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Stem Cell Symposium
Hypharse writes "The newly created Cable Science Network(who literally strives to be C-Span, but for science) has opened with a very informative session on Stem Cells. I have had great hope for this network since stations supposedly for science like the Discovery Channel and PBS have become much more show than substance. If this symposium is an example of their future offerings I would be very happy."
"I have had great hope for this network since stations supposedly for science like the Discovery Channel and PBS have become much more show than substance."
Discovery Channel is trying to be politically correct so of course we are not going to see any truly uncensored scientific research results there until we overcome the "moral" outrage of uneducated people who are trying to stop us playing God for purely religious reasons. In my opinion, however, stem cell research is important, because when we are talking about a potential to save literally millions of human beings, I believe that ethics should always take precedence before morality.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I am in complete support of adult stem cell research, and it does have great potential. Embryonic stem cell research, though, I cannot support because a embryo is a human being with the same rights as anyone else. Killing one human to save another (Technically /more/ than one human to save another if it doesn't work well the first time) is immoral and stupid.
I heard somewhere they are very close to being able to create stem cells without actually having conception with a sperm and an egg, if this is true I am in full support of it.
the Political Inquirer
And what is your opinion of klling rats/mice for research? Due to their close relation to humans, much genetic research is done to mice/rats in order to get a better understanding of the human genome.
What about insect research? The latest trend in neuro-toxins is for them to target insects specefically. The idea is that crops can be sprayed, insects eat crop and die. Humans eat crops and don't die.
Bacterium research? Although bacteria are now 99% understood, is it approiate to exploit bacteria? Because of their simple nature, they can easily be altered to manufacture proteins that are critical in biological research.
Lastly. Are you for euthanasia? I mean for humans and animals. For example, if YOUR FATHER/MOTHER was suffering from terminal lunch cancer and were on a severe pain management program. Their mental state would not be "fully there". Is it worth letting them suffer through the pain and not being mentally there to enjoy their last moments with you? Or is their physical and mental suffering acceptable if they can physically be present? I know that I would choose a "livable state of mind" over "physically present". I had previously decided it was time to call it quits when my dog could no longer walk on his own, and I would call the same decision for any other loved one.
Grump.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
What about all those unneeded embryos being discarded (killed) in fertility clinics? Do we only have moral objections when we want to do something useful with them? They are being killed anyway, why can't scientists use them for research?
If they can stop my descent into blindness I don't care how many dead embryos we have.
Clearly you can't support throwing them away. Then again, leaving them frozen forever would be no different than jailing someone for life for committing no crime (at some point the embroys will die while frozen). Given the sheer numbers (not to mention the lack of willing volunteer parents) you can't bring all these embryos to term.
Unless a viable alternative is proposed to dealing with these embroys, it seems to me that leaving them frozen in fertility is far more immoral, stupid, and cruel than allowing the embryos to save their fellow humanity.
How many embryos are you saving by not supporting stem cell research? Zero.
Would it be possible to grow a fetus not without bones but without a brain using a similar method? If so, would it be still considered unethical to perform experiments on it or use its organs for transplants even though it would be consciously equivalent to just any other organ, like heart or liver, taken from a patient after the death of his brain? Unlikely. The studies you are referring to should definitely continue, because one day it might provide a method for easy transplants. Today there are basically two most important problems with transplanting organs: finding an organ in the first place and avoiding the rejection. The surgery itself is already on a satisfactory level. Cloning the entire set of spare organs with patient's own DNA would be an amazing breakthrough and a sure Nobel Prize.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Everyday I discard more human cells than exist in these embryos that are destroyed. I work in a hospital and the bronchoscopy lavage fluid that I handle contains millions of cells that are going to be cultured then destroyed.
If you go to the doctors you will have millions and millions of cells disposed of for the purpose of preventing you from getting ill (Drawing blood).
These cells that are bing destroyed everyday are no diffferent than the cells in an embryo. It does not hurt for these individual cells to die, If it did your skin would be crying in pain as you shed thousands of cells each day.
What tend to forget is that a cell is a cell is a cell. A sperm uniting with a egg does not make the newly formed unit into something miraculous, it just reforms into a cell.
While we've been able to make psuedo-stem cell-like cells from adult cells, they do not act the same. Similarly, hematopoietic 'stem' cells are not the same as embryonic stem cells - not by a long shot.
I see what you're saying, but be careful as the argument as you stated it would be used against stem cell research (if a cell is a cell is a cell, why use embryos?).
That is true. I should have clarified. Once a cell differentiates it is almost impossible to get back to the state it was once in.
My analogy would be that a skin/other cell is like a car while a stem cell is a box containing the raw materials to make a car.
It is easy to make a car out of the raw materials but its nearly impossible to create a cadillac out of an Kia.
Empirically, we can see a continuum between cells, and human being over the span of a gestation, and assigning an arbitrary cutoff point at which a fetus gets rights would be wrong. After all, How many rocks does it take to make a heap of rocks? How developed must a fetus be to be worthy of human compassion?
Of course any fetus that will come to term should be accorded the same care and respect as the fully formed human being that it will become, but a fetus living in a test tube, and past it's 'expiration date' has no such future in store for it. It will never be more than a clump of cells.
But in the case of the embryos that could potentially be used for embryonic stem cell research, the embryos are at the extreme left of the cells_in_petri_dish-->human_being continuum. While the case for ten rocks being a heap of rocks, may be wishy washy, it would be hard to argue that one rock constituted a heap. Lacking the potential to become more than a clump of cells, such an embryo fails the test for being human miserably.
But the debate seems overblown. I will be voting against George Bush, but not because of this. The stem cell issue seems to be fairly unimportant incomparison to things like going to war against Iraq in response to an attack from alQueda. ( 200 billion so far = $800.00 from every man woman and child in the US. I certainly wouldn't have donated $800.00 to Iraqi Freedom voluntarily... ) Not to mention the effect of creating the atrocities that are inevitable in war and which are sure to swell the ranks of alQueda. The Iraq action, shows a profound ignorance of how to deal with terrorists. Terrorism is not about causing terror in and of itself - it's about causing terror in order to inspire panicked reprisals against the innocent which will inspire rage against the victim of terrorism, and swell the terrorists ranks. GWBush has shown himself to lack the neccessary coolheadedness to deal effectively with alQueda types.
Is there a difference between embryonic stem cells and other stem cells? That seems to be the question that scientists want to answer by doing embryonic stem cell research. Why can't that question be answered using mouse stem cells? And if the answer turns out to be: "yes, there is a difference" unless there is a way to turn non-embryonic stem cells into embryonic stem cells, what is the use? Once someone is born, they won't be getting any more embryonic stem cells anyway, so there will be none available for any treatments.
I can get PBS without access to cable. I can watch the Discovery Channel with basic cable. Will I have to increase my cable subscription in order to see the channel? While I would love this channel, I simply can't justify increasing my cable subscription from ~$10 per month to ~$40 per month for one channel.
Best of luck to TSN - I'll just have to cheer from the sidelines.
What makes a human being?
What endows it with rights?
And are you sure that all human beings have the same rights?
In the United States, adults are indeed endowed with a plethora of rights. Foreign nationals in the country--be they Saudi Arabian, Chinese, Mexican, British, or Canadian--are subject to arbitrary detention and deportation. ("Papers, please!") Criminals have been deprived of certain rights--freedom of movement, possibly even the right to their own lives--for the benefit of the rest of society. Children have a sharply circumscribed set of rights. Their parents or the state are empowered to make decisions on their behalf (including with respect to medical procedures), and to direct their actions.
So to equate an embryo with a human being, and then blithely state that they are endowed with the full rights attendant to that status is a tad imprecise.
A much more complicated question is the one of what constitutes a human being in the first place.
As I read it, the parent has a very clearcut definition which suits him or her. Spermatazoans are not human, ova are not human. Once sperm fertilizes egg (bam!) that single fertilized cell is a human being.
Okay. What if that bar is too low, or too high? What if--apologies to Monty Python--every sperm is sacred? I imagine that most Slashdot readers probably feel that sperm is disposable, but why should that be so? Every one is half of a potential baby; the same can be said for every unfertilized egg. This takes us to the strict Catholic doctrine that birth control is murder, and fornication for pleasure a sin.
Going the other way things get quite complicated, too. After sperm meets egg, it still has a rough ride ahead. The newly-assembled embryo has to make its way from the oviduct to the lumen of the uterus, and eventually implant itself in the unterine lining. It undergoes several divisions during this process, and takes five or six days to do so.
All through these early stages, the embryo is very vulnerable, and a significant fraction of them never make it. Indeed, spontaneous abortions in the first week or two are quite common. The body probably disposes of about half of all fertilized embroyos, either because a genetic defect is detected, or just because conditions aren't right--or plain old bad luck. Really, the body itself is quite cavalier about expelling embryos is doesn't like or doesn't want. (These early terminations are sometimes referred to as "chemical" pregnancies, because often only sensitive biochemical tests can reveal that they took place. The mother's period might be a bit late that month.)
Jump ahead to about week 12. The major internal organ systems have appeared, though their function is for the most part quite limited. The fetus is a couple of inches long. At week 14 or so, eyelids, some musculature, fingernails, and sex organs have formed. The fetus begins to make spontaneous movements (albeit far too weakly for the mother to detect) and is about three inches long. The earliest surviving premature baby was born at about 22 weeks, if my memory serves. (There is a 50% chance of survival with extensive medical intervention at about the 26 week mark.) A full term pregnancy is about 40 weeks in length.
A lot of people are content to not really think of the fetus as a "human being" until it has achieved some minimum level of development. Some peg it to the development of certain internal or external features (often around the end of the first trimester) while others apply a (shifting) target based on when a fetus is likely to be able to survive on its own. Maybe we should choose an early stage--the formation of a blastocyst (around the sixteen-cell stage) or the formation of the placenta (about four weeks, IIRC)?
Then of course there's the question of in vitro fertilization. Common practice in many places is t
~Idarubicin