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Stanford Jumps Into Cloning Fray
smackthud writes "According to this article in the Minneapolis StarTribune website Stanford University is planning to clone human embryos. Story summary says it all: 'Stanford University announced today its intention to clone human embryos, becoming the first U.S. university to publicly embrace the politically charged procedure. The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research.'" Stanford has released a statement distinguishing what Stanford is doing from reproductive cloning.
"The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research."
The benefits of this is to great to avoid doing it. If the cells are not cloned in the US, they will be bought from abroad, so the result will be the same anyway. Brave of Stanford to dare doing this in the US anyhow!
It would seem even the mighty media can mislead us! Maybe the perception of the average person is changing but it seems that most people can't distinguish between cloning human cells and cloning a human. Most people see cloning as the bad sci-fi movies portray it, person goes in onside of the machine, two or more people come out the other side, identical in every way. Blah BLah Blah, it goes on and on. Hopefully one of these days the journalists will do some informed research before posting these things.
SU researchers probably will have to clone stem cells of human embryos, which is something different (in my opinion) than cloning human embryos.
Still an interesting question remains. If they will clone stem cells, will that be a next step to the cloning of human beings? Usually having a technique means it will be used...
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
Stem cell research is perhaps the MOST promissing medical research ever ... It would be a crime to not allow it. I'm ok with the government restricting funds for it, but don't disallow private institutions (or publically funded ones if those public funds aren't going to the research) to persue it.
Of course that's not to say I wouldn't mind seeing some public funds go to it! But in the US, public funds are supposed to go where the people want it. If the majority of citizens don't want it, then that's what the government should do.
That brings up the question... what does the majority want?
I know 2 people with MS (not microsoft)... if this can help them, then why not?
That the radical religious factions responsible for saying genetics and evolution are lies not to be taught in schools are suddenly up in arms once the prospect of the best accreditted people proving them wrong arises.
The religion lobby has a long, rich history of dicking over education, research and technical progress. Stem cells and cloning are the obvious progression of medicine: we have near infinite potential to repair human bodies, minds, and lives sitting in the palm of out hand and we're debating whether or not we want to play with it.
There's a natural apprehension, to take a pause to reflect over the new "ethics" and come to terms with the concept, but I think the average American/1st Worlder has been exposed enough to the concept to realize the dangers. Of course, the dangers are far greater if the moral side is the one not to embrace its power.
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On the same day that Stanford announced their intention to clone human embryos for stem cell research, researchers in France announced that they can essentially cure sickle cell disease via stem cells. A great story was written about this here yesterday. Sickle cell disease is a genetic disease that affects people of African, Mediterranean, Indian, and Middle Eastern heritage. In the United States, these disorders are most commonly observed in African Americans and Hispanics from the Caribbean, Central America, and parts of South America. To my knowledge, this is the first case in which researchers actually believe that a disease can be "cured" via stem cells. This should definitely put the pressure on governments to open the doors to stem cell research.
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Given the number of times that people who are clinically brain-dead are disconnected from life-support...I'd say the answer is "Yes."
This should definitely put the pressure on governments to open the doors to stem cell research.
Interesting. Now, tell me, what governments (except the US) has closed those doors, to begin with?
You know, there are several lines of stem cells being researched upon within a 10km radius of me even as I write this.
The only effect of US religious rights conniption over stem cells is that the US get harder to keep up in this area of science (and, to be fair, this might slow the progression of the science somewhat).
But still, in the long run, it doesn't change a thing.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
I suppose you've opened the proverbial can of worms already, so I'll clarify the stance of those opposed to fetal cell research for you: When does a human life become worth protecting?
What makes childbirth a defining moment between being a human being and not a human being? If that's not the moment at which to protect a human against death, then when does it happen? Is it in the 3rd trimester? Is it at two years old? Is it when they pass some formal IQ test?
What I don't like about both abortion and fetal stem cell research is that someone is arbitrarily deciding that a human lifeform doesn't have a right to live based on their own or someone else's selfish needs. It's ethically no different from killing someone for food because you're poor and you need it to live. Sure, you can argue about the sentience of an embryo, but then do you advocate allowing people to kill and harvest life-saving organs from severely retarded people or people in comas? What about people in cryogenic suspension? Should we treat them as "corpsicles" and take their organs for living people too? At what point does a human's right to live end (or never begin) without connection to any actions that they have done? These arguments over the worth of a human life and human dignity aren't any different from those who advocated slavery and forced sterilization on the basis of the inferiority of the victims in comparison to enfranchised society. If you place any value on human life beyond that of your immediate friends and family, then you should object to an arbitrarily drawn line on human worth.
That is why many of us object to fetal stem cell research. There are so many possibilities for bone marrow research that could save lives without creating and killing them. We explore them fully before less ethically sound path just because it's easier.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Well, since I am against experimenting on (semi sentient) animals I wouldn't vote for experimenting on either cows or newborn infants. Not to mention people of low mental capacity.
In regards to killing a infant or killing a cow, I guess neither would really know what is going on, maybe the cow would be a little more aware.
The big difference there, would be that an infant creates relations with other people (or rather the other way around), which makes infanticide worse than slaying a cow. On the other hand, people can create relations with animals too. A little girl (or an adult farmer) will probably be very sad when they have to put a cow to sleep.
Also, I still think a infant have vastly more feelings and emotions than the mass of cells from which they take stem cells.
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The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.