Fetuses Provide Stem-Like Cells to Mothers

Flatline5150 writes "Excerpt from this article on Boston.com: 'Many a pregnant woman has moments when her fetus seems like a little parasite, all take, take, take. But new research suggests that a fetus may also be giving back a lifelong gift: cells that appear to act like stem cells, migrating to diseased organs in the mother and trying to fix them.'"

Comments

Re:Well then..

[NanoGator]

"Whats abortion do in this case?"

It kills the baby. Next question?

Re:Exciting

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>>Many a pregnant woman has moments when her fetus seems like a little parasite, all take, take, take.
>That seems to be the most offensive viewpoint I think a parent could take towards their child. Surely they could have come up with a better description? The rest of the article is pretty upbeat about mothers, but starting the article off like that is really offensive.

Offensive to you only because of your insistence on moralizing a morally neutral phenomenon. In placental mammals, the fetus is parasitic on the mother. There's nothing offensive about that. It simply is the way it is. Your religious viewpoint is leading you to ascribe pejorative values to a biological term that has none.

just say no. and leave us alone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you people have a movement that simply refuses to use the results of such research and spare the rest of us of your religious propaganda.

I personally do not want to die of some disease that took 20 years longer to cure because of people who can't distinguish a zygote from a human being.

Re:Well then..

[superyooser]

I think you mean the fetus, after all, you can't kill something thats never been born.

Read this story and watch the accompanying slideshow. The article basically shows that babies in the womb are as active as those outside the womb.

Re: Parasite

[shrubya]

That seems to be the most offensive viewpoint I think a parent could take towards their child

Well then, Mr FroMan (I'm guessing unmarried and childless), prepare to be offended. I know over a dozen mothers in their 30s and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM had that exact feeling at least once during each pregnancy.

It's a natural reaction, because it happens to be true.

Whose ass is grass?

[leonbrooks]

At the point where these cells are useful they are less human than the living cells in a blade of grass. Or do you feel there are moral issues to consider when debating mowing your lawn?

My goodness, it'd be hard for you to be wronger! (-:

The cells at that point are totally human and nearly undifferentiated, which is quite a different thing to being grass cells or whatever. What you're promulgating is exactly the same lie as the "it's only a fish... it's only a reptile..." bullshit which was common a decade or two ago.

There is no such thing as a baby in the womb.

Yeah? So what is it that our local maternity hospital almost routinely rescues halfway to term? A ball of grass? A mystery mass of foetal cells? At what point does a baby stop being that mythical lump of cells and start being a baby? It's certainly not at term. And if babies can survive at 20 weeks prem, how about 21?

I have a nephew who was waaaay prem, and aside from the fact that his sister was nearly the same size as him while they grew up ("are they twins?"), you'd never know. He's a normal adult now, the same as you or I.

Get an education - you don't need to be a conservative or a religious bigot to see a fact when one whacks you across the face, and the real-life observation here is that the only difference between a baby in utero and one in Daddy's arms is that the second one is breathing and the first is on a lifeline.

Re:Exciting

[Tikiman]

I'm extremely leery of extending full human rights to a newly-fertilized egg, or a group a a hundred cells. On the other hand, a baby that can survive with some help, even if extremely premature, is certainly more of a person than a blastocyst (at least in my conception). I'm not entirely sure when personhood starts. It does have to happen at some point, but I'd be more inclined to think that it happens little by little, step by step. As the embryo develops toward maturity and eventual birth, so would its rights and protections develop from practically nothing to full human rights. Unfortunately the polarization that surround so many arguments of this type prevents consensus on a stepwise definition of "personhood". I'm certain that it's this same polarization that prevents us from moving forward in so many debates in society today.

I was leery too, until I realized that it was only place to attach rights that actually guaranteed you got any rights at all. Rights simply cannot by obtained "step-by-step", as there can be reason under the sun that says killing someone at step #6,123 is murder, the most heinous crime you can commit against another person, but step #6,122 is not murder. It's simply illogical. Furthermore, there is no reason why that society when reaches consensus that you don't become a "person" until after birth, as some cultures have done. I think that the most enlighted (and logically constent) approach is recognizing that "rights" are not granted by society, but a natural part of our humanity - and thus are granted at the moment our human life begins, at conception.