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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.
just asking.
sulli
RTFJ.
...Begun, this clone war has......
"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!
cloning, nature's way of saying: imagine a beowulf cluster of yourself!
Fleur de Sel
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
The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research.
And why isn't everyone doing this? Oh right, it's against the presidents religious beliefs. Is it really suprising that people would rather pursue research that might aid in a cure for cancer, rather than follow a law set by Bush that stem cell research is against his religious beliefs?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Finally time that someone in the higher echelons of education stand up to the US government.
I feel rather ecstatic about this, someone is finally making a point.
I was rather angry at Bush when he decided to limit stem cell research. I felt that his decision was affected directly by his religious beliefs.
Science and religion don't mix. Looks like someone is finally trying to seperate them.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
I'm not opposed to abortion but this seems pretty weasley (no offense to weasles) way to get out of the abortion issue. Lets just get on with stem cell research and quit playing games. Stanford takes the high road and explain their "clean" procedure (parenthetical quotes are mine):
Creating human stem cell lines is not equivalent to reproductive cloning. The first step in the process of creating a stem cell line involves transferring the nucleus from a cell to an egg and allowing the egg to divide. This is the same first step as in reproductive cloning. However in creating a stem cell line, cells (parts of the fetus) are removed (dismembered) from the developing cluster (fetus). These cells can go on to form many types of tissues, but cannot on their own develop into a human (because they are just pieces of dismembered human tissue).
How is this procedure different from whats going on in the rest of the world? I guess the Christian right wingers can sleep well at night now.
What is the world coming to?
What is the world coming to?
Original post:
"If these ppl do this they should be jailed and bared from science. I hope they are stopped but if its to late and they do it before the feds can stop them, they need to be severly punished. This is life we are talking about we can't allow ppl to just play with it."
Repaired post:
"If these people do this, they should be jailed and barred from science. I hope they are stopped, but if it's too late, and they do it before the feds can stop them, they need to be severely punished. This is life we are talking about. We can't allow people to just play with it."
Why does there seem to be a proportional relationship between the extremity of a fundamentalist and poor grammar?
Intelligence level, maybe? Nah, couldn't be that...
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Rimmer: "Can you imagine a society composed entirely of me?"
CAT: I'm trying not to, last time I did that it took me a week to dry the matress!
Now we must beware the Robotech Masters who will surely launch an attack on Stanford in order to learn the secrets of humanity's ultimate power!!
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I've always been of the opinion that cloning, genetic engineering, etc were Good Things. This is technology that can potentially cure genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease in people who already suffer from it as well as prevent it from ever showing up in the first place. Then of course there is cancer. Imagine treatments that would simply repair the sections of our DNA sequence that MUST be damaged in order for any cancer to form. Forget radiation and chemotherapy that are simply attempts to kill the cancer without killing the patient. Fix the anti-cancer genes in the cancer cells and they kill themselves.
I think that genetic engineering can, in the hands of those who are honest, wise, and well intentioned, also be used to enhance human abilities without trying to alter human nature. Human nature might not be perfect, but I don't trust anyone to try and make it better. This is where genetic engineering gets risky in my opinion, when it gives people with an agenda for who and what mankind should be the tools to warp human beings into their twisted model of human behavior. Just imagine if the looney left or the religious right were to become the keepers of the technology. How many bolsheviks and bible thumpers could they create? There are already enough idiots and brainwashed buffoons in the world without a breeding program to manufacture them.
Anyway I'm glad this is being done by Stanford. Of course you'll hear nothing but screaming from the idiots of the world, but such is the burden of scientific progress. At least nowadays you don't have to worry about the inquisition murdering you for daring to contradict the codified superstition that passes for mankind's understanding of the divine.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I imagine there are plenty of people who would limit stem cell research for non-religious reasons. After all, this quickly degenerates into an abortion debate.
Pro-life reasoning is that human life deserves protection all the way back to conception. Pro-abortion reasoning is that human life deserves protection only after some period of development (varying according to who's talking). Pro-life groups advocate protection all the way back to conception because they see no rational reason to draw the line anywhere else.
It is therefore not necessarily a religious motivation under which Bush limited stem cell research. Not that it wasn't a religious motivation. But an experienced politician at the top of the game knows better than to try to legislate his religious ideas without a separate rational argument.
If you don't want to protect human life as an embryo, why should your human life be protected now? What is your argument that your life is intrinsically more valuable than a human embryo to be used in stem cell research, or the Jews experimented on by the Nazis? Where and how do you draw the line at where the value of human life begins?
The question of when to begin protection of human life, embryo, fetus, child or adult must precede any argument for other uses of potentially adult human embryos, no matter how useful or convenient any use or disuse of the embyo may be. If a human life is deserving of the same rights as any adult or child then no one else has any right to determine how that life is to be spent.
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?
There are few things I know within the core of my being. The idea that cloning etc. is somehow inherently wrong just isn't one of them. For me to believe it is wrong would require some evidence to that effect, or at least a valid argument against it. I'm sorry, but appeals to emotion just don't cut it.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I'm not sure I follow you. WHAT exactly are they doing that makes them criminals? You say that they are playing with life and the implication is that it is somehow wrong. Isn't playing with life exactly what biologists and medical researchers have been doing all along? I guess you'd rather we do without things like anti-biotics and vaccines, both of which were created/discovered by the process of playing with life that you seem to have a problem with.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Read The Washington Post's article, which notes: "The new institute, which will aim to create stem cell therapies for cancer and other diseases, is to be established with $12 million from an anonymous donor. Under a Bush administration policy announced last year, federally funded researchers wishing to work with human embryonic stem cells must limit their endeavors to a small number of approved cell colonies created before Aug. 9, 2001. But because the Stanford institute will be privately funded, researchers there will be able to create and experiment on new colonies."
I have some questions for those who freak out about the prospect of human reproductive cloning. What's wrong with human reproductive cloning? I always hear about the nebulous heavy ethical problems but the problems are never articulated or discussed. I do understand that 95% of the people in the US say they wouldn never use reproductive cloning. If that is so, then what do they have to fear from the 5% who would? It reminds me very much of the controversy surrounding in vitro fertilization. Most people were freaking out about "test tube babies!". Funny how reality is much less sensational than the fears of the uneducated masses. Human reproductive cloning can be a valuable, helpful procedure for some people, just as in vitro fertilization is.
One big difference, stem-cells are just cells, without emotions, will and such (sole if you want to put it in one word, even though I do not belive in the sole idea).
I forget the name, but it technically is not cloning! Though it's moving a nucleus from a real person to an egg, it's not cloning.
Furthermore, there's some 19-ish (bio majors correct me) cell limit before it becomes and embryo. It's not getting something that resembles a human and tearing it apart for cells, as it never gets past a very small ball of [stem] cells!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Your use of the word "Pro-abortion" gives your position away immediately. No matter how rational you try to make yourself sound, you kill your argument by using such rhetoric.
To answer your question, you are not a human being until you have a functioning brain. An embryo is not a human but rather human tissue with the potential to become a human. Potential is not actual. I have a penis therefor I am potentially a rapist. I am not a rapist, however.
The difference is not as subtle as you believe.
One of my favorite maxims is that religion stops a thinking mind. I'm not entirely sure that it is true anymore, but it is good for pissing some people off and making other people laugh.
Nowadays I'm much more convinced that religious zeal fulfills a psychological need in those who don't want to think in the first place. They tune in, turn on, and drop out. This is all done without drugs because for them religion is a drug.
It is commonly known to psychologists that there is a strong correlation between drug abuse and religion. If you look at families that have a history of drug or alcohol abuse you'll find that the ones who don't end up on drugs tend to end up being religious freaks. Some even start out as one and later become the other. For them religion truly is an opiate.
Now I'm not saying the everyone who believes in God or has religious beliefs is a religion junkie. Religion is not inherently evil. I myself believe in God, but don't make any claims to understand what God is. Religion is a human invention and as such relfects human weaknesses and imperfections.
The problems I have with religion are with those who refuse to accept its shortcomings, who want to pretend that their religious beliefs somehow supercede reality itself. This is the classic battle between science and superstition. Religious factions that want to choose superstition are going to lose out in the long run because within a few generations they won't have any more followers, or will become extreme fringe groups. I don't want to see this happen because the only thing worse than religion is its abscence. Nature abhors a vacuum. Just imagine the BS and nonesense that would fill in the place that religion currently holds in areas such as ethics and morals. We've already got enough permeation of political correctness and the ideologies from which it is created without such nonsense becoming the univeral norm.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I'm glad that Stanford has stepped up and decided to defy Bush's stance on stem-cell research. This is one of the most promising areas of Biology, and it's absolutely ridiculous to cut it off.
:)
I don't quite remember at what point biologists declare a zygote to be an actual embryo; the last time I touched Developmental Biology was 2 years ago. However, if I remember techniques correctly, we can stop division when the zygote is at the 8-cell stage, possibly sooner. I believe the blastula stage (hollow ball of cells) is generally considered to be the real "start" of an embryo, but again, my recollection is a tad hazy.
I think a lot of the misconceptions being tossed around related to cloning are quite interesting. I only hope that people will realize one day that the concept of the "mad scientist" is more than a little ludicrous, and that cloning human beings is quite a ways off, as is the concept of producing genetic "supermen". Of course, the media, being sensationalist to begin with, will continue to misrepresent the facts, and the general populace will continue to be misinformed.
That's not to say that when I'm done with my Biology degree (and probably my Ph.D. too) that I'm not going to attempt to take over the world with an army of cloned gorilla-men, but that's a different story altogether.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
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.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
The therapeutic cloning approach of the Stanford researchers also has great potential, but the process of creating and destroying embryos to harvest stem cells seems to be more complicated than using adult stem cells. Further, some experiments in which embryonic stem cells were reimplanted ominously gave rise to carcinomas. Many research scientists think both approaches should be pursued.
Hey! What if that was your embryo in the Stanford lab? Now you don't exist, and you can't argue your viewpoint.
What are the benefits of stem cell research? Fixing old people, that's what. Why do we want to fix old people? Seems like normally we'd be interested in making new people. So stem cell research is the first step in having a NEVER-ENDING population of PEOPLE WHO EXIST NOW, and simply RAID THEIR CHILDREN to LIVE FOREVER.
This is pretty close to a troll, but no one else is suggesting this side. Look at social security. Most people don't seem to care how my generation is going to have to break their backs working for our old man. Do we want the old guard: Bush, Clinton, Blair, and Jiang Xemin squabbling forever on OUR STEM CELLS? HECK NO!!
THAT'S THE TRUE DANGER!!!!
Prove to me that Stem Cell research is better than having a whole lot more kids, one of whom might make stem cell research irrelevant.
The December issue of Wired (online Dec 13) talks about China's aggressive push into the stem cell industry while the West grapples with ethical roadblocks. An major approach is to create human embryoes using rabbit egg cells as the host. Its rather slow and costly to get human egg cells in sufficent quantities. Would these clones be called "habbits" then and have the urge to hop and mate mate every five minutes? :-)
Outside of China, human embryo stem cells are grown intermixed with mouse cells. That is because the nourishment techniques were developed with mouse biotechnology and haven't fully migrated to pure human yet. These clones would have a taste for cheeses and squeak while talking.
I'm a biochemist here at Stanford and Irv Weissman (the dude in charge of the project) is not talking about cloning at all. He's talking about taking existing stem cell lines, and swapping in new genetic material. It's a modification of existing cell lines that involves no new egg cells (or sperm cells), no fertilization, and no organismic development. Even the US Catholic League is okay with this. Besides, if it fell under the definition of human cloning, Stanford would lose federal funding, which it is certainly not willing to risk. I am very much against actual human cloning for a variety of ethical reasons, but this honestly isn't even close. Swapping interesting genes in and out of an existing cell line in order to study them is really not a big deal.
...but let me know when they going to start making saber darts and rocket suits.
Yesterday news also hit of bioethicist Dan Brock advocating mandatory abortion for disabled people such as blind and mentally ill.
This is not a new concept, but is one that is growing in feasability and global support.
What does this have to do with cloning and stem cell research? Well they all have the same amoral drive: creating a "better" human race through science without any moral guidelines. As we see on this board, many people ridicule those of us with moral presuppositions as "non-scientific", "ignorant", etc. Above, though, we see an extreme example of this.
Fast-forward now 10 or 20 years. Science has guaranteed a "perfect" child to anybody who can afford one. A minority of rich people get smarter, stronger, better-looking, and richer, in contrast to those who still suffer with gross things like blindness and the worst- mental inferiority. It wasn't enough to genetically engineer perfect children. The question now is "Why hold on to that last moral presupposition that we shouldn't kill scientifically inferior people?" You may think me an extremist, but it's happened before.
That is the question that should be answered today. If you truely believe in removing morals from science, be logically consistent with it: advocate a super-human race and the death of all inferior people. If you believe in moral presuppositions, though, realize what unchecked research in cloning, embryionic stem cells, and science in general will lead to. Either way, the question is: what criteria do you use to value human life? You may have about a year to decide.
There are alternatives, such as adult stem cells, which have potential as well and sidestep ethical concerns.
usury (paying or receiving interest) is a sin,
Excuse me. Just like "Thou shalt not kill" is a mistranslation (murder is more accurate), so is "thou shalt not charge interest." Usury is _excessive_ interest, not interest itself. Of course, that's the English meaning -- the Hebrew meaning is completely unclear.
-Billy
(This is sarcastic, for those with sarcasm sensory imparement)
I was rather angry at Bush when he decided to limit stem cell research. I felt that his decision was affected directly by his religious beliefs.
GWB's religious beliefs do not seem to be slowing him down from a pointless war against Iraq in which a number of non-combatants will become "colateral damage"...
I guess he is able to choose when his beliefs come into play and when they can be cast aside...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
In one word: Yes!
Why the hell would you classify a human body (a corpse really) as a human if it is brain dead?
It's just a piece of meat.
If your brain is shut down, and there is no hope of rebooting it, you are dead. period.
What good is it to you, or anyone else if your body is still breathing?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
What's a pity is that most people have a tremendously poor understanding of science and the scientific method.
Unfortunately, there have been a number of scientists who have chosen to conduct research that would not be considered ethical today. When the potential for money is involved, some people might turn a blind eye to the odd ethical lapse because the stakes are so high. Can you be certain that all of the research taking place is done for the sake of pure research and not potential financial gain?
I have some questions for those who freak out about the prospect of human reproductive cloning. What's wrong with human reproductive cloning?
I cannot claim to have the answer to any of the questions surrounding this debate. A number of people have been able to articulate clear and salient points that we as a society need to consider before enbarking down this path. For example, it might be possible to clone non-sentient human bodies that we can use for organ harvesting. Do you have an issue with that? Personally, I do, regardless of the potential benefits to society.
As we brutalize others, so do we brutalize ourselves...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Why is Reproductive cloning bad? I have yet to hear a coherent argument against it. What will the existence of a clone do? Cause the breakdown of time and space. The fact is a clone would be no different than a twin, which by the way are certainly considered separate legal entities, no issue there.
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."
As we move closer to the end of the age, look for more decisions to be made based on the "common good", "world order", and "tolerance" rather than individual rights and dignity.
Precisely what do "individual rights" and "dignity" have to do with a cluster of cells that, I quote (from the official Stanford press release), "cannot on their own develop into a human"? Please. This is not reproductive cloning. This is actually about the same, in terms of "dignity" or "individual rights" as a pacemaker.
Just because it comes from human tissue doesn't make it human, or do you give your toenail clippings funerals? Ever done that experiment in science class using epithelial cells? Did you feel like a murderer after you scraped the inside of your cheek?
Anyway, I don't know where your perspective is coming from, but you ought to at least RTFA before you rant.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Embryonic Stem cell research and therapeutic cloning are not part of the abortion debate.
So why is the Religious Right hijacking this issue to use as a weapon in their war on abortion?
Similarly, I'm against smoking, but also favor people having the choice whether to smoke or not.
In other words, it's best not to allow the Govt. to make everything that someone doesn't like illegal, from our past experience making doctors who perform abortions and women who receive them into criminals isn't a good idea.
But many folks who feeel that the woman should ultimately decide about something that will take over her body for 9 months and may well kill her in the process, will still advise against abortion unless the woman feels she has no other option...
Scientific cloning- the publication in incremental results- allows progress on the subject. Rember is was something like fifty years bewteen the first successful clones of amphibians & reptiles in the 1930s and of mammals in the 1990s. Would be even slower without publication.
I feel the need to present the other argument.
You seem to feel that killing something or experimenting with something that is a "non-sentient mass of cells" is ok. All humans (including you) are just a mass of cells so presumably your argument can be refined to be that we can experiment on anything that is not sentient.
It would be hard to argue that a newborn is sentient. Think about all of the great AIDS research that could be done by infecting infants with the disease and testing treatments. I hope this idea is appalling to you. What about experimenting on mentally retarded people. Someone with the intelegence of a three year old (or an octopus) is certainly not any more sentient than many of our animal research models.
Since the above types of research are unaceptable, there must be some criterion other than sentience that makes reseach on infants bad. The most common answer is that it is the potential of sentience that makes infanticide worse than killing a cow. That said, when you do what they are doing at Stanford you create life that has the potential for sentience and then destroy it before it reaches sentience.
presence or absense of brainwave activity is generally used. When there is no brainwave activity, the family is given the choice whether to turn off life support and donate the organs or not.
The IVF embryo debate seems to have a similar ethic to me: the embryos are frozen and will either be stored indefinitly or discarded when the money for storing them runs out. So it should be fine for folks to donate embryos they don't use in the process: the realistic options are similar to a person without brainwave activity: donate the organs (stem cells) or keep them on life support (frozen in liquid nitrogen) untill they completely die, at which point the organs (stem cells) are useless.
Meanwhile, 12 million is the size of a single grant of hundreds that NIH and NSF fund for promising research in other areas, and this years version of the Brownback bill, barely stopped by the Democrats last year, will make the doctors working at this Stanford Center federal criminals in a few months.
Heck, the US Congress is set to make patients who travel to other countries for therapeutic cloning related therapies into federal criminals.
I think the term is: "Woo Hoo".
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").
So, instead of doing the ethical thing and developing a nonlethal technique for harvesting embryonic stem cells -a move which would quell all current opposition to research- they decide to create entirely new human beings, simply for the purposes of killing them in order to get their stem cells.
Whatever happened to "First, do no harm"?
To make "this decision for someone else (i.e. the fetus).".
Since the mother risks her life carrying the fetus, this seems only fair.
Regardless, the point is that one can be in favor of letting the mother choose whether to risk her life while also being in favor of her choosing to risk it.
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.
You sound like Edward Teller, mooning over an advance of science without one whit of concern for the fallout (excuse the pun) it has on society. If never ceases to amaze me how some people think that if it's possible to do something, then it's the inevitable march of progress and that we must do it at all costs. This is the sort of thinking that led Teller to advocate using nukes to alter the weather and to dig mines and canals.
Of course, the dangers are far greater if the moral side is the one not to embrace its power.
Have you ever considered that like chemical weapons there may be no way to embrace its power and still retain the moral high-ground? "Lives sitting in the palm of our hand" are not generally the kind of thing that most reasonable people think are something that should be "played with." Fetal stem cell research results in the exploitation and death of a human lifeform. It's senseless when there are alternatives that do not. Sure, it can save lives, but we can save lives now by cutting up retarded and insane people for organs. Should we deny our prerogative as "the moral side" to "embrace the power" there?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The person that strays from "life" and "choice" and into something more reasonable like "abortion", "abortion rights", "the right to abort", etc. is the only one worth listening to, because they're the most likely to view the discussion in a reasonable manner.
I would disagree that use of the terms "abortion rights" and "the right to abort" implies an open-minded person. Any time you describe something as a "right" you are already presuming that the "pro" side is the correct one. The opposition in such cases always vehemently denies that the debated topic is a right and does not use that term.
The right to bear arms vs. gun-control
Civil rights vs. integration
Gay rights vs. "special privileges for gays"
Along those lines, I think that "legalized abortion" is a much more neutral term, much like "legalized drugs" or "legalized gambling." It's a much more balanced term that talks simply about the matter at hand -- whether or not the activity in question should be legal.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Stem cells are available from far more sources than aborted fetuses. Like umbilical cords for instance. Nothing wrong with taking a few samples that way.
The difference is that we don't agree the cattle ever gain those rights. I'm just pointing out it's difficult to say, "Humanity starts here."
Never confuse volume with power.
Both methods have potential. At this point, it is not possible to say which will work. Given the number of people in need, the only ethical choice is to proceed energetically along both lines of research. The concern about stem cells giving rise to cancers is a real one, but it will remain a concern with any undifferentiated cell, whatever its source.
It isn't informative, or even well read, but it is a valid point that contributes to the discussion. If I had points I would give it +1 insightful.
Given that a reply to this has been given +1 interesting, I'ld say this needs to be modded higher.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
---Anyplace you see aggression and conflict at the hands of communists you can pretty much define it as a war in the name of 'no God.' The reason is that communism has no deities, only saints and martyrs.---
That makes about as much sense as calling them "wars in the name of no Star Trek" since Mao didn't watch American Sci-Fi. There have certainly been people who didn't believe in god persecuting those who did for their beliefs. But simply not believing in a god is no reason to talk about doing something in the name of no god. I don't brush my teeth "in the name of no god."
Since "atheist" has been co-opted by religious and agnostics seeking to obfuscate that binary problem, some have suggested using "non-theist" to make things clearer. Sure, atheist MEANS without god belief, and most atheists use it that way, but the connotations are sometimes just too ingrained to bother challenging.
Thanks for the links.
Kind of depressing to read though. I didn't think that many europeean countries were siding with the US on this.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Except that there is a required gestation period, and a period that merely reduces risks.
In partial response to someone who said a fetus imposed small risks to the mother, far more babies will live being born even as early as 6 months than mothers will die giving birth in the United States.
Compare it to building an airplane. Is it an airplane before it actually is test flown? Or is it merely a vehicle that moves slowly on the ground that has the potential to be an airplane?
Never confuse volume with power.
I would suggest that you reevaluate your personal moral code -- it doesn't sound like it's particularly consistent at the moment. Some things, you just know are wrong; others, you need evidence for. I suspect emotions drive the evidence-free beliefs. Don't feel bad; all humans do this, although some of us try to avoid it. :)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
There's a saying, though I'm not sure of its source:
"Logic gives us what we need. Magic gives us what we want."
From that, I think, stems the fundamental conflict of religion. We can use all our scientific knowledge, logic, and reasoning to discover everything there is to know about the universe... but the questions that science can't answer ("Where did the universe come from?") or are irrelevant to science ("What is the meaning of life?") we badly want answers to. Reality isn't forthcoming... so we make them up, so that we can feel better. We want to feel safe and secure, and religion lets us do that. Some of us, apparently, are either able to feel safe and secure without religion, or are emotionally stable enough to handle the lack of security.
For my part, I don't know where the universe came from (and I don't care, as it wouldn't affect anything about my life), and "What is the meaning of life?" is a non sequitur.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased