type of thinking does a great disservice to humanity, it is counterproductive, arrogant, and fickle.
ok, //end_rant
sorry, but i feel very strongly about our kakistocracy...
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
People seem to think that their bodies do not belong to them, for some strange reason. (to me.)
I think members of the so-called "religious right" have done a poor job of explaining their objections to such research and this has led to your misunderstanding. As someone who is against embryonic stem cell research, I would not say that your body does not belong to you. What I would say is that someone else's body doesn't belong to you. The fundamental principle behind my argument against stem-cell research is that people should not be used as means to other people's ends . I consider embryos to be people, so if you use an embryo as a means (via research) to cure someone else, I consider that an immoral act.
If you'd like to use your own stem cells, from your own body to do research, please feel free. Just don't take them from someone else without his or her consent.
As an aside, it seems to me that this is a principle many /. posters support in other contexts. How many of you fight against the limitations on personal freedoms that Microsoft, the RIAA, DMCA, etc. support? These personal freedoms all fall under the above principle.
That statement is so loaded that I have to respond.
Are you aware that each IVF procedure produces multiple embryos? Some of which are not viable for a pregnancy? Of the ones viable for pregnancy (typically 8-10), around 3-4 are implanted into the uterus and the rest frozen. Later the parents can decide if they want another pregnancy to use the frozen embryos (which are typically available for 5 years).
In 5 years, the parents have the option of releasing the embryos to other couples (sort of like an embryo adoption).
Now what happens to the embryos that are not viable and to the frozen embryos that nobody wants to adopt?
You got it. They become biological waste.
Wouldn't it be better to use these embryos to help people instead of trashing them?
And how would using these embryos (which would end up in the trash can anyway) be killing people?
Personally I'm pro-life based on principle, but it seems we want to discard principle when we can take a technological short-cut.
CA apparently has more of those then stem cells and they are both illegal and often a nusiance despite claims to help the economy, and they could solve many more problems.
Of course the Church teaches against that too, but they also teach that we should help the poor and Government seems to see nothing wrong with imposing that morality on the rest of us.
They do seem to want to avoid the Church's mandate to "educate the ignorant", how else to explain the public school system?
Didn't the Nazis and Japanese make many more medical discoveries in WW2 at a much faster rate when they discarded those silly ideas about human dignity and the value of life?
We would have slavery today if "modern medicine" was discovered before about 1850. The northerners wouldn't want to close their tissue bank.
But that is what you get when pragmatism dictates principles. Niven's "Jigsaw Man" is probably less than 50 years away. Wait until the baby boomers start needing replacement parts...
Or the complaints and fears here about electronic cattle ear-tags. But if we don't assert the intrinsic dignity of human life (and yes, embryos are human life, merely at an early stage), we are just animals and there is no argument against being treated like cattle.
Humans have government. Animals have Zookeepers.
And the USA is turning into a zoo.
> The argument that an embryo is not human life has always seemed very "hand-wavey" to me, with heavy use of scientific terminology that can't do justice to the profound question of l-i-f-e.
It's also a straw man. Pro-ESCR folks don't make the argument that an embryo is not "human life". In fact, their argument is that it is the same kind of "human life" as other tissue culture, organ transplants, human cells grown for cancer research, etc.
Pro-ESCR folks make the argument that a fertilized egg and the undifferentiated embryo that forms from it in a petri dish is not _A Human Being.
In fact, most of the pro-ESCR arguments I've seen have made the distinction between "human life" and "a human being" pretty clear.
Why do Anti-ESCR folks keep using the generai term "human life" when they mean a specific "human being"? Are you also against tissue culture and organ transplant?
> I have no qualms whatsoever with next of kin donating the organs of any deceased person.
How about an encephalitic infant? Should parents be forced to keep a child without a brain alive until they die of old age (or the power goes out)?
Generally, the medical standard is that when there is no brain activity, it is ok to harvest the organs, since waiting until complete and total cellular death generally means the organs can't be used. Are you also against organ transplant?