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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."
Perhaps this will help cool the American debate over embryonic stem cells.
Yes, Karen, you can get stem cells without harvesting embryos. No, really!
--
Every six seconds, another American hates Milkman Dan.
This is absolutely exciting, stem cell research potentially producing real results. And even better, by use of umbilical cord stem cells. Results without the ethical issues.
I just can't wait to see this research be verified. Seems like too many scientific research teams release their results early and without complete verification, hoping to get more funding from the buzz created.
In the end, this is really exciting. Can't wait to see how this develops.
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!
That's not interesting:
1. There is no ban on stem cell research in the US.
2. There has never been proposed or discussed a ban on stem cell research in the US.
3. Cord blood is just that: cord blood. Not embroynic stem cells. Unless someone can point me to something that suggests otherwise, this is not covered by the Federal ban on stem-cell research funding.
4. This treatment could have been derived in the US at various research universities. The fact that South Koreans made the breakthrough at this time does not detract from the US but rather should be an item of pride for the ingenuity and dedication of the South Koreans involved.
Snippy, snide, child-like comments aside, this development bolsters the claim that we do not need embroynic steam cells for the type of treatments and remedies that would help so many people. This was achieved withour US federal funding, without embroynic stem cells. The otherwise of the issue would have you believe that banning Federal funding of embroynic stem research on new lines is akin to calling the earth flat.
It's not even that Bush is against embryonic stem cells. His policy is that he doesn't think it's appropriate for government funding should go to harvesting new stem cell lines. So, the material that they already have, they can continue to do research with. Privately funded studies can still develop new lines. It's really not as radical a stance as people make it out to be.
That won't help. The raging knee jerkism doesn't stop for silly things like facts.
Of course, this is only an issue because many of the religious types who want embryonic stem cells banned tend to leave the "embryonic" word off when they start ranting, leaving one to wonder if they really are against just embryonic cells or the whole thing.
A press conference is not a peer reviewed journal. A woman walking in from of a camera does not mean a single stem cell helped her. Wait for journal publication, review, and commentary from experts before going around talking about how great this is.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Not at all. These are not created by aborting a fetus. In fact most attempts at using embryonic stem cells have met with tumors and rejection. But cord stem cells have been used successfully used to treat 75 illnesses. And to set the record straight, Bush didn't ban stem cell research in the US. He only increased government funding but limited it to those embryonic stem cells already harvested. Big difference, he didn't say you could not donate your money to the research. Just that the estimated 60 million people who find it morally apprensible to abort babies to harvest cells don't have to pay for it too.
embryonic stem cells are way more useful then any other type of stem cell
Stop spreading ignorance. Bush was the first President to get federal funding for stem cell research. You're simply spreading yet more FUD.
There was never any debate over adult stem cells... there's still a debate over embryonic stem cells...
This news just gives more fuel for anti-embryonic stem cell groups to point at and say:
"Chalk up another victory for adult stem cell research... what is that now 79 to 0? Why are we studying embryonic stem cells?"
I tend to agree with that sentiment.. seems like the embryonic research is turning into a big waste of money... but then again it has about 10 years of work to catch up on so it may yet prove itself.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Okay, I'll bite on the last part, at least.
Your question is misleading. The government should be in charge of funding basic scientific research that drives forward our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and creates the platform on which industry can develop specific products.
Why should the government do this? Because the results of fundamental research must be completely open and available to all scientists and entrepeneurs who would do something useful with it. Industry will *never* do that.
Government-funded researchers invented the calculus, the mechanical (and electronic) computer, and the internal combustion engine, and gave that research to the public, so that commercial and charitable use could be made of them. Industry, on the other hand, is busy trying to patent your *genes*!
"Stem cell research", as you can tell from the name, is not medicine, nor is it a commercial product. It is a fundamental piece of scientific research that advances our entire base of technology.
So yes, the government should fund it.
Sounds like as good of a reason as any to firmly establish what adult stem cells can do before entering the moral/ethical quagmire that is embryonic stem cell studying. Look at it this way: If adult stem cells can do everything, then no one can complain. If there are specific diseases that cannot be helped by adult stem cells, then we can have the whole moral/ethical debate specifically about those. But, it will be a much better educated debate because we'll have a better understanding about the limitations of adult stem cells - and isn't a well-educated moral debate better than a knee-jerk moral debate?
The first thing she should do is stand up and flip George W the bird.
However, embryonic stem cells are the cells which hold the real promise for research. This modern debate on embryonic stem cells is similar to the ban on using corpses for medical training and analysis in 16th century Europe. Sure you could learn some things by cutting open a dog. However, the real learning and advancement began once Human corpses were allowed for Medical research. History will view the ban on stem cells the same way. 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. Let the Bush Bashing resume.
The sound you just heard is that of a million scientists calibrating their bullshit meters. Seriously, if this is true it presents a moral and ethical alternative to those problems that have limited embryonic research, but bear in mind: Adult stem cells are not the same as ebryonic. They are more finicky (they are matched like organ donors), they create a limited number of cell types within the body and they are difficult to extract from an umbilical or placenta (which must be frozen immediately after birth). I would be more interested in stem cell warehouses for DNA types. Once you're born they save your umbilical stem cells like medical records (huge warehouses) free for one to use as needed throughout their life. The cash cow for the medical industry will be doing anything with embryonic stem cells, which are more easily ported across gene pools, and can replicate any cell within the human body. Don't make it a Bush/Kerry or USA thing. It's really not. That whole beef was about using government money to fund new embryonic strains.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
I really, really hope that what's being reported is true, but I'd really like to see it in a peer reviewed journal and have the findings reproduced before getting too excited. Because things like cold fusion have been announced via press release before, with no journal paper forthcoming. Without it being reproducable it's just another faith healing.
That said, please, please be good, reproducable research.
If not now, when?
This modern debate on embryonic stem cells is similar to the ban on using corpses for medical training and analysis in 16th century Europe.
Oh, please. A corpse is dead. An embryo is not. I'm not going to say that the ethics of this are exactly like the Nazis using Jews for experimentation (it's not), but it's closer to that than it is to corpses.
If you don't recognize the ethical implications of doing experiments on living humans, regardless of gestational state, then you don't understand the issues.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Be real for a second and review industry's track record. Drugs for phantom depression. Drugs for sex enhancement. Drugs for obesity. None of these result from real societal problems and the greatest tragedy is that they aren't funding smaller problems with the major profits. They are just inventing more problems.
Perhaps a better question is "who do you want to define research priorities--government or industry?"
A government of the people should
Laws are for people with no friends.
The spinal cord is an enormously complex structure, the exact neural connections of which are formed in early embryonic life. That you could simply inject multipotential cells into a damaged cord and expect them to differentiate and grow into mature neurons, complete with appropriate connections, is asking an awful lot. In addition, in this patient, "paralyzed" for two decades, you have the issue of muscles, bones, and joints that haven't been in use all that time.
It would be wonderful if this account is true, but I'm not getting my hopes up until I see more of the fine print.
Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist, Houston/Richmond, TX, USA
No, that's not at all analagous. There are no limitations on stem cell research. Anyone can do anything they want with stem cells. FEDERAL funding will not be granted to NEW lines of FETAL stem cells. There's a huge difference. Any pharmaceutical, drug company, biotech company, hell, anyone with money can fund NEW FETAL STEM CELL research, just don't aks the government to get involved.
This is is no way analagous to a tax, and to say otherwise is spreading more FUD.
My sentiments, exactly; I wish I had mod points.
I had a friend who broke his neck from a fall, so I've researched the topic a little bit. It is possible, in a very small number of cases, that people will spontaneously regrow the damaged nerves. This could be one of those cases.
One isolated incident does not make for a medical breakthrough. They need to demonstrate that this is repeatable.
Why would the president of the United States influence what medical research is carried out in South Korea?
A more pertinent question might be - who should be in charge of our national science policies - scientists, or clergy?
This space available.
Hmmm. "Never been successully used in any therapies". Maybe that is BECAUSE there is no federal funding for this. It's a self fulfilling prohpecy. Brought to use by the self-fulfilling prophecy president.
He said Iraq was dangerous, and harborred terrorists. Sure enough, we attack them and they start bombing us! Yeehaw!
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
For starters, it's a bureaucratic nightmare for labs--if so much as a single "bad" sample makes its way into an experiment, they can lose all government funding in a heartbeat. Labs end up having to spend a surprising and frustrating amount of time and money simply to meet the ever-growing list of compliance demands for federal funding. Angling for private funding is all well and good, but there's a severe lack of funding for pure science; corporate sponsors are far more interested in applied science. Applied science is important, but pure science is equally important and would suffer badly if it weren't for federal funding.
Second, the stem cells in question are coming from discarded embryos from in-vitro fertilization clinics which are already slated for destruction. To ban these stem cells from research is hypocritical, at root--if the issue at hand is the destruction of a human life, they should be fighting just as hard to outlaw the practice of freezing embryos in the first place. That they're attacking the scientific link in this chain suggests that they're more against using these wasted embryos for scientific study (which, for various banal reasons, is seen as the arch-enemy of religion by many,) than they are upset about the wasting of embryos in the first place.
It's a shame that the debate such that the scientific community is being made out to be the villian here. The real villian is the IVF industry; science is simply stepping in and trying to conduct incredibly promising research with something that'd otherwise be flushed down the drain without so much as a second thought.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Government-funded researchers invented the calculus
Um... Isaac Newton invented calculus when he was still a student at Trinity College. The school was on break for two years as a result of disease sweeping the area, and having little else to do, he spent his idle time thinking very productively.
There was no government funding involved in his inventing calculus, sorry. He invented it out of curiosity, not because he was paid to do so.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Wow, even more FUD! Bush, besides being the first president to secure federal funding for stem cell research, has said on numerous occasions that he actively SUPPORTS umbilical cord stem cell research.
You calling him an idiot? Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black if you can't even bother to inform yourself on such a basic issue.
Is it really surprising that most of the advancement has come from research that hasn't been effectively banned?
That's like saying there hasn't been any advance in the theraputic use of cocaine or heroin.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be. Why not allow federal funding for research on "surplus" embryos taken from IVF facilities (i.e., embryos that are not going to be implanted, but that are going to be flushed down the drain?)
>There is a huge difference between the two
Yet in practice there isn't. A lot of these lines have been ruined by mouse DNA and other issues. The best stem cell research, predictically, isnt from these lines but from others and most notably from foreign nations.
Bush could have left the Clinton-era laws alone, but chose to give this as a handout to his religious right base. Its dirty politics any way you slice it. The moral issue is as manufactured as the PC you're using to browse this site.
Pretty standard words actually.
"Is an embryo more alive because you consider it to have some mythical soul or because under the right conditions it may become alive?"
No, it is alive because it meets the criteria for life. Why wouldn't it? Because you don't think it has a mythicial soul?
Life and death are biological concepts, not moral ones. If you cannot seperate the two, then you really have missed the point.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be.
The problem is that you can make that argument about any human. Someone's in a coma, they're never going to come out, why not do some experiments on them? They're going to die anyway, why let a perfectly good body go to waste?
Or even a newborn that's not wanted. A newborn isn't sentient (that takes another few months); if the parents don't want it, why not allow post-birth abortions?
Now, I recognize that a lot of embryos are going to be "flushed down the drain", and that it's not quite the same as the above, but that doesn't mean there aren't ethical considerations. If embryos are OK, what about two cells? 1024 cells? One week gestation? One month? Eight months, when the mother wants a late-term abortion?
I'm uncomfortable with drawing arbitrary lines on this. It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Prior to Roe v. Wade this was the case. The wealthy have always had access to safe abortions, either in the US or overseas.
Lesser members of the human race had coathanger abortions in alleys, or just had kids. All Roe v. Wade really did was to allow poorer people the same access to abortion as the wealthy.
.
In my experience, it is that secular mass media often assumes that the religious want to ban all stem cells, because they fail to differentiate between cellular sources.
Simple google search shows the "major" media outlets routinely leave off the word embryonic when discussing the topic. Drawing a distinction between the two would better inform the public.
Catholic news letters define the difference, and promote more research into adult stem cells as the intelligent alternative.
Unless you beleive that all non-religious people are morally bankrupt anarchists, I think you can grant that scientists are bound by ethics that have nothing to do with a god of any kind.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
While this is without a doubt something amazing and even blessed (I use the term loosely since I am atheist) it is only a glimpse into the potential for stem cells. Personally, I am very very moved by this event.
But as one article discusses, the whole point of using embryonic stem cells is that they are undifferentiated. The use of the cells used in the treatment of paralysis were supposedly cord stem cells and are more limited in which ways the body can put them to use. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, can in theory, be used to create ANY cell type in the human body. That is a tremendous difference.
Ethical debates will persist from now until whenever but the moment people outgrow their need to believe in mythology, we'll make some better progress. I'm hopeful that there should be an ethically acceptable method for collecting embryonic stem cells so that we can make the real medical miracles happen.
Fortunately, religious != ethical. Inclusions between the two sides are left as an exercise.
A person has every right to be fundamentally motived by religion. They have every right to act according to the morals of that religion. The problem with cutting funding of stem cell research is NOT that it's based of religious values, it's that a SINGLE person in the United States has the authority to do it without a review of congress or the courts. It's outside the spirit of the US constitution which clearly outlines a "balance of power" which prevents any part of the government from having too much power.
This coming from a pro-life deistic humanist (read: not christian). Yes, those exist.
Burn Hollywood Burn
reference link
I like microcars
Well that's reason for me enough to keep abortion legal. Let me on the pro-choice wagon. I'll even support federally funded abortion kiosks in all poor areas everywhere in the country, with advertising campaigns encouraging the underclass have abortions. I'll *pay* the mother to abort, and pay again to have her tubes tied.
Actually it's pretty much accepted practice that ethical beliefes should influence science to prevent unrestrained growth and unintended consequences. Some of those ethics come from religion some from secular models of morality. Either way, to simply discard a set of ethical standards simply because they are based on religion is silly and close-minded. Science needs to be restrained and watched...not hampered or shutdown but we need to be prepared to control what we create and be able to judge our creations against acceptance criteria that include ethical and moral standards regardless of whether those agreed upon standards are religious or secular in nature.
Give me a break. We kill for every reason but to improve the human race. We kill for oil. We kill for money. We kill for religion. But we won't kill for life. Bush is the same hypocritical guy who voted to invade Iraq (and kill over 100,000 civilians) while claiming to be worried about killing 20 or 30 embryos, eggs and other assorted little piles of sludge that would only exist for the purpose of experimentation anyway.
It has approximately the same ethical weight as you flushing your retarded slow-swimming semen after you whack off to pictures of Rumsfeld in a Gestapo outfit.
With or without religion man has biased beliefs. It's just human nature.
I don't have to worry about man playing God because I know God will intervine before we get to that critical mass point. Think I'm wrong? Cure one disease, watch another one pop up in the wings baffling mankind yet again........
I'd argue an embryo becomes a human when a recognizable brain forms, and detectable brain activity occurs. Prior to that point, the embryo is a clump of cells indistinguishable from any other mamal's embryo. Humans are still animals- the only thing separating us is brain functionality/capability. It's alright to kill off frogs, or sheep, or cattle at any point to disect and use for research, so what is the difference from a human embryo, provided it hasn't developed a brain yet?
The big issue is not whether killing a fetus is morally right or wrong (I myself am pro-choice, but only up to a certain point of development. I do think killing off a fetus is wrong, but ejecting an embryo is fine), but at what point the embryos become a Human fetus. I've heard every argument from conception, to the development of a heart, to the development of a brain/brain activity. The later makes the most sense to me.
Drugs for obesity. None of these result from real societal problems...
My wife talks to diabetics all day on the phone as her job. Most of them are 200+ pounds, many in the 400+ range.
Obesity is one of the biggest problems facing our society today. People lose their eye site, limbs, mobility, and quality of life. All for a cheeseburger.
This problem isn't invented by the pharmaceutical industry, it's invented by gluttons.
Do you have ESP?
So, at this point, we are banning research on things that 'potentially' under the correct circumstances become life? If that's they case...we could take it to ridiculous length. Why not ban male masturbation? Potentially, this lost sperm ("every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great..") under the correct circumstances, could be come human life. Obviously, gay people are really withholding their contribution to potential life...etc. Ridiculous stretch there grant it, but, just to illustrate my point. Embryos that are created outside the body...unless implated are not life...they will not live without scientific intervention. So, I have a hard time calling it destruction of a human life for science.
I consider myself to have fairly deep religious feelings and beliefs, but, embryonic stem cell research doesn't bother me...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If the argument against using these embryos in research is an ethical one, it strikes me that the target should be the people who are actually responsible for killing the embryos, not the people who want to use these doomed embryos to try and improve humankind's lot.
I don't see the ethics of "what is a human" as cut-and-dried by any stretch of the imagination. That said, if given a choice between throwing an embryo into the rubbish bin or using it in scientific research, I see little question as to which option is better. This does not mean I relish the destruction of embryos. This means simply that I'd much rather use embryos in an effort to cure cancer than simply throw those embryos away.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I've thought about this for a long time. With my heart condition at birth I myself would not be alive if it wasn't for modern medicine and surgery. I find my self wondering if it's fair for me to have a child with my genes...
I sometimes think that were ruining countless gerenerations of evolution and mucking it all up.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
They put out a food pyramid with such things on it as a 2 ounce muffin as a serving..,
and joe sixpack buys the 10 ounce 'mega-muffin' to eat as his serving.
They put out a 3 ounce burger as a serving on their food chart...,
and joe sixpack buys the 12 ounce triple-burger with the super-duper-size fries.
Americans are getting fatter because they eat HUGE portions of bad things, and don't excercise enough. The food pyramid works fine if you eat the reasonably sized portions they suggest. It also might help if folks would get off the damn couch too.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be
Should medical experiments also be performed on condemmed prisoners? They will be killed shortly too? For that matter, the above statement applies to all of us. Both you and I will somday be dead, so should we be medical test subjects? There are better arguments for allowing experiments on human embryos (or for that matter killing them outright). I think there are two good routes to this. One is to claim that embryos in an early stage of development aren't people (say, because of no brain activity (no brain at this stage)), but this kind of argument is dangerous. It was this sort of argument that was used to justify the "final solution" to the Jewish "problem" in the 1940's. The other kind of argument is to claim that killing people is OK under some circumstances, and that these circumstances apply in this case (for example, from a greater good perspective)
I think that the best argument in favor of early term abortion or embryonic stem cell research is that without a brain you aren't a person, because the cessation of brain activity is what we often call death. But I'm leary of other arguments such as arguing that it serves the greater good or arguing that it they're going to die anyway because that same logic can lead to things that most of us would consider very bad./P
I like my beverages with warning labels!
That's why you NEVER ever marry them. When they get to the point to where they don't want to put out...you can put them to the curb, and upgrade to a newer model that does....without losing half your stuff.
There's plenty of them out there dude...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What the fuck is this then.
What it RNA, and What is DNA what are amino acids.
They can grow, reproduce, and react with their environment.
I should imagine that if you had a diamond and some carbon vapour you could make the diamond grow and not turn into graphite, nono-tubes grow and react.
Don't forget that you've got a lot of viruses and bacteria living off of a corpse too.
You could even argue that the frabirc of the universe is a living system. (well were part of is I suppose!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
this development bolsters the claim that we do not need embroynic steam cells for the type of treatments and remedies that would help so many people
No, it does nothing of the sort. Cord cells do not have the same capabilites as embryonic cells. Unless we research them, we won't know what else can be accomplished with embryonic cells.
Also, while your point #1 is correct, a federal ban on FUNDING is essentially a ban. Someone earlier stated that you could put a $1000 tax on a pack of cigarettes, and while it is true that you haven't BANNED cigarettes, they are effectively banned for economic reasons.
"The otherwise of the issue"? What are you talking about?
A more accurate analogy would be to say that banning federal funding of embryonic stem cells is like the king of spain never giving money to Columbus, and thus, Spain never FINDING OUT that the world isn't flat.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I think it ought to be noted that as a scientifically minded religious person, you ought to realize that a) The federal government funds most of the scientific research that goes on in the country and b) that the federal government provides tax relief and funding for religious organizations. You also know (I imagine) that the federal funding ban prohibits stem cell research in any lab which recieves government funding at all, which basically rules out any institutions of higher learning, such as research universities, as well as most hospitals.
You seem to be extremely educated, so I was wondering if you could comment on the strange dichotomy which you seem to support: The idea that your moral values are correct and ought to be supported by the government, and the idea that the moral values inherent in embryonic stem-cell research ought to be cast aside.
Justification with something so simple as "my morals happen to be correct" isn't acceptable. The government either needs to stop making moral issues legal issues. Doing so would have the potential to save thousands of lives.
for people who hold your viewpoint, there's no ethical dilemma here....For people who do not hold your viewpoint, knowing whether or not a treatment is based on research done on embryonic or fetal stem cells is quite important, regardless of whether the embryo in question would have been taken to term or not. It means they are profiting from the death of a sentient being if they accept a treatment that did come from embryonic/fetal stem cell research.
If you have an ethical concern regarding stem-cell therapies, don't use the treatments. Those of us who have adopted a non-medieval viewpoint on the issue (one supported by scientific evidence, if not proven by our knowledge) can utilize the results from this research. Ethics are individual.
The problem is not a matter of ethics -- the problem is that a significant portion of our society consists of backwards-thinking neo-luddites, who will attempt to suppress virtually any scientific advance on the grounds that it possibly violates their "beliefs". Indeed, nobody cares if you, personally, have a problem with fetal stem cell therapy, or genetically modified foods, or eating meat, or the idea that the earth orbits about the sun. But when you attempt to outlaw research into an idea, you prevent the rest of society from believing that idea. That's an imposition of your (goofy sense of) ethics on our way of life, and that has a slew of ethical concerns of its own.
(footnote: all use of "your" is considered royal -- if you were just playing devil's advocate, don't take it personally. If you were sersious, well, there's not much I can do for you....)
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Do you love your parents?
Prove it.
Whether you love someone or not is a subjective issue, like asking whether or not FDR was a good president.
God existing or not is an objective issue, like asking whether or not
FDR used a wheelchair.
Thus the analogy fails. The inability to prove you love someone is merely a side effect of the fact that it's subjective, and ALL subjective things are inherently unprovable (because it is possible for mutually exclusive positions to be simultaneously correct if it is subjective). It is not possible for god to both exist and not exist, so that is NOT a subjective issue. There IS only one right answer, but we just don't know what it is. That is a completely different situation.
Given the attitudes of Carl Sagan as expressed in his final work, The Demon-Haunted World> , it's a great travesty how they ended up writing that ending to the movie Contact. It expresses a stance in direct contradiction to what Sagan would have expressed.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
1. There was no existing work, due to this being a new discovery
2. Bush prevented work from being funded for embryonic cells (with usual caveats)
Whether or not this is "halting work" is purely a matter of sematics.
The ideas were NOT around much prior to the Bush Administration: it was not until 1998 that embryonic cloning was possible and 1999/2000 that the first breakthroughs in differentiation were made. Please see the link, which has an obvious slashcode-inserted space.
With medical costs rising much faster than inflation and wages and with an anti-science agenda in our government, the USA is moving backwards in time with respect to medicine.
For example, medical insurance has become so expensive, that I fear ever going to see a doctor out of fear what will happen to my premiums afterwards. If I ever see a doctor, it'll probably be due to a trip to the emergency room. And I get by cheap. If I was a woman with a child or had any pre-existing condition...holy shit, I know people who were quoted $1000+ per month, and they aren't even 30, yet!
I don't know the answer, but the current system is not it. Not by any measure.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
As righteous as you consider your agenda, it's not moral to force it on everyone else. The average Joe couldn't give a damn what happens with stem cell research, and that's his right not to give a damn. You are not a saint for trying to force your agenda on the average Joe -- you are an aggressor, and Joe is the victim.
Realize that the "it benefits society as a whole" justification for more government is the oldest trick in the book. Anything and everything government does is justified with that exact rationale.
Why did the US government chose to wage war on Iraq? "Because it benefits society as a whole."
Industry, on the other hand, is busy trying to patent your *genes*!
Industry is only playing by the rules. The fact that the rules are fundamentally broken is a failure of government, not industry.
We live in a capitalist society, which is a big step above the feudalistic society. Feudalism was a society based on the use of lands owned by a lord in exchange for service, usually military service and support to the lord.Most importantly that relationship was hereditary. The lands (which always belonged to the lord) would pass to my descendants, and they would also be bound by their obligation to serve the lord, in exchange for the rights to use the land. This the basis for the hereditary nobility, a class of empowered (i.e. landed) people that enjoy the privelige and benefits of society at the expense of the unempowered (i.e. everyone else).
I see it as a big step backwards when public monies can be given to companies as capital. The concentration of wealth is well documented, and that concentration is only increasing. When the GDP grows, most of that additional wealth generated goes right to the pockets of less than 1% of people, and most people get just a little bit. There's nothing wrong with this, as investors should get rewarded for their investment. And I say that if the PEOPLE/TAXPAYERS are the ones doing the investing, than the PEOPLE/TAXPAYERS should reap the big rewards.
Now to address your argument directly:
1) Companies employ people, this is true. And your argument is that when the government funds research, then that money puts people to work.
2) Companies that accept taxpayer money to do research that is required to be put into the public domain will STILL be employing people. Their funding for employing people comes from public monies, rather than private monies. I believe that this is the same result that you suggested was the main benefit of public monies funding research that would be proprietary.
Now, I will make the further case:
3) Instead of paying their dividends to a small number of people, the benefits of the research would be more directly distributed to the people who funded the research. i.e. the taxpayers. It cuts out the "middleman" who may or may not decide to circulate his wealth out to the rest of the population.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Most Eggs are fertilized outside the womb - in the Fallopian Tubes. Also they are alive. If they were dead they would not be of any use in establishing stem cell lines.
Your point is invalid. What you are saying is that preventing natural processes from proceeding makes something "potential". What you are actually doing is depriving the embryo of access to the nutrients it needs to develop. You aren't a potential if you are locked in somewhere and starve to death.
It is dangerous to learn science or philosophy from Monty Python.
You may have very deep religious beliefs but so did the Aztecs, and they weren't bothered by cutting out the hearts of thousands each year.
They aren't potentially human, they are merely at an earlier stage of development. If you needed a transplant, you could have someone close to you conceive and have a baby and let it grow until it was big enough to harvest the organ. If a human being can be sacrificed at X, sacrificing it at X+3 shouldn't bother you either.
Either Humans have dignity by virtue of their being human and any intentional death (including creation of an embryo to murder it) is murder, or it is merely some subjective idea the powerful impose on victims - Nazis can dehumanize Jews, Communists can dehumanize dissenters, and we can kill sufficiently immature (biologically) humans.
A wart is alive and has human genes... is it a human?
/bleh
What about your appendix and tonsils? Are they not alive? Are they not human?
What about that nasty tumor growing in your brain? Don't get it removed or you'll be killing a human.
You can still cut your hair and nails.
I'm no expert on Stem cell research or medical ethics, I probably know a lot less about it than most people on Slashdot. What I do know is that my daughter's mother is laying in a nursing home where she will soon die from ALS. I don't think that this kind of thing is too unusual, many people know someone who has some terrible disease. We also have hundreds, perhaps thousands of nerve and brain injured soldiers laying in VA hospitals around the country and many more people with various injuries and diseases in hospitals and nurshing homes all around the country.
All of these people wish to have their health back. Scientists and doctors everywhere are saying that stem cell research holds a great deal of promise and that it deserves a great deal of study. These same experts seem to agree that fetal stem cells have some special properties.
We have a conservitive government who for decades have said "deregulation is the key to success" who have regulated research in this area. I guess they meant "deregulation is the key to success unless we don't agree with it."
Thank you for a good post explaining why you feel the way you do. You demonstrate good and consistant morals.
Since we do, it is my opinion (based on my religious beliefs) that we should bring it to term, not destroy it.
You point out that your opinion is based on your religious beliefs. There's nothing wrong with that, but our society compromises many religions (including the absense thereof), and our country believes in a separation of church and state. Therefore, deciding right and wrong for the whole society is very different. We cannot transfer the morals of one religion on to our society as a whole.
Are you accepting of the fact that it's legal to do invitro fertillization. I understand that you don't think it's ethical, but do you think it should be banned? If you don't think it should be banned, then what do you think about embryonic stem cells? Either way, embryos are being created and later destroyed.
Masturbation and not being pregnant are not causing the distruction of viable embryos. Masturbation in males releases sperm which, correct me if I'm wrong about this are not embryos, and a woman not being pregnant every 14 or so months, that does not cause the destruction of an embryo either, right? Just asking for clarification.
haven't we sort of sidestepped the issue of whether ethical objections to destroying small clumps of human cells (which could potentially, but will not, produce babies) trump the research benefits of embryonic stem cell research.
Well, the problem isn't whether those clumps of cells can potentially produce babies, but whether those clumps of cells are in fact already babies. This is a very heated area of dispute.
If embryos are human beings, then it is immoral to manipulate or destroy them for personal benefit. It would clearly be wrong to kill a one-month old (that is, one month after birth) even if the tissue you harvested from them could save 100 people. Now we're debating over where the line gets drawn. Is it OK to kill a fetus just before it is born in order to harvest tissue to benefit those same 100 people? Is it OK to do it one month after conception? A week?
It really isn't as simple an issue as the rhetoric would have you believe...
I think the point is that literal interpretation of the Bible is problematic. Christians, being human themselves, should understand that, but too often they just don't.
If I had a dime for every time I've heard a Christian say "I only read the King James version of the Bible because it's a word for word interpretation" I'd have a pretty big handful of dimes. You and I know that the KJ bible has a history that rejects literal interpretation on translation grounds alone, but what about other literary techniques like alegory, simily and metaphor? Are Christians so blind to the capabilities of the written word?
Please, If you believe in what the Bible says then I urge you to be a thinking person and believe God gave the gift of literature to the writers of the Bible. Please believe that there is the capability that things don't mean exactly what they say. Heck I've heard all kinds of fun interpretations of the meaning of Revelations, why must you fail to believe the same possibilities of the rest of the book?
I think a Slashdot quote is pretty appropriate when it comes to literally interpreteed Bible math: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
TW
Man, I need to write an include file for this evolution misperception. I blame Star Trek.
Evolution is not a progression, it is a reaction.
Diversity equals security.
The more diverse humanity's gene pool is, the better it can react to environmental stresses.
You and others like you just might be the people carrying a genetic makeup that allows you to survive the next global change thus securing the viability of our species.
Your genes are not weakening the species but diversifying it. If you don't think diversity is good, read up on wheat.
"No good reason? The jews were on that land about two thousand years before the terroris^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h muslims showed up. It's their land. Not supporting israel is supporting terrorism and land theft." Chief Redcloud called, he wants your house back
"It's not the despair, I can take the despair, it's the hope that's killing me!"
HOw naive are you? Why cure somebody when you can sell them medication for the rest of their life??? A corporation exists to make money for it's shareholders. I hope you don't believe drug companies exist for the good of the people. If they did, they wouldn't charge americans more than they do canadians.
Because much of this research won't happen unless it's government funded (its long-term, not a quick buck). If there was no gov't funding, you'd have 10^6 aspirin knockoffs and no real treatments. A lot of commercial drugs never would've been developed w/o gov't assistance.
You seem to be extremely educated, so I was wondering why you don't understand that it's not a matter of if government legislates morality, but what morality it legislates.
Murder is a moral issue. Rape is a moral issue. Theft is a moral issue. Slavery is a moral issue. I could go on.
The point being, that like it or not, the government legislates morality; and we decide by consensus what moral codes ought to be within the jurisdiction of the government, and which should not. Even libertarians, who love to claim the high ground in situations like this, fail to escape this basic truth.
Yeah, but that argument is flawed. Here's another example: Q: Can god make an object of any shape? A: Yes. Q: Can he make a square triangle? A: Yes, er.. Ummm. Nevermind...
meh
Meanwhile, stem cells that are not derived from fetal tissues are being worked with every day to develop new therapies. For example, they were used to help a paralyzed woman walk in South Korea - which you would know if you had read the article.
As for all the promises from all those researchers - sorry, but researchers promise lots of things that never come true. Even the New York Times is reporting that California's $3 billion is looking more like a science slush fund than real science.
Clear, Dark Skies
The federal ban is basically federal government research dollars shouldn't go towards research into the non-approved stem cell lines. The National Science Foundation has a chart that shows how much federal money is spent in the US by year, compared with a study by AAAS on R&D funding by state. 2002 totals come in at $84.9 billion by federal and $88.3 billion by states, in 2002 dollars. So, money could very well come from the state levels of governments, where the states that approve of the process can push their own money towards their goals... One could argue that that is the preferred path, to reduce the dependence on federal government, but I digress.
... while it may offend, noone is harmed at the end of the day.
The core issue for most people is "should the government fund projects that I am morally opposed to?" It's a tricky argument, one used for and against the National Endowment of the Arts for years... Whether its Maplethorpe (S&M photos), Ofili's Madonna (elephant dung on the Virgin Mary), or any other controvercial art, these are just personal expressions of speech
But when it comes to embryonic research, there are people that believe that the fetus is viable from the moment of conception, and that the process of extracting the cells is in effect "killing" a potential human. For them, it ranks as an abortion. Whether or not you believe that a life is being taken, many religious people do, and thus they want the practice to stop.
I would also counter that we are arguing two slightly different points. We both agree that there are two tracks that are available for research, embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Your argument appears to be that the government should not abandon the embryonic path simply because a minority are opposed to it on (their) ethical grounds, that there are many sick people who can benefit from the results of this research. My argument is that the government should be pushing its resources towards adult stem cell research, given that both technologies are on equal footing with this one being free of any stigma, and at the end of the day they are benefitting just as many people.
Personally, I'm about 50% against / 50% for embryonic stem cell research, but 100% towards adult stem cell research. I'm discouraged (yet not surprised) that there are just as many discoveries being made every day in adult stem cells (with more successes), yet the uninformed public only hears that embryonic stem cells are the only method.
I agree that the government should stop legislating moral statements, but then the constitutionalist in me also thinks that the government has no business putting any limits on first amdendment activity anywhere... This does not mean Freedom From Religion, that means Freedom Of Religion (like it reads), that the government needs to stop telling people that they cannot bring their symbols into schools and work, that the schools need to teach an objectively balanced education (as opposed to atheist) when it comes to religion. But that's an issue for another day.
How do you define dead or alive?
That's a bloody good question. No one really knows what it means to be alive, although we do have a good criterion for death - i.e. thermodynamic equilibrium. Living systems, bacteria, man, or embryo, take matter and energy from their environment and use it to dynamically maintain their own order in the face of the second law of thermodynamics. When dead, they just decompose and entropy wins.
An embryo is biochemically alive, just as a bacteria or any other microorganism: its genes are being expressed, its metabolic pathways run full speed ahead, all the enzymatic machinery is fully functional. But this is not the problem here: bacteria are alive as well, yet most of us don't have ethical problems about killing bacteria. The problem is to know whether they are living human beings and should be regarded as equivalent to babies or children.
Europe solved the problem in a rather pragmatic way: you can have abortion before X weeks of pregnancy, after that, you can't. The time varies between 10 and 22 weeks (22 for Belgium and the UK). Religious beliefs aside (and we all know that the US are the largest theocracy on earth), this is quite a reasonable solution.
Thomas-
Carbs are not bad for you. Just eat a reasonable amount of them. Don't super-size everything. Telling people to eat lots of meat and other fatty foods instead is a LOT worse then telling them to eat carbs.
Forget your friggin Adkins diet and just eat sane size portions of food and get some exercise.
First, CA just approved a multi-billion dollar fund for this research as a way to attract companies.
Good for CA. Still most basic research (embryotic stem cell research is not advanced enough to be considered applied), is NIH funded, particularly at Universities. The current rules basically kill this traditional source of funding (except for the conditions already noted).
It appears from what you and others say that adult stem cell research is both easier and further along. Therefore it's more likely to give medical treatments first, regardless of funding restrictions. That's fine, but many in the scientific medical community believe that the embryotic stem cells have the potential to be even more useful than adult cells. It would therefore seem logical to explore both methods.
You make a clever analogy about walking before you fly, but I have no idea if it applies. Do you? It is quite likely that researching embryotic stem cells now will give us head start for applying the knowledge from adult cells. I am a scientist, but not in this field. I know enough to know that I don't know a whole lot about this. I don't know your background, but I suspect you don't a whole a lot about the science here either. We are both pulling most of this out of our asses.
That is correct.
There is little practical difference though. There is very little privately-funded research in foundation research such as this - businesses don't invest in long-term stuff like that.
And it's not socialist in the least. It's common sense that the government should spend money on foundation research, given that it does return on its investment in the long run. For both businesses and society as a whole.
This is one thing both the right and left agree on.
(Although anarchists and ultra-libertarians wouldn't)
"If embryos are human beings, then it is immoral to manipulate or destroy them for personal benefit. It would clearly be wrong to kill a one-month old (that is, one month after birth) even if the tissue you harvested from them could save 100 people."
But would it be immoral? I mean we regularly execute people for killing one person (or not even killing someone but being an accomplice) in the hopes that this will convince others not to commit murder (best case-in reality it is closer to revenge...) I mean if it is moral to kill a murderer, something that will not save anybody's life, why would the death of a baby (or fetus) that could save 100 people be considered immoral?
We place a value on human life all the time (aka cost benefit analyis)-is this immoral? Government/ private enterprise/people regularly make decisions that cost peoples lives for the sake of money, yet we don't hear the same outcry? Why exactly? These apparent contradictions have always interested me.
"It really isn't as simple an issue as the rhetoric would have you believe..."
You certainly got that right!
IAAB, and I find this post extremely interesting because it demonstrates the lack of information/understanding /. readers have on the issue.
(1) stem cells can be cultured from adult hosts through hormonal treatments
Some stem cells can be taken from adult hosts, such as the ones they use to do a bone marrow transplant. However, these cells are already partially differentiated, and they can't be redifferentiated into any arbitrary tissue (studies showing that they could were later found to be incorrect).
(2) they have none of the rejection issues that embryonic stem cells do
This is not true. The issues are the same. If you take adult stem cells (e.g. bone marrow) from someone else, there will be rejection issues.
The whole point of all this research is that ES cells are the least differentiated, while stem cells taken from an adult are partially differentiated. There is a lot of work going on that attempts to de-differentiate adult stem cells (or other cells) into ES cells, which could be re-differentiated into any arbitrary tissue. For example, to take blood and differentiate it into liver cells. If one could perform this de-differentiation, one could take cells from a person and make them into 100% compatible organ tissue for reimplantation.
This process of cellular de-differentiation has been falsely labeled "cloning" by GOP spinmeisters, despite scientists' best efforts to get people to understand that it is not cloning, merely a process which enables many things, including cloning.
Anyway, to get back to the point, the goal is to de-differentiate cells from a patient into ES cells, then use those ES cells to treat the patient. Because the de-differentiation process is very inefficient at this point, it's easier to get started doing research with ES cells that are lying around waiting to be thrown away. This is why we need to get unused ES cells from fertility clinics, because the in vitro de-differentiation procedures are currently very low efficiency.
As a second point, the two opinions that
1. destroying ES cells is destroying human life, and
2. adult stem cells are as good as ES cells without the drawbacks
are mutually exclusive. If ES cells were human life (which they simply are not, but I can understand the confusion), then you're defining human life as a population of cells with the capacity to differentiate into any tissue. If I don't have any of those in my body, then I guess I'm not alive. Alternatively, if a population of adult stem cells were found to possess this capacity, then using those would be murder. When the original paper came out incorrectly showing that there were blood cells that could differentiate into any cell type, that would have implied that every blood transfusion every performed would have been a mass murder of thousands and thousands of innocent people! I could go on and on, but basically, the opinion that ES cells represent human life simply doesn't make sense.
I get the feeling there must be more to the story than meets the eye here. If this woman had been paralyzed for 20 years, wouldn't her muscles be atrophied? Even if you repaired the nerve damage, it seems to me she wouldn't have just been able to get up and walk, at least without a lot of restorative therapy.
Is there something I'm missing here?
If the claim turns out to be true it will not lower the tensions over embryonic cells, it will exacerbate them. It is well settled that embryonic stem cells are much more flexible and useful than adult stem cells cited in the report. If it turns out such a breakthrough was achieved with limited adult cells, think how much could be done with more capable embryonic cells. The "speculation" that embryonic research may lead to cures for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and paralysis would quickly become a perceived certainty. The pressure to accelerate research with embryonic cells would increase dramatically. Too bad the claim will probably turn out to be false.
I agree with your statement of a conflict of morals. The fact that the goverment concerns itself with moral (religious) issues aside, I do not understand how one can condone ending an unborn baby's life in an abortion (which yields another full plastic ziplock bag in the trash) and condemns ending an unborn baby's life to help mankind progress in science.
This may end up being flamebait instead of interesting and thought-provokative, but if you are going to end a life, there should at least be a "good" reason.
User logging on... 300 baud... 300 BAUD?!? (Click!) NO CARRIER
Murder is illegal because it deprives another of the rights and property that they've worked to obtain by depriving them of their life.
Marriage is a contract between two individuals. Unless a 10 year old can enter into a legally binding contract, I don't see why a 10 year old should be permitted to enter into a marriage.
Rape of all sorts is an assault.
and the list goes on.
All "moral" legislation insofar as murder etc. has other non-moral reasons for existing. The acts that they ban damage someone's rights, deprives them of property, etc. and basically damages the capitalistic/democratic ideal that we've agreed to live by.
"Moral" legislation ala a homosexual marriage ban, a ban on pornography, the inability to abort a non-viable (ie: WILL NOT LIVE outside of womb-fetuses without brains, or other necessary organs) fetus in a way that does not endanger your life or future fertility, the laws against suicide or physician assisted suicide with appropriate documentation stating that it is our will, etc. is just an assault on our freedoms and the right to choose what works for us, as consenting adult individuals. It also forces us to abide by the rules of a religion that is not ours, and that flies in the face of our religion, with no justification for the existance of the law other than religious/morality justifications.
Why not? Other animals kill other animals all the time. Even their own species. Heck some animals eat their own young. What makes us different? Why do we have a natural right to life, and those other species do not?
Natural rights come from God if we're religious, and are a figment of our imagination if we are not. And we know this for the very pragmatic reason that they must be enforced by society, usually through government, if they are to have any value.
There is no morality inherent in that statement,
Don't be absurd, of course there is. Even if I were to accept this ficticious notion of natural rights, the fact that we must respect them is itself a moral issue.
Basically, you can want to promote the idea that its OK to trade one life for another or many others, but only if the life being traded is your own. Anything else is unethical.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
No, I think you ignore the fact that there still exists a market (however much the government might try to suppress it), and this will cause the price to level. In the optimal case, those paying less would resell to those willing to pay more, making the profit themselves rather than the pharma companies. Thus the price level stabilizes itself.
Of course, the government HAS broken the above-ground market. This creates a black, underground market. The result is
1) Above-ground, there is effectively a dual currency system, in which customers must pay (a) regular dollars; and (b) what might be considered ration coupons, which is what they can get their insurance provider or Medicare/Medicaid to approve.
2) Rampant crime in smuggling. Consider the case last week where the Dept of Homeland Security raided a house in NJ because they were trying to import flu vaccine. Note that the vaccine was produced by a perfectly reputable manufacturer, and the shortage itself was caused by gov't single-source supply (and why is it the gov't that takes charge of procuring vaccines, anyway?)
3) Guess what the source of the product behind all of those v.i.a.g.r.a. spams that we get? It's the broken market that creates the marketing opportunity the spammers are exploiting.
In conclusion, there really is more to economics than just a supply/demand curve, and you shouldn't enter into arguments on the subject without understanding how the entire market functions as a whole.
Quite simple. If you posit that you have any rights whatsoever (and that is a simple, deep structures within the brain assumption), then it must be inferred that I have the same rights.
No it mustn't.
First of all, What if I determined you to be mentally defective, or otherwise inferior to me in some way? I can just as easily put forth a Darwinian defense that you do not deserve to live, because you risk spreading your genes.
Secondly, I do NOT posit that I have any rights. I want them, because they are in my best personal, selfish interest; I'm glad that my government enforces them, and would they not I would seek to secure them. But I have no illusion that I'm naturally entitled to them just because I exist. If I decided it was in my self-interest to kill you, I would. But of course for a whole host of reasons it is not, including the fact that we as a society punish murderers.
Your entire argument seems to be that we have rights that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have---simply by virtue of the fact that we can conceive of them and they cannot. I'm quite content in letting that sit in evidence of my claim that natural rights are entirely man-made. So please keep on making your arguments; by their very complexity you are proving my point.