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Paralyzed Woman Walks Again
mgv writes "It's been promised for years, but it's just become a reality. Stem cells taken from cord blood have enabled a paralysed woman in South Korea to walk again for the first time in 20 years. The details are on the Sydney Morning Herald Site which requires registration, but can also be seen on the World Peace Herald. Too late for Christopher Reeve, but not for the thousands of new injuries worldwide each year or the millions of paralysed people from other diseases in the world."
What will the Republicans do when people have to travel overseas to get their health treatments???
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
if government put a $1,000 tax per ounce on tobacco, yeah, tobacco isn't "outlawed" but it effectively will be.
I wonder, with every miracle, there's always some downside.
Only in the movies, (and literature.) Science and technology have provided untold numbers of miracles, and many have no downside whatsoever.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
It was one thing to starve stem cell research when it was just a possibility.
Now that there is something tangible that can make the lame walk again he is going to have to look paralyzed people, their loved ones, and their friends in the eye and tell them that he will not allow them to have that second chance
... she's walking straight to hell!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Because, what, it involves tearing people open and was never known to work till this single supposed occasion? Not saying it didn't happen of course, I just haven't seen much confirmation personally. Something that's dramatically worse doesn't qualify as better in my book, even though some assert otherwise. But, then, these 'scientists' would be using rocks to cure paralysis if there were a prominent myth that stem cells didn't exist.
I know I know, it was a frickin' joke. But you can't get away with that on Slashdot!
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
A fetus doesn't even have synaptic connections until the third trimester, and thus is unlikely even to feel pain. Because it can someday be a human doesn't mean it neccesarily is one, there's still good reasoning to consider it no different than a corpse. It's a lot like a brain dead organ donor.
On the whole life or death thing, how do these embryos compare to the average things that most people eat? It's a view that these things are fundamentally different because they might someday be a human that makes people quiver.
I think abortions should be legal until the child has the intelligence of the smartest thing I eat. From what I understand this would be about two years after birth.
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
Fuck the Anonymous doubletalk Coward, whose Bushlover ideology blinds them to Bush's antiscience, antireality ideology that is putting America into the Dark Ages. And is so twisted that they use "ideology" as an insult, when they are purely a creature of it. I'm sure the "Coward" in your Anonymous ID is purely accurate.
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make install -not war
The NIH is responsible for both the obesity and diabetes epidemics in America because, after trying to prove that eating fat makes you fat, they built a food pyramid on a base of carbohydrates (which are what make you fat, burn out your pancreas, and lead to diabetes) after a study that showed that taking drugs to reduce cholesterol reduce heart disease. There is no medical research that shows that eating fat causes heart disease - the problem is the carbohydrates. There IS research that shows this. They ignored it and spent tens of millions on unnecessary research and then published dietary recommendations that helped make people fat. I think we could do without the NIH.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Whats more, the idea that stem cell research was unknown before Bush (and thus that it is too new to have recieved funding before him) is plain wrong. The ideas certainly were around well before he took office.
BTW, your link is broken.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Think of all the good medicine we would not have today if some brave people did not push the issue of using corpses for medical research.
Donors knowingly give their corpses up for scientific use. Embryos do not. Fact is stem cell proponents want to enslave a race of subhumans bred only to supply stem cells. Toward what end? So a few people with spinal injuries can regain some limited mobility? I join Mr. Bush in his revulsion of the idea.
an ill wind that blows no good
For now, the unborn is the only class of human beings enough people aren't repulsed by. The Nazis would have accellerated medical research if they weren't in such a hurry to exterminate the Jews and others, but they were doing eugenics and wanted to breed the aryan superman, not bioengineer him.
Calling something a "religious belief" does not make its truth or falsity change. Thou Shall Not Kill is either a universal and transcendent principle ("sacred" would be the term all but theophobes would recognize), or it is only something for the elite and not the disenfranchised. Nazis and Arians in 1940 Germany. The Commisars in the Communist countries (who were atheists that slaughtered millions of the "inconvienient"). In the modern west, those who haven't been aborted.
You can try to follow a logical trail to prevent your own killing/murder, but it will eventually lead to what is a religious belief which you cannot prove in the mathematical sense, so must impose some idea of human dignity. But then the exercise is to try to create a definition that allows the murder of those whom you want to murder, but doesn't happen to include you. But then it is all subjective.
If human dignity is objective, it belongs to all human beings - and the embryo as well as the zygote, fetus, baby, toddler, adolescent, adult, and elderly are all human. They are not fish, tomatoes, or rocks.
Someone was made able to walk without murdering innocent human beings. Yet it seems that there is a dark side to this world - and I would say demonic - something else that is rarely believed in - that seems to think only Molech can do miracles, and he requires the sacrifice of innocent children before he will do his magic. We now call the priests of Molech "researchers", but they would rather murder a human person (and patent the stem cell line? Where are all the IP libertarians now?) even if the research is less productive.
That is an evil attitude.
Once conception has taken place, it is inevitable that birth will take place.
The Anonymous Coward calls me a "spectacular shithead", and I'm incendiary? The information in my (obviously satirical, though sincere) post about religious zealotry is right on the money. If you don't see the American Taliban agenda for a Christian country, wedging with embryonic stemcells, through abortion, through general stemcells, through all of science that competes with fundamentalist propaganda, you need to look more closely. They used to believe "differently" in burning "witches" at the stake, too. I'm sure they'll join you in editing profanity from the web, at first in quotes of other people's statements, then "preemptively" on anyone in their way. Eventually that will include you, too, as well as me.
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make install -not war
I for one support post birth abortions, up to age 18, its population control. Mom and Dad not happy with little Billy, cram a coat hanger in his head and end it, one less worthless human being to breathe my air.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
What do you have against using embryos which a destined to be 'thrown out' from fertility clinics? I'm talking about embryos which were drawn for in vitro fertilization, and then not selected for the procedure. If you think using those is destruction of life, then you should also be campaigning against masturbation, and women who don't get pregnant every 9/10 months.
Humans are by definition rational animals. Brainless cell clumps don't qualify.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
So, why are you so sure that humans have any intrinsic dignity? Why aren't we just bags of meat with greater self-awareness.
Now here's the real question. If intentionally creating embryos then killing them is murder, then why aren't you crusading to have fertility clinics shut down? Don't try to back track, you said it now stick by it. The doctors who work at these clinics KNOW that some of the embryos will be destroyed. Why aren't they murderers?
The truth about this stupid argument is that the only way pro-lifers can make a logical argument against abortion is to claim that life begins at conception. Otherwise, they'll have to draw a line somewhere during the pregnancy for "life" to begin. While there may be the possibility of life to come from a fertilized embryo, the chances are MUCH greater that nothing will come from it. More importanty, an embryo doesn't really exist until about 2 weeks in, at which time the organization of the cells can really be observed.
As sad as this is for you, human life is not unique. Only the pathetic belief in "god" that so many disgusting weak minded fools use as a crutch has kept this stupid debate going.