Slashdot Mirror
Stem Cell "Master Gene" Found
nexex writes "From the Washington Post, 'Scientists yesterday said they have discovered a long-sought "master gene" in embryonic stem cells that is largely responsible for giving those cells their unique regenerative and therapeutic potential.' The report summarizes an article in the newest issue of the scientific journal, Cell."
Since they've now apparently isolated this gene, isn't it kind of like having "root" access to stem cells? Hopefully this kills off any remaining debate over cloning/killing babies and paves the way for real, theraputic research.
You are not the customer.
Something you have to wonder is if they are going to patent this
::sigh::
information? I would hope that since this is being done at a
University that won't happen. Although with all the recent patent
craziness, I wouldn't be completely suprised if they granted a patent
on it.
It still concerns and dismays me greatly that there is any discussion
of patenting things like the human genome. As many have said, they
are a discovery rather than an invention. Let's hope this research
follows that philosophy.
Sadly, the fact that stem cells have great potential application to
ease human suffering is seen by many people as a great way to make a
buck. It's even worse that most of this research is funded by our
tax dollars, then we have to turn right back around and pay a high
per item cost to help defray research costs.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
This GOVERNMENT filth is misinformation!
Support BABY HARVESTING. It's the only way for a brighter future! Kill cancer, HARVEST BABIES!
Can anyone familiar with the details say if this will end the need to do research on embryos? This seems to be a controversial aspect of stem cell research and eliminating this need may help win public acceptance.
If they have found the controller for the unlimited reproduction abilities of these cells, then we may be well on the way to curing many of these harmful diseases... True cures for Alzheimers and Parkinsons???
... [because] it's wrong".
maybe even eliminate costly transplants...
Who knows, we could even save Michael J Fox's career... =)
Hopefully the people in charge realise that this is more than an attempt "to transcend embryo research
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
What happens if you turn the Master gene on for a normal cell, or off in the stem cell? Does that automatically make the cell grow into a baby? That would be wild!
stuff |
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
And was posted on May 30 Link follows: Here
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Watch out what you ask for. If you get those religious/moral types too far out of science you end up with Mengele reruns throwing jews into freezing water just to measure how quickly they die. It's good science but morally impermissible.
Now I can finally get my foreskin back after 43 years without it!
No, it's just the /. effect taking out a memory-hungry VM. You didn't expect it to hold up, did you?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Sorry, even a libertarian (as opposed to anarchist) society will have to deal with the question of who or what is a rights bearing being. Artificial intelligences, embryos, the retarded, catatonic, and other border conditions have to be addressed in any society that's as advanced as we are.
Does anybody have the Locus Link ID,
Unigene ID, official HUGO name or even
the genomic coordinates for
the NANOG gene?
Following a distinguished legal career, a man arrived at the Gates of heaven, accompanied by the Pope, who had the misfortune to expire on the same day.
The Pope was greeted first by St. Peter, who escorted him to his quarters. The room was somewhat shabby and small, similar to that found in a low-grade Motel 6-type establishment.
The lawyer was then taken to his room, which was a palatial suite including a private swimming pool, a garden, and a terrace overlooking the Gates. The attorney was somewhat taken aback, and told St. Peter,
"I'm really quite surprised at these rooms, seeing as how the Pope was given such small accommodations."
St. Peter replied, We have over a hundred Popes here, and we're really very bored with them. We've never had a lawyer.
The recursion is all in the xml library, pretty typical to have that deep of a tree with xml parsing.
Having read all that I'm pretty sure what it's trying to say is "unexpected end of file" lol
"The one thing that's true of embryo research ... is that once people have done a little of it, they want to do more."
Just ask Christopher Reeve about his trip to South Park. {snap! schlurrrrrp!}
Religion does not necesarily equal morality. I'd rather not have Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson have a say in what happens to MY genes.
cat * >> sig
I don't live in my parent's basement.
I live in the garage, fucktard.
We might want to figure out how to turn it off.
That might be a cure for cancer.
Can I exploit this knownledge to turn on women, you think?
I, for one, will welcome our new master gene overlords
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
My ex in particular was always telling me what to do-
Help fight continental drift.
There's a cool song about stem cell research by Dream Theater, called "The Great Debate", off "Six Degrees of Turbulance" - I suggest checking it out =)
~Berj
A gene that tells all others what to do should definitely be feminine-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
The suggestiveness of S&M in the term "mistress Gene" is entirely appropriate, I might add.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
i've tried going to the source at Cell and it gives an error message. Same thing's happening at Neuron and Molecular Cell. Don't tell me we brought the whole server down.
I hadn't realized it was saturday night before reading this comment.
kool!
props to all dead homiez
That should've been:
"artificial intelligence, embryos, the retarded, the catatonic, the average slashdot poster..."
Oh wait - you were trying to avoid redundancy. My bad.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
An article about an article about an article about a cell. Sounds alot like...........(ok so I can't think of anything its like but im sure someone can)
"AYBABTU," then "In Soviet Russia..."
When will the lame jokes end?!?! I only hope this valuable research will lead us towards a way to turn off the "lame-joke" gene.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Religion should NOT get in the way of human progress. And this looks like human progress to me. So take that Catholic Church, take that President Dubya, and take that Religion in general. Science is the way, the truth, and the means to make humanity better.
Let the Karma-bashing love-fest begin!
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
it's more like:
... the women on your ... planet are ... logical. No other planet ... in the galaxy can ... make that claim."
"Spock
Reading between the lines of that cell article, I'm forced to conclude that God doesn't write in VB, but uses java!
You mean religous fanatics like Louis Pasteur, yes?
Now if we could only find a cure of the common cold.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
oh crap more stuff to learn about in molecular,developmental biology and genetic classes. crap!!!
Did he let his irrational religious beliefs influence his scientific work?
Can you give give me one single solid example of a time when religious restraint on scientific research has done more good than harm? (I assure you, history is full of examples of the reverse.) A single one? Apparently when religion and morality are invoked, we're all supposed to stroke our chins and nod wisely and say, "Hmmm, well, of course, science requires religious morality to control its excesses." It's bullshit. If I have to choose between superstition and ignorance and morality-by-authority on the one hand, and a longer, happier, healthier life for myself and the people I love on the other, I know which one to pick.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
;-)
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
and you'll see in the beginning of the gene:
...
int main (int argc, char** argv)
{
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Not necessarily in that order.
Considering the resounding success of televangelism, shopping channels, politicians, a considerable portion of what passes for entertainment and information (increasingly siamesed, artificial and vacuous)... They would seem to be doing fine !
1. Put on some smooth jazz or R&B. Al Green will do nicely.
2. Light some candles and incense. Sandalwood is perfect, especially if you can get some sandalwood massage oil.
3. Compliment the Stem Master Cell heavily, even if you don't believe a word of what you're saying.
4. Offer a deep-fetal-tissue massage.
5. After a nice 20 minute session, rub the Stem Master Cell's buttocks and thighs, hightening their pleasure with small injections of dopamine.
That should do it! Lord knows it works for me.
Well I wanted to nuke china to prevent SARS from spreading, but my pastor talked me out of it.
</troll>
The problem of a Mengele appearing is not theoretical but historical. The example I gave was all too real and the research data was under embargo for decades after WW II. From a purely scientific point of view this was and is bad science.
Naziism, formally called national socialism, was very much not christian which any serious examination of their belief system would bear out. It's an anti-christian libel to view Nazi denial of jewish humanity as different only in degree with christian fury over the christ-killer libel. Christians were angry with jews over what their ancesters did, Nazis believed that inherently the jews were subhuman. And christians, unlike nazis, have doctrines of love and forgiveness that tended to ameliorate anger.
It was the denial of humanity that allowed all those medical experiments to be done as if jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and the other inmates of the death camps were just animals that could be used as means to nazi ends.
As for religious restraint doing more good than harm, how do you determine the good and harm of an experiment that was not run? Medical ethics boards don't tend to trumpet to the public the immoral ideas their staff come up with that they shoot down. As an alternative, I'd look at the history of immoral scientific experiments that could have used a bit more moral supervision. I'd suggest a little more restraint on the part of they doctors who refrained from treating those black syphilis patients with more than a placebo just so they could record 'what would happen' would have been a good thing.
see subject
Of course He uses java. Where's he gonna find VB programmers in heaven???
After listening to that song, I can't read any discussion about stem cell research without rolling my eyes over that stupid song. :)
Yes, and there is certainly no way to appreciate one's fellow humans without gettin' Jesus... I would actually say that an atheist with morals is superior to a christian with morals, because the atheist acts decently with no heavenly reward dangled in front of him.
Typical of the washington post's slant. They leave the last words to a bishop
"The one thing that's true of embryo research," Doerflinger said, "is that once people have done a little of it, they want to do more.
I'm always curious to see how the mega-medias treat stories to reflect their stockholders/ chairpersons political and religious interests.
Does anyone know where I can find a topic map of the big media ownership and their political affiliations?
I found this one pretty easily...
Washington Post's Media interests
Genesis 3:22-24
22. And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
odd that there is little or no serious thought and speculation as to why
something that on the surface would aper to be a good thing
actually turn out to be the source of all mans troubles:
couldn't be
that with only 2 points of reference all that i can do is draw straight lines in space
the ROOT of/for divine logic is:
either/or can never be enough
if i/we seek only to know whether something or someone is good or evil
i/we must know what is both good and true: for not all that is good is necessarily true and not all that is true is necessarily good
23. Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
And I LOVE it! No snipping for me, thank you!
>eliminating the need to destroy embryos to get them.
Now they can rest where god intended them to rest, in the dumpster behind the clinic or finally tossed out en masse when storage costs outweigh potential profit at the fertility clinic. Heaven forbid this waste actually does some good for someone somewhere!
It's really going to hurt when European and Asian drugs based on stem research, patented of course, hit the markets here in the States with a huge mark-up.
Science may require some kind of morality or ethics -- just like everything else does; however, Morality and ethics do not require religion.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Don't blame ALL religion when you really mean Judeo-Christian. Would we have this science-religion gap if we were Muslims or Buddhists?
A lot of tumor cells use signaling pathways which are activated normaly only in embryogenesis - turning the cell signaling off is a new promising way to treat cancer without the typical debilitating chemotherapy side-effects. The ability to switch this master stem-cell gene off could be useful in this respect.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
The master gene was discovered decades ago :)
Execute? [Y/N] _
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Ha! Pretty Funny! Did anyone else get this? Where are my mod points when I need them? I just let 4 points expire yesterday...
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
>Christians were angry with jews over what their >ancesters did
Allegedly did. One gospel account has the Romans holding Jesus's trial, another account has the Sanhedrin holding the exact same trial.
So one of the gospels violates a commandment and bears false witness.
>And christians, unlike nazis, have doctrines of >love and forgiveness that tended to ameliorate >anger.
Individual Christians may live by such doctrines, but historically and politically pogroms, murder, and severe economic sanctions were commonly used by religiously oriented governments (Christians included) as a form of political control which played on feelings of religious nationalism. The Vatican was openly in support of Hitler, then tried to erase its involvement afterwards. The tremendous support given to Nazism by religious institutions was not an accident.
It seems that the political usefulness of religion is to help individuals to assert their moral superiority over others, and then use that superiority to justify expansion and or exploitation. Christianity may make its followers well disposed towards other Christians, but it has rarely, from what I have seen, increased the acceptance of various 'outsiders' (whoever those happen to be at the time) by Christians. The Quakers were one possible exception. Our modern emphasis on tolerance is more a novelty than the rule.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
"You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." Bertrand Russell
"The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights . . . not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide. . . . Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality. . . . It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake." Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
"The slave trade flourished with the approval of the Church, and in Britain and America it was the established churches that fought most vigorously against abolition. . . . Bible texts . . . were used constantly to support slavery. Opponents of slavery, including Wilberforce and Paine, were savagely attacked by the churches for presuming to know better than the Bible, and the antislavery attitude of the Quakers made them unpopular with orthodox Christians. Wilberforce . . . complained that his supporters were nonconformists and atheists, while church people generally opposed him." Carl Lofmark
"Historian Larry Hise notes in his book Pro-Slavery that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.' He listed 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals." James Haught
"Abolitionists failed to win the churches to their cause. In 1837, the Presbyterian General Assembly 'excised' from the church its most thoroughly antislavery synods. No major denomination endorsed abolitionism. This reluctance on the part of clergymen and church bodies was to have profound consequences for the course of the antislavery movement. It helped push Garrison and others into taking militant anti-clerical stands, and it caused the movement in the later 1830s and 1840s to adopt increasingly secular policies." Merton L. Dillon
"In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery." Mark Twain
"The delegates of the annual conference are decidedly opposed to modern Abolitionism and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave as it exists in the slave-holding states of the union." Methodist Episcopal Church, 1836 General Conference, Cincinnati
"It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. . . . With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh." William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist leader
"I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. . . . I . . . hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land." Frederick Douglass
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
to site "The complete left-wing history of Western Religeon" as your source....
I am serious...for fucks sake people, get over it. Not all Western Religeous people (Christians included) are what you want them to be in your own mind. Consider reading some other books and taking a history class NOT at Berkley. The truth lies somewhere in between.
According to: The Gesargenplotzian Gospel
IV. 1. Lo, in 1962 the Great Gesargenplotz came back, and it saw what He had done. And the Great Gesargenplotz was wroth, and it spoke unto Him saying "Why have you done this? Why have you created these creatures just to torment them?" 2. And He answered, saying "I have done so because it amuses me, Great Gesargenplotz. Of what matter is their pain and disappointment? They are not gods as you and I, they exist only for my amusement." 3. The Great Gesargenplotz, hearing His answer, knew that His heart was hard. The Great Gesargenplotz repented it that it had made Him. 4. The Great Gesargenplotz ate Him and He was no more.
After being eaten by His creator, I think His patent lapsed.
Charles K. Clarkson
Many people truly want to help. Unfortunately, many people truly suck at it.
Science may require some kind of morality or ethics -- just like everything else does; however, Morality and ethics do not require religion.
If by "religion" you mean "theism," then you're right.
But, at the very least, to be moral you need to have some claim as to the worth of others / the whole of humanity. A self-centered viewpoint, which is emminently logical, is the very essence of amorality--and what logically a person will have if they do not believe in the worth and value of SOMETHING other than themselves.
The bare minimum to be moral is not "belief in the almighty" or "belief in the beyond" or even "belief in humanity", but a faith that if you are moral to others then others will be moral to you.
Thankfully, this can be proven through observation of how humans behave socially.
Historically, of course, great moral humans (who set the tone for the whole of our society) have been rather religious--and those that have not have had a "religous feeling" towards something else greater than themselves.
And, as for the "relion fantaics" meddling in medicine--it's just a semi-religous argument as to the personage status of a fetus. If a fetus is a living person, then it's unethical to kill them or profit from their death. If it's not as person, it is ethical to euthanise them and learn / profit from their death.
The religious overtones of the arugment are coincidences--the various clergy could just as easily be arguing that a fetus is no more than a part of the mother, and can be treated as a spare kidney or bundle of hair.
I'd be gettin' some tonight, but I got plenty this morning from the missuz and we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow to see the in-laws and eat barbecued ribs :)
So we didn't have to kill all those babies after all? We could've just done more research and spared human lives? Doh!
Given... God made the Universe.. Heavens, Earth, and everything in it. I am not stating what God is, or how "he" did it. I have no idea. I have been looking for 40 years now without much luck.
Science is the study of God's Creation. I choose to let Creation itself bear witness of the Creator. I consider the Laws of Physics to be God's Law. He created them. I certainly didn't. Scientists are recognized for observing and documenting a relationship, but name me any scientist that dictated the mechanization. Anybody here can change the charge of an electron? Only God can do that. And don't take me as a religious nut - I get in extremely heated arguments with every darned religion I come in contact with. Even the Bible itself describes how much deception is involved in searching for God. Many passages. If Science is the study of God's Creation, then I see Science itself as the ultimate study for verification of God.
I see all these lengthy texts from antiquity, but yet these were written by MAN. Of course, they say "Inspired by God".. but I am writing this right now, and I feel "Inspired by God" too. Does this make me a prophet? I hope not, for I don't have anything more than speculative reports at this time. I just want the TRUTH. I've known MAN for way too long and know he will tell me anything to get me to follow him. ( Leadership skills ).
My prime fear on religion has to do with the propensity of men to "create" a superior when they want authority to boss other men around, but don't want to take responsibility for their decisions. Its kinda like the business types that can make a decision, but if you press them for one that they don't want to make, they will come up with the line that they don't have authority to do it and will bring it up to the "committee". Knowing how the human psychology mandates pecking orders so heavily, how do I discriminate between That who Created the Universe, and something somebody made up long time ago? They speak many words, but offer no proof, citing "faith". C'mon now, am I to believe in a God that is sold like a bad investment? What do they take me for?
Science is the only thing I have to go on. Something demonstrable.
All this study on Genetics to me is just further study of God's Creation. God put it here for us. If whatever created us did not want us messing with it, we would never be able to comprehend it. Can you imagine cats studying genetics? If God had wanted a bunch of bleating sheep, He could have left it as such.
And as I stated, although I often use the word "He" to reference the deity, I have no idea what I am dealing with. Lacking anything definitive, I often see nebulous phrases such as "spirits" used as a descriptor.
I don't think the problem is so much what we know, its whether or not we can develop the wisdom of knowing what to do with it. Knowlege can be used for great good, or great evil. Our choice. If you pray for anything, pray for Wisdom.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
"Why have lawyers when you're the judge?" asks the Diety, "Then again how many cases can I win, when everyone who sits on the witness stand either swears by me or at me?"
The comment that you reply to was so very well expressed that I feel a need to defend it. He did not say that Nazism was Christian. Read it again. What he did say is very rarely brought up, because it is so potentially troubling to Christians. It is also practically self-evident. Nazism did not arise in a vacuum; it was adopted by a community of Christians with a horrible history of violent antisemitism that preceded Nazism. Read about the treatment of Jews in 19th century Germany. The Nazi policy toward Jews was an elaboration and formalization of that preexisting attitude. Without that Christian kernel of hatred toward the Jews, Nazism could not have taken hold.
He was not arguing against moral restraint. Religious influence is not moral influence, it is religious influence. Morality must overcome religion; ethics must not be usurped by superstition.
Anymore than Likkudism == Judaism
The Nazi's also exterminated quite a few Christians who didn't agree with their views and actions. Alot of people like to forget that or leave it out of the history books, but the original poster needs a reality check...they were not Christians reguardless of what they chose/choose to call themselves.
Briefly, for those who went to high school here in the states:
Gene (DNA) -> RNA -> Protein
So, each Gene makes a single Protein product.
Reearchers have found the Gene that makes the protein product that causes a cell to behave as a stem cell. This Gene is found in every cell of your body, but, under normal circumstances, the protein product is found only in stem cells.
While I'm clearing things up I might as well explain some more.
Melanin, for example, is the pigment that turns your skin brown. The gene to make melanin is found in every cell of your body, however, the cornea (whites of the eyes) of a black person is not black. The gene to make melanin is inactive in those cells.
Likewise, this stem cell gene is inactive in most cells of your body.
Different forms of a gene (called alleles) make slight variations of the same Protein product, or make the same protein product under different circumstances.
For example, both a white person and a black person have the gene that makes the protein melanin, which is a dark brown pigment found in both skin and iris.
A white person, with brown eyes, has a gene which is less active in the skin, makes less melanin there, and the skin is paler (forms of melanin which are less dark also exist). A black person has a gene which is more active in the skin.
A white person with brown eyes, however, probably has every bit as much melanin in the iris (the colored part of the eye,) as the black person. So, the melanin gene is differentially active only under some circumstances.
This differential activity is mediated by transcription factors. Transcription factors are switches that turn genes on and off, they are present in some tissues but not others. The white person has an allele of melanin which doesn't not respond to the "on" switch (or responds weakly) found in the skin, but still responds to the seperate "on" switch found in the iris.
The gene this group has discovered (nanog) is an example of a transcription factor; more accurately, the protein product made by nanog is a transcription factor. It allows genes to be activated ("expressed" is the term) in a human embryo but not in an adult, or vice versa.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I've often thought that it won't be too long before all disease can be cured. I doubt I'll live long enough to see it, but I bet my children will.
That of course assumes that the religious right doesn't screw it up, that world conflict doesn't drive us back into the stone age, and that large rocks don't come raining down on us from outer space.
If it does come to pass, it's interesting to think about how societies will change. If I had several hundred years of healthy living to look forward to, there are so many things I'd want to learn..
I would think that human life would become more precious too: longevity might even be a disincentive to war. There would always be deaths from accidents, but population growth would have to be carefully managed.. and so many other effects..
-- Tony Lawrence
Based on the limited experience of atheists in power (mostly 20th century communists who have the highest 'fellow citizens killed' totals and percentages ever) I'd say that there's ample real world reason to exhibit a bit of concern.
I understood what he was saying but it makes it no better to argue that naziism was out of the christian tradition. There is a difference in kind between the nazi belief system and the christian belief system. I know that the Church intensively studies the German experience in the 30s to this day. Part of the results of that was a severe tightening of just war theory that we all saw on full display over the Iraq war where bishops played back seat driver to national leadership to an unprecedented extent very much because the German bishops of the time did not play back seat driver enough.
As for the dichotomy between religious and moral, I would suggest that religious leaders are subject matter experts in morals and comprise a large majority of the people on the planet who professionally think about moral matters. The original post on this topic was about taking religious people out of moral supervisory roles regarding scientific experimentation. I don't deny that you *can* have non-religious moral standards, I do think that taking out the majority of professional moralists on the planet will inevitably reduce moral supervision of scientific experimentation which I hope you agree would be a bad thing.
Yes, they understand all the good things you can do without killing babies now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Dodging the godwin's law sidetrack...
Science is not merely the realm for scientists to ask questions, they're merely the ones determined, talented, or able enough to put action to them. Everyone else in a society is also allowed to ask questions that the scientists can try to answer and that they must answer to. That society includes the "religious/moral types".
It might have been prudent to cite one or two examples "of the reverse", when you asked for one of religious restraint in action for good. Nevertheless, I have none for either side. Rather, I say that I've found that history and especially the idle historian better remember the fantastically bad events than the quietly good ones. I myself am also an idle historian.
And morality... do you scoff at all moral guidence in science or merely that from religion? Especially if it is the former, I hope you are neither a doctor mucking about with my insides nor a scientist mucking about with the Universe. Moral guidence, whether direct by personal belief, or indirect by considering the questions they raise, is what keeps us from destroying ourselves personally, publically, and scientifically.
*honken quip about karma going up or down*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I feel I've reached a new level in my geekiness. I actually understood and laughed at your sig. I'm going to go soak my head now.
This post is made with the utmost lack of spine, in AC vision.
Based on the extensive of experience of deists in power, I'd say that atheists are the lesser of two evils. Unless one's opinions of theology have no bearing on how good a person one is...
arrgh, one too many "of"'s in the first sentence. forgot to preview.
Excellent. I'm not religious and I don't believe in God. I believe that you should have a right to if you want to. I only wish more people who do beleive were like you. YOu see the corruption that is organised religion. Nice work.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I want 2 hearts and 4 lungs. Imagine how hard I could go. Of course i'd need a new liver as well.
Its amazing the amount of responses this is getting.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Human beings of all ideologies can be rotten, brutal, evil and malicious. The relevant comparison in regimes is total deaths and percentage of your own population's death in my opinion. From memory, both figures are held by communism with the Soviets taking the total #s crown at 67 million and Cambodia taking the percentage crown at 1/3 of their own people in a few short years.
By what metric were you judging the deists?
total slain. you gotta remember, the deists have been at it a while...
... religion is stupidity.
The great spanish inquisition, a huge stain on the catholic church killed under 1000. If you're just guessing that the religious toll *must* be greater, guess again. The subject is serious enough that it deserves a true count. The total communist toll in one century is 100 million. That's a hell of a number over a very short period of time.
On the side, you're using deists in a non-standard way. What exactly do you mean by it?
Why on earth would the discovery of the "master gene" have any impact whatsoever on the debate over the moral status of stem cells derived from the destruction of embryos?
The contention is that a human embryo, from the moment of conception, is a unique new human life, and deserves the full measure of respect and protection accorded to human life generally.
(Sidebar: note that the contention is not that the embryo is a human person; personhood is fundamentally impossible to establish scientifically, since it is at bottom a philosophical and theological category. But an embryo is, inarguably, human life.)
And yet those parties to the debate who support embyronic stem cell research persist in trotting out the most recent developments and extravagant promises of embryonic stem cell research as if they will determine the debate.
Let me try to make it clear. Let us posit that embryonic stem cells will cure not just one, but every human disease; that they will erase poverty; usher in world peace; and make us all immortal.
It is still irreducibly evil to profit from the deliberate destruction of a unique human life.
those who worship a deity.
and i suppose your going by the catholic church's official records on the inquisition.
you're, rather.
None of them have rights that take precedence over the advancement of the human race as a whole. There issue settled, shows over, lets get back to work now.