Slashdot Mirror
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."
Cord blood stem cells are considered to be adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. Just wanted to get that out before all the Bush bashing starts.
And her first words?
"I'd walk a mile for a Camel!"
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Will the legs have a mind of their own since they're using stem cells?
But can they use stem cells to make my wife put out again?
Mundus vult decipi decipiatur ergo.
-Xaviera Hollander
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.
Ok George Bush didn't outlaw Steam Cell Research; He ceased giving federal funding for new steam cell lines. And remember he was the first president to start giving money to this kind of research. At least read his statment first and then search google to get the facts
Even after that before you start bashing, ask who should be in charge of developing medicine - the government or industry?
No subscription required for the story here, either.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
I did not know stem cells were already in use. I wonder, with every miracle, there's always some downside. I wonder what the long term effects are of this treatment.
My best wishes to her and the many people affected by this.
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
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!
The article doesn't really explain how this actually works. Do the cloned cells somehow stimulate the body to natural "regrow" the damaged tissue? Or is it a literal transplant?
Still, this is great news for all of us, as it is definitive proof that stem cells can be put to good use. Too late for some, though
apterous.org
Note that they came from cord blood; they weren't embryonic stem cells.
Do you mean to imply that she got better, then had a faith healing?
Perhaps you meant it was better back when faith healing was the only option?
Oh, NOW I get it. You meant better THAN faith healing.
-theGreater Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
How much better science is this than rubber tails for dolphins?!?
Sounds like good work to me.
Take out the trash, pick up around the house, make dinner, put the kids to bed, and she's all yours, dude.
Since these stem cells were not from an embrio it shows that maybe the Republicans stance woun't kill stem cells from doing good. Enbrios are not the only place the get them from. Maybe the Republicans will get to have their cake and eat it too.
Evolution or ID?
You're wrong.
This was done by using umbilical cord stem cells. This has far fewer ethical problems and George Bush said on many occassions he fully supports the use of umbilical cord stem cells.
This is a huge advance, getting results without the ethical issues that many people struggle with.
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!
Considering this real, practical success using cord blood-derived stem cells, I honestly wonder why there's such a push for using embryonic stem cells. Can anyone enlighten me as to why we can't just use cord blood cells (instead of embryonic) and make the whole stem cell controversy go away?
Too bad Christopher Reeve died before hearing these news.
So the first news about this are from South Korea, the US of A did not lead in this research and who is to blame for that if not the current US government?
You can't handle the truth.
It's in Cambridge. Trim the suffix. (And perhaps get a better dictionary.)
The article doesn't explain the important thing which is how they managed to inject enough stem cells into adult (for the adult to not reject them) from the small amount of blood available in an umbillical cord. There has only traditionally been enough (that the body's normal blood's anti-body won't attack) for a child's blood. Unless, they are talking about injecting it into the actually spine or something...I'm confused...
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The Republicans have no idea what can be done with embryonic stem cells that cannot be accomplished with adult stem cells. Neither does anyone else.
Send them to the same place they have to go to get their prescription drugs?
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
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.
Look here
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
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.
> It looks like people like Christopher Reeve are walking
You do realise he's dead?
and show the Bushies that they are dumb (at least as far as science goes).
At least we know how to RTFA. The stem cells used were umbilical stem cells. You know, the type Bush wants to encourage people to use? As opposed to fetal stem cells, which are just covered in ethical and moral dilemmas.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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
Ahh, you are a fool.
This is not a "stick it to the Bushies" moment. This is a validation of the conservative position. The opposing side has claimed that with embryonic stem cells people who are paralyzed can walk again. This event proves that the paralyzed can walk again without embroynic stem cells AND without federal funding. A two-for-one special.
You should really know what you are talking about before going raving mad telling others they are dumb and mocking them for considering ethical issues as well as scientific issues.
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.
Well, at least I was the first in this thread to mention it.
This from the "rocket scientist" who didn't even read the article summary. Or if you did, you didn't understand what you were reading (not surprising). The stem cells were from umbilical cord blood, not human embryos. The federal ban is on the latter, not the former.
Because now you have to grow the fetus into an embryo, kill it, and harvest the cord to get the cells. How is this better ?!?
Why can't we just get the stem cells from plants? Stems are abundant with them!
- inject cells
- ???
- people walk!
just call me a cynic. having said that, i hope this work is verified and does give the results suggested here...Stop spreading ignorance. Bush was the first President to get federal funding for stem cell research. You're simply spreading yet more FUD.
I want the folks who brought us Vioxx to make all my future meds. That way, when I die from them, my family's health care costs will plummet. "Daddy's dead because he loves us, honey."
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.
I got start previewing more, or at least get a spellchecker!
But he died of heart failure, he didn't kill himself because he couldn't walk.
Agreed.
From the Korea Times: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200411/kt200411261 7575710440.htm
Let's forget about the moral/ethical reasons for not pursuing embryonic stem cell research - let's look at it from a scientific (*gasp* - a conservative Christian talking about science!) point of view. Less capacity to cause cancer = a good thing, no?
- Another Brandon (my last name is Danner)
One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness named them...
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.
So I suspose you didn't read the part where this article had nothing to do with Bush's ban on federal funding for embroynic stem cells.
;)
He banned federal funding, not the work itself. And specifically for embroynic stem cells.
I agree with this ban. The federal government shouldn't be funding anything except our defence.
Badnarik for prez.
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?
God intends for the placenta and cord to be eaten by the mother after birth. Any other use is an abomination in the eyes of god.
Whooptie-doo. It is relatively new research. The type he funded didn't gain traction until around 2000. Therefore, he was the first president who practically could have started giving money to this kind of research. I hear him bragging about this, but it is nothing to brag about.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
How about you read the article.
Bush's ban is on federal FUNDING for EMBRYONIC stem cells. Nothing about Bush's ban would have stopped this from happening here. It just didn't.
Bush says he wants to encourage people to use them, but he banned federal dollars going to this cutting-edge research.
Now, I'm not a fan of federal funding of things like this -- not in the least -- but I recognize that there are some medical technologies (ones that aren't profitable for years perhaps decades after research is started) that we wouldn't have today were it not for federal funding to get it started.
I'd support Bush's decision to block funding if it were for the right reasons. Religious concerns are the wrong reasons to do anything in government. If he did it to be fiscally conservative, it would have been a totally different story.
Why is it that when some people hear the term "stem cells" the same sort of knee jerk reaction happens just like when some people hear the term "nuclear power"?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
AHHH! The stem cells have created undead cannibal zombies!!! AHHH!!!
But would this really have prevented his death? Maybe I'm just incredibly sceptical...
Summation 2
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.
The work was done in Korea, you idiot.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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?
I for one welcome our walking undead overlords.
Wasn't he the first one to block federal funding as well?
FWIW, throwing out "facts" like this is kind of silly -- this is a President who has yet to veto anything. One is left to wonder if he has the will to make any sort of decision, really.
Travel overseas as well? I don't think they'll much care, since they'll be able to avail themselves. It's just the poor and middle class that will get the screw. But that's pretty much how it is now, so . . .
Do not touch -Willie
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
Success stories like this have popped up all over the world lately (although none as wonderful as this last one).3 1&art_id=qw1100886480700B243
A couple of weeks ago, a brazilian woman who had recently had a stroke was helped by a stem cell transplant.
Although doctors claim the healing could have happened naturally, they also report that "there is biological activity (in the area affected by the stroke)... "
Interesting, let's hope all these stories help build a united front.
The link here http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=
Results without the ethical issues.
Unless, of course, you're a Jehovah's Witness, or a member of any other faith (Christian and non-Christian) that has strict rules about what's right and what's wrong when it comes to medical procedures...
What's the betting that the Christian right still uses this as an excuse to preach from the pulpit? These people are the modern-day descendents of the morality police that retarded medical science for centuries. If they had prevailed throughout then the most advanced medicinal procedures around today would still be boring into skulls to release demons or a course of leeches to suck out evil.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The only problem being that umbilical stem cells are not as versatile as embryonic stem cells:
"So-called "multipotent" stem cells -- those found in cord blood -- are capable of forming a limited number of specialised cell types, unlike the more versatile "undifferentiated" cells that are derived from embroyos." (Source)
I thought crippled people were only going to walk, through embryonic stem cells, if John Kerry was elected? :) Go figure it happened with Cord Stem Cells, under a conservative prime minister in Australia. I guess politians lied to us, BIG SHOCKHER THERE.
Yes -- thank goodness he put the kibosh on steam cells and not stem cells.
Also expect that once the Fundies get Roe v. Wade overturned, the affluent will simply hop a plane to a more civilized country (such as Canada or Mexico) to terminate their pregnancies.
Many people, including myself, would take the position that any country that allows a fetus at 9 months - perhaps only days from delivery - to be partially delivered, have a hole cut into the skull, and have the brain sucked out with vacuum to better faciliate crushing the skull with a vise, and then extracted limb by limb with a pair of forceps to be more civilized.
The central argument of anti-abortionists is that it more civilized to bring the fetus to term and give it to a family willing and able to raise it instead of destroying it like a cancer or a mishapen cheek bone.
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?
Wow, not only fixing paralysis but raising the dead too? Will the wonders of modern science never cease! Then again, I have seen enough zombie movies to know this can't turn out good in the end...
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Except that there's never been any controversy over the use of adult stem cells. This research could have been done in the US with government funding.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The work was done in Korea, you idiot.
So? The work is done. Their work will be the basis for future work. Everything here worked. The Federal government of the US did not have to fund harvesting of embroynic stem cells.
Why pretend that because it happened first in South Korea that it doesn't count. The whole world has television, radio, and the Internet, correct?
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
As a relatively devout Roman Catholic, I will say "no." The only problems that the Catholic Church (I can only interpret the RC Church, not any of the other fundamentalist Christian faiths) has with stem cell research is the destruction of unborn children in the attempt to get embryonic stem cells. Since it is a fundamental of faith that we are human persons from the point of conception, the destruction of embryos is morally equivalent to murder, regardless of the ends that are attempting to justify these means.
This is the same moral argument against abortion.
There is nothing wrong with donating blood, for example, thus using stem cells from adults that do not otherwise harm those adults is completely up to the owner of those adults. Here I'm using the term "adult" somewhat loosely since the cord may have the child's DNA (I'm not sure whose DNA the cord has, so I can't properly attribute it to mother or child). What I mean is in comparison to the embryonic stage of human development, any other stage, for the purposes of this moral argument, is basically adult if the donor (child, adult) is not killed to harvest the cells.
I presume that most of the other religious groups that oppose stem cell research are also only opposing harvesting of embryonic stem cells based on their similar convictions opposing abortion, but, as I said, I can't really speak for them.
Example (poorly worded): American Catholic website
There is a huge difference between the two.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Science and religion have been at polar opposites since civilization began.
Well they obviously are now in your mind.
Religion was the first science.
Religion has only opposed science when it was used politically, so I guess you could say that politics and science are opposed.
Even cold-war "science" was used politically often against the benefit of real science.
So I think that your statement is only true where politics and domination become religion.
I don't see the Dali Llama opposing science any, or any of the majority liberal moslems. I recall the moslems were great scientists in their time whilst retaining their religion.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
If he could only have held out just another year then who knows....
IMHO he probably would have had to wait a lot longer than just a year. From reading the articles it sounds like this woman had an injury to her lower spinal cord. The accident she was in apparently damaged her back & hips, but her arms still worked fine. So she was a paraplegic (only her legs didn't work) which indicates a lower spinal injury. Reeves' injury was to his neck, which left him a quadraplegic (couldn't move arms or legs). He also needed assistance in breathing, etc. which indicates a more severe upper spinal cord injury. So chances are that a LOT more research & testing would have to be done before this procedure could be used on somebody in his condition.
All that aside I share your sympathy. It would have been a great site to see him able to breath on his own, use his hands, and eventually to even walk again.
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.
Now the controversy will start, so I'll try to pre-empt this with a few things from myb log on this.
First, notice these are adult stem cells. This likely couldn't have been done with embreyonic stem cells; every test with embreyonic stem cells has failed, or has caused tumors. I'm not a biologist, but I'm going to guess that since embreyonic stem cells are totipotent and regrow entire bodies, that they "try" (*cough*) to regrow something other than just surorunding tissue (when they actually graft), and thus simply turn into blobs of useless, random tissue (tumors). Adult stem cells have treated over a hundred diseases already. :)
That should be sufficient to undercut any "OMFG EMBREYONIC ONES R BETTAR" arguments. Let's try political arguments. Before bashing politicians, think about how they bat embreyonic stem cell research around as a political hand grenade, without mentioning adult stem cell research. There's something wrong with a bunch of blood thirsty, power hungry mongrals who are willing to draw attention to something that has so far been proven in 100% of laboratory tests to be totally useless, while ignoring the other component which has displayed genuine results and greater future promise, just for their own political agenda. I'll hold one party at fault more than the other for this; but when your opponents lie, you should take up myth busting and put them back in their place for it. It's still a fault that conservatives don't come out and lay down the low down like I have on my blog.
So I've bounced technical and political arguments here now. Anything I missed?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
There should be something like the NIH in every country if not a global equivalent. But the most important part of the equation is having impartial, experienced scientists rather than partisan, uninformed politicians decide what should and shouldn't be studied.
I think we all know that it's scientific research and not politics or religion that we have to thank for things like penicillin, etc.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Good thing for her hell's as fictional as those WMDs the monkeys are always insisting exist . . . .
:)
Hey fundies: mod me troll if you want, but with karma like mine it doesn't much matter. You can try to piss me off, but I'll probably laugh at you.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
When was the last time religion allowed a person to walk after being paralyzed for 20 years
;)
Depends whether or not you believe the Bible; if so, about 2000 years ago.
(FWIW, I don't.)
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
He died of an infection from a bed-sore he got because he was laid-up all of the time.
If he had better care, and then had been cured, he would not have had the bed-sore problem.
Additionally, do you think industry would work towards a CURE for a disease when they're already making a killing (no pun intended) on the TREATMENT?
Uhh, his problem wasn't just that he couldn't walk. This treatment, had it been reproduced, would not have cured him.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Pro-lifers (which I believe you are actually referring to) are going to stand up and cheer at this news. This is the exact point that they have been making with this issue. You don't have to harvest babies to get stem cells.
Nope. These are adult stem cells, not embreyonic stem cells. No killing of babies was involved. Adult stem cells are parts extracted from living developed organisms (i.e. birthed already) without killing them. They can also come from placenta blood or the umbilical cord. READ: No killing involved.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
The only problem with your argument is that non-embryonic stem cells are less adaptable/versatile than embryonic stem cells.
I fully disagree. The more difficult we make it to do embryonic cell research in the U.S., the more willing the experts in the field will be to flee for some country where their research is supported.
The fact that it was done without U.S. federal funding doesn't mean it wasn't done without government support. The fact that cord blood cells were used in the ultimate treatment doesn't mean that research on embryonic cells wasn't helpful in guiding the search for that cure.
In short, this development--in absence of further information--bolsters none of the claims you make. The ban on federal funding really does hinder vital research, and it does so in absence of any clearly articulated moral justification for doing so.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Try looking in a non U.S. centric dictionary.
www.brownsauce.org
Bush says he wants to encourage people to use them, but he banned federal dollars going to this cutting-edge research.
He did no such thing. He banned federal funds for collecting new fetal/embryonic (take your pick, it doesn't really matter) stem cell lines. You can still work on existing ones, and you can do plenty of work with adult and umbilical stem cells, the latter of which was used in this case.
I'd support Bush's decision to block funding if it were for the right reasons. Religious concerns are the wrong reasons to do anything in government. If he did it to be fiscally conservative, it would have been a totally different story.
Religion didn't enter into it, ethics did. Surely you understand that there are serious ethical considerations for many people regarding the harvesting of embryonic stem cells? And that those considerations have nothing to do with religion? Until those considerations are settled, better not to use tax dollars to do something many tax payers consider wrong. Especially since, as this South Korean advancement now demonstrates, there is better use to be gotten from other stem cell sources than just embryonic.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Federal funding is the only thing that is disallowed.
There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research of any kind in the US - only federal funding for research on non-approved lines.
Bush is the first president to allow ANY federal funding for embryonic stem cell research; it's just that it was only allowed on pre-existing lines representing embryos that had already been destroyed. It disallowed federal funding on NEW lines that would require the destruction of new embryos. (And if they're against destroying embryos for abortions, at least the position is logically consistent, eh? And when is it life, actually? When it pops out of the womb? When it's "wanted"? Some arbitrary point in the timeline? Don't pretend like you have all the answers, because you don't. There are serious ethical questions here. We could also learn a lot from experimenting on live infants, or gain a lot from farming humans for organs - but we have ethical boundaries that we don't cross, and when the line gets blurry, it would behoove you to not pretend like you have all the answers.)
Stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, is NOT BANNED. The only "ban" is on the FEDERAL FUNDING of embryonic stem cell research on NON-APPROVED LINES. Get it now?
You didn't read the article, did you?
Clear, Dark Skies
As the article says, the cells harvested from cord blood have already achieved limited differentiation, and are therefore more limited in the kinds of cells they can become. So not only are they useless for some kinds of research, they also provide less insight into how differentiation happens.
Yes, it's great that they work, but don't get your hopes up in thinking that they're an ideal replacement for embryonic cells.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The argument used by the conservatives is that using embryos means taking a life. Well, then what about the hundreds of embryos that go un-used in fertility clinics? What do you think is done with them?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I don't think it was a question of poor care. As a rich poster boy I'm sure he had the best care possible. His injuries were very severe.
Think of it like HIV. No one dies from HIV, they die from the flu or infections, but the HIV was definitely the reason.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I have to take issue with this statement.
A lot of people like to take this view because it is convenient, and they have not studied both subjects at depth.
I have an Engineering degree, and I attended a mixture of private religious schools, and public school during my time. In high school, I took religion (it was a requirement) and I also had teachers and nuns who helped me cultivate my belief in God.
Science is wonderful to me BECAUSE it strengthens my belief in God. I have learned how the universe is structured, and I have seen how the 'rules' of the universe are set up so perfectly. It didn't take me long to realize that Science is a window into how God works. It all works to well for me for it to be some big cosmic accident.
As far as spin jobs go, that's not particularly good.
Counter #1: I can think of a time in the future, when no scientific discoveries occur first in the US. According to you, that's OK?
Counter #2: The Sudan is embroiled in a genocidal civil war. Everything there worked too. The warlords in the Sudan didn't fund embryonic (that's how it's spelled by the way) stem cell harvesting. So, the fact that this happened first in Korea and not Sudan doesn't say anything at all about Sudan.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Korean Times
I demand that we redefine pi as 3 according to 1 Kings 7:23:
1 Kings 7:23
Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference.
Useless, you mean. They turn into tumors.
Some researchers believe that bone marrow stem cells in mice are polypotent-- can become any type of tissue. If this is true in humans as well (with any type of stem cell), then we've effectively bested embreyonic stem cells in one swing: adult stem cells don't try to grow into full bodies, and thus don't become tumors.
Either way, most adult stem cells are multipotent, and can become one of several types of cell. There are many types of stem cells, so effectively we have nearly guaranteed access to stem cells for any type of cell in the patient's own body, without the risk of tumors.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Pity the poor, backwards Koreans, whose barbarian trust in diabolical "science" damns them to hell for eternity. If god wanted that woman to walk, he would never have paralyzed her in the first place. Instead of praying, she's strapped into some infernal machine, feeding on baby's blood. God have mercy on their souls, they should have been grateful to America for freeing them from their Communist threat, and surrenderred to Jesus like us. Then they'd have no healthcare problems at all!
--
make install -not war
This is a reproducable advance. Many diseases have been cured in this method. In one experiment now, bone marrow stem cells are being grafted onto hearts. The patient's heart is stopped for 2 minutes to allow the cells to graft. After that, it's restarted. Any scar tissue from heart attacks is healed and becomes healthy, strong heart muscle tissue.
Talk of curing diabetese with this has also floated around; and over a hundred diseases have already been treated successfully.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
A majority of americans are against Stem Cell Research because they thing it only comes from embryos. Stem Cells can not only come from the cord, but also before the egg officially becomes an embryo.
on the left who can't tell the difference between the different kinds of stem cells or understand the difference between "ban" and "refuse to pay for".
Clear, Dark Skies
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.
.
- "Uh, this is the sort of stem cells the Bush Administration supports, you ignorant dumbass." --- 25%
- "Well, yeah, but, Dumbya cut funding! And this is you: duh doo duh doo duh doo" --- 25%
- "Uh, Bush was the first to federally fund ANY stem cell research. And this is you: bibblebibblebibble pppbbbffffttttt!" --- 25%
And then the same people wonder why nothing works right anymore.
--- Ban humanity.
For yet another idiot who can't be bothered to understand the difference between different types of stem cells?
Clear, Dark Skies
Unless the fetus's skull was fatally bloated and brain was virtually non-existent.
The abortion issue is a question of whether a fetus is alive or not. It's not whether either side is for or against life.
The "partial birth abortion" issue is completely made up and manufactured. The proof is that ALL the Republican bills against "partial birth abortion" have been overturned because there are no provisions protecting the health of the mother.
There is an EXCELLENT reasons the Republicans refuse to put such provisions in. It's because the procedure called "partial dialation and extraction" is intended ONLY to protect the health of the mother when there is a non-viable fetus. The alternative is a more invasive C-section. The result is the same, the fetus is already dead.
Yes there are some doctors who will exploit these things and attempt to do third term abortions using these provisions. But this is the exception rather than the rule. And in such cases, Democrats SUPPORT convicting the doctors.
You see, the entire issue is a red herring. It's been conjured up as a way to procure votes from folks like yourself. And it's been quite successfull!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
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.
"Embryonic stem cell research was not banned. Federal funding was given for embryonic stem cell research but limited to pre-existing lines. There is a huge difference between the two."
That would be like wasting money hacking up the original Star Wars trilogy, while putting out unwatchable sequels.... oh wait...
with some additional details here
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Unfortunately, researchers using funds from the California bond initiative won't be able to use this research. They are restricted to research on stem cells from cloned human embryos. Which, so far, shows much less promise than adult stem cells.
Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World is a book that goes into detail on this and other ethical issues that researchers and legislators are facing.
I dropped out of kindergarden you insensitive clod!
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
... so I guess if you're against embryonic destruction, you should be against fertility treatment. It purposely creates DOZENS of embryos per patient that the doctor will purposefully destroy even in implantation attempts.
The scientists say they need the embryonic lines for research. Neither you nor I are in a position to substinatively disagree.
What I will say is that fetal tissue harvestation is like dumpster diving. The fact is that they were going to throw them away anyway!!!!
At the very least, all those women against destruction of embryos could volunteer to have them implanted in their uterus' and bring them to term!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
the opposite of christopher reeve?
that'd be christopher walken!
RIP
Bush's decision to halt embryonic stem cell research (as opposed to non-embryonic stem cell research) was a matter of motive. Up until this development, both multipotent stem cells (umbilicial) or undifferentiated stem cells (embryonic) had potential with the perception that embryonic cells having to most potential. Due to this ambiguity, science should/would objectively explore both options. Bush's halt was motivated by politics and not science. Ergo, to the Bush apologists, this is NOT a vindication of Bush's stance. At a minimum, it shows that he's won this round by rolling a seven in this political game of stem cell research craps. But, I think CA is going in the right direction by taking science's lead (if they actually have the money to do it) and not the religous right's lead.
If he could only have held out just another year then who knows....
And maybe five years after that, Ken Bigley.
May be worth all these words if/when the claim is supported by detail in a peer-reviewed journal, as opposed to a News Corp (read: "tabloid publication, regardless of the actual paper size) and/or Agence France Press, which, like AP, UPI, and others, frequently distributes stories printed by others without factchecking.
[this sig has been trunca
Modern fundamentalist religions, like those that oppose abortion, stem cell research, or equality for women, are headed for a direct confrontation with people that want to believe in a wider range of spirituality. The issue of stem cell research highlights this, because many people now respond to it in terms of the soul, whereas that was not at issue when abortion was originally made illegal in the US in the the middle and late 1800s. This concern for the soul and the sanctity of life shows a trend towards more holistic and 'superstitious' views of the world.
This view has actually been encouraged by the emerge of recent sciences including chaos theory and quantum dynamics. The cycle will continue, but if you want to know what's coming, asking high school and college students their opinions. Not the ones that are eager to answer, but the ones that are reserved about their opinions. They're the ones that are still considering the issue, and their opinions will shape decision on the subject thirty years from now. Since I think that there are a lot of undecideds on this issue, I see a big fight coming once a large number of them have made up their minds and raised children with those views.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
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.
Of course, my solution to this problem is to eliminate copyright and patents... :)
Seems like a government solution to a government caused problem.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells, evolution, sex education, medical marijuana, nefarious flying contraptions... all these damn facts get in the way of the word of god. They destroy faith, our purpose for living on Earth. If you parse too much, you lose the redeeming message Bush is spreading, now that his Second Coming is at hand. Share the love!
--
make install -not war
The burden of proof lies firmly with the person making the accusation. You have to prove what you believe. I do not have to disprove it.
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.
As a scientist, I'm very disturbed to see so many intelligent, educated people on /. coming out in defense of the current government's anti-science stance. The claim that bothers me the most, however, is that this result somehow proves that we don't need embryonic stem cells. So some researchers in Korea finally cured a spinal cord injury in a human. Big deal! Try growing a new kidney in a vat for me without using ES cells. Or try growing someone a new hand to replace the one they lost in a car accident. Don't get me wrong, this is a breakthrough, but spinal cord injuries are just the very, very tip of the iceberg. And the current government impedes working on embryonic stem cells for "ethical" reasons, when the cells get thrown in the trash can anyway?
The comedy is in the people posting to correct me on point #1 but not on point #2.
Basically, Reeve died of a pressure ulcer which progressed into a letal condition. However, all my friends say that pressure ulcers are completely avoidable and are a sign of bad care. I'm no expert on this subject, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Wasn't it in Korea that that team of Scientists claimed they'd cloned the first human being.? I remember that hitting the news world-wide when they announced it, but I don't ever recall hearing anything about whether it was true or not.
But you can't get embryonic stem cells without harvesting embryos.
Duh.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
What does my belief have to do with this discussion? I have not stated a belief one way or the other.
I'll take that one step further: You you do not have to "harvest babies" to get embryonic stem cells.
An embryo is not a baby. A fetus is not a baby. An embryo is not a fetus.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Adult stem cells are not equal to embryonic stem cells are not equal to cord blood stem cells. The main argument against stem cell research is that it will "promote abortions". All of the required "embryonic" stem cells can come from the 1000's of 8-cell blastocytes that are destroyed or frozen every day as part of the in-vitro ferilization process. No abortions required.
This is why government policy (and hence scientific research) should not be influenced by religious beliefs.
What are these "ethical issues" precisely? Millions of abortions happen every year. Abortion is legal, the American people by and large don't want it outlawed, so this fact isn't going to change anytime soon. The only question is, do we want to throw all these possibly life-saving cells in a dumpster, or perform the research that could improve the quality of life for millions?
Supporting stem cell research isn't going to increase the number of abortions. I really don't believe that a woman trying to decide whether to have an abortion is going to make stem cells a factor. But to assuage the fears of those who really think that, I would have suggested the following, more limited injunctions:
1) Research groups wouldn't be allowed to give money, goods, or services to abortion providers in exchange for access to fetuses.
2) Family planning providers would be forbidden from mentioning stem cell harvesting in their literature.
This sort of research has only been going on for a few years. It is far too soon to say that cord blood cells are "good enough" for most research. It's absolutely certain that they won't be able to tell us everything we need to know about cell differentiation.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
While it has been demonstrated that important treatments can be devised with umbilical stem cells, this has not - in my opinion - 'bolstered the claim' that we don't need embryonic stem cells.
Perhaps embrynoic stem cells will lead to more effective treatments, or treatments for other ailments.
I don't know much about stem cells, I just have a problem with your argument. "This development bolsters the claim that we do not need embryonic stem cells for the type of treatments and remedies that would help so many people" is either incorrect or trivial (What type? All types? Wrong, not demonstrated. Some types? OK, and tylenol helps my headache, therefore we don't need embryonic stem cell research.)
Furthermore, why would anybody make the claim "We don't need embryonic stem cells for treatments to help a lot of people". This statement is obvious - a lot of people are helped every day with treatments like penicillin. Such a claim does not need 'bolstering'.
I don't understand your argument.
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.
It does? Assuming it's even true, I don't think it says anything about the potential effectiveness of embryonic stem cells. Since we are not aware of what embryonic stem cells are and are not capable of doing, I think it's a little premature to say that "we do not need" them based on this information.
The fact is, California alone gave $3 billion for research into this. Bush claims to have donated $25 million -- translated, California gave 120 times the amount that the Bush talkingpointists trumpet.
Then Bush said that there were something like 75 stem cell lines, and it turned out that something like 60 were garbage and entirely unusuable, and the last 15 might be useful, or might be contaminated.
As for "Bush was the first one... etc." -- considering that stem cells started to show real promise in 1999 and 2000, it's not too surprising that the previous research funding wasn't broken out separately. It IS offensive to me that the were so many restrictions on research to put us behind the South Koreans and to bury Christopher Reeves.
And to those who claim that "well these were not embryonic stem cells!" No one here can get to stage 2 before starting at stage one, which is embryonic.
Clearly we must give these IVF embryos the respect they deserve -- by throwing them in the garbage rather than saving lives.
You can see that that the "Bush was first" stuff is false here:
In August 2000, HHS, under President Clinton's leadership, published new guidelines for research using human embryos. These guidelines create a loophole that essentially claims if privately funded scientists destroy the embryos and extract their stem cells, government-funded scientists can conduct experiments with those stem cells without violating the federal ban. 9
On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced he would reject the Clinton Administration's guidelines and only allow federal dollars for research on approximately 60 existing embryonic stem cell lines already created in privately funded laboratories.10 The president outlined four conditions for the use of existing cell lines:
* The embryos were destroyed and the cell lines were created before the August 9 speech
* The embryos were among the "excess" frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics created through in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes
* The parents gave their consent for the embryo to be destroyed
* The parents were not offered any financial incentive in return for donating the embryo 11
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Surely you understand that there are serious ethical considerations for many people regarding the harvesting of embryonic stem cells? And that those considerations have nothing to do with religion?
How is it unethical to use what is already dead-never-gonna-grow-into-life tissue? I don't think it is, but then I am not religious. I'm seeing very religious people saying it is unethical. To me, there's a very distinct connection between the two.
It's alright, it was the rural poor and middle class that voted for him anyway. Besides, the benefits will travel here, even if the research doesn't, it just puts American industry behind the rest of the world.
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
Have been playing Half Life 2 just a little to much, have we?
Ok, who else thinks g-man is actually G.ordon freeMAN self in the future?
That's why I watch nothing but Fox news, all the time.
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
Wether or not its "embroytic", or "adult", the real question is how much would it cost to buy another person's flesh? In the end, its still a coporation buying and selling flesh... what a great world we live in. No matter how you slice it, its still a disgusting practice.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
"Someone's in a coma, they're never going to come out, why not do some experiments on them?"
They do, with family consent. Perfectly common. They also wait to pull the plug on organ-donors until the transplant recipient is ready to recieve.
They even do experiments on living humans. It isn't even contraversial, it's just an accepted way to pick up drinking money. Granted if you're a perfectly healthy human being the ethical contraints are a little firmer, but there are many degrees of grey.
For example, people who were fully blind and having an eye removed for whatever reason were used to test how much damage a laser does to a living human retina. Consent, naturally.
So yes. It's established that you can experiment on living adults with consent. It's established that you can use the organs of the brain-dead to save lives with family consent.
I agree with one line in your post. It's wrong to draw arbitrary lines on this. We're just already way over on the side of accepting that those who are going to die may help others to live.
The only place we *don't* accept it is the fetus/embryo, ostensibly because such a thing cannot give consent. If you're going to flush it anyway, consent is irrelevant, so let's go for it.
Really? Next you'll be telling me that colour doesn't have a "u" in it ...
-- now where did I put that
I am frankly shocked at the amount of disinformed entrenchment people insist on displaying over this topic.
This is a not a "President Bush vs. everyone-else" argument and he has taken heat for federally funding adult stem cell research - It was his administration that pointed out a very reasonable question (one that Californians obviously didn't hear or read) - "If stem cell research has such potential, why isn't there more private funding and effort?"
Follow the money. Determine why private research funds (even at some universities) are not being spent on stem cell research.
The abortion fanatics (all of 'em) are using this as another means to inculcate their rhetoric into the debate. Unfortunately, the bystanders in this side show are employing simple repetition and not doing the homework to get at the underlying issues to which they are voicing an opinion.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
it shows that maybe the Republicans stance woun't kill stem cells from doing good
No, it just keeps them from doing better. Denying research funding to embryonic stem cell research could be denying even better cures.
Assuming this story is verified, it just proves that stem cells can be used.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
While this is technically correct it is at least misleading. While Bush has never supported a ban on stem cell research here in the US as in, a US law that would ban it he did in fact support and push for a UN Treaty that would have banned it. Had the UN adopted this treaty getting new embryonic stem cell lines would have been banned in the US...
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.
Yes, one advantage of mathematics is that it generally does not have any supplies costs, so if you are one of the greatest geniuses of all time, you might be able to make an important contribution over spring break.
For people who are only ordinarily brilliant, and people involved in fields such as stem cell research, with substantial supplies and equipment costs, progress is highly dependent upon the availability of funds for full-time salaries, supplies and equipment.
In the US, the primary source of biomedical funding is NIH grants. Other funds are extremely limited, and the amount of effort required to gain funding is much greater. A field of research that is not eligible for federal funding is greatly crippled in its ability to attract talented researchers. This severely slows the pace of research in the area.
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.
Why don't the rest of us get to say what our tax money is spent on? I don't support Iraq, so why doesn't Bush make it so I don't have to pay for it, either? How about the death penalty? I don't support that, so please refund my taxes for all those executions. Ha!
Taxes aren't about what you or I want. It's about what is good for the whole. No matter what comes of it, researching embryonic stem cells will provide a benefit to society and should be federally funded.
Ernest Angley
On the political front Rev. Ike has the answer.
'...LACK of MONEY is the root of EVIL'
Don Imus said it best though in "One Sacred Chicken to Go". You'll have to buy the record.
Don's much tamer these days
But back to Ernest. Just READ THE TESTIMONIALS
Puts science ina whole new light.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
"Abort babies to harvest cells"
Boo, hiss. Parent is suggesting Bush merely banned the harvesting (suggesting a Plan to seed then harvest) of "Babies" (No babies here.. just fetusses, Big Difference: we call it a baby when the brainwaves start, fetusses do NOT have brainwaves) where in fact Bush:
- Did put a hold on all stemcell research on -new- fetusses, even those obtained from IV conception (If you get an IV conception, I believe its likely you fertelize multiple eggs, some of these "Extra" ferted eggs can be removed)
So in the real world, it means: we have all these extra ferted cells we now have to toss away instead of learn from them. It's not like less of them will be -created-. They just wont be used.
Before you start bashing, ask who should be in charge of developing medicine - academics or corporations? I for one love the idea of letting Africans and Indians die of AIDS because they can't afford to buy our patented medicines at inflated prices. <sarcasm />
But can they use stem cells to make my wife put out again?
I don't get it. I have no problem getting your wife to put out. All my friends say she is insatiable in bed.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
And the current government impedes working on embryonic stem cells for "ethical" reasons, when the cells get thrown in the trash can anyway?
Impeding and not funding are different things. An imposition is banning or blocking or imposing harsh regulations. Anyone, including you, can fund and research embroynic stem cell research. California has decided to do it for themselves. Good for them!
The claim that bothers me the most, however, is that this result somehow proves that we don't need embryonic stem cells.
The claim before this development and during the election was that Christopher Reeves would walk again if it not for the Bush administration banning federal funding of new stem cells. It was a dramatic gauntlet thrown down, and one that is fundamentally false.
The bottom line is that the issue here is the future development of "factories" of human bits and pieces. It frightens people. Embryonic stem cells are thrown away, but we both know that in short order they would be harvested efficently and clinically with absolutely no regard to their nature: much like antibodies or animal specimens are harvested today.
It is hardly disturbing that the government would elect not to fund a practice which is very fairly consider contraversial for a pay-off that is available through other means or highly hypotethical. Bush has said repeatedly that if other avenues are exhausted or the circumstances warrant it a revisitation of the issue can be made.
Parent is not informative; parent is uninformed. He missed on every base.
In essence, the parent is giving an argument similar to the likes of "Windows is bad and unstable," then putting someone in front of X, showing it to be stable, and saying, "See? Windows IS stable and reliable!" Two separate animals that look the same to the uninformed.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
If you offer a wanted service, they will come...
How is this any weirder than guys paying buckets of money to have a girl in leather whip them?
Businesses, particularly small businesses, can make a profit selling an otherwise equivalent product at more money if they can offer something else with it. Whether that's "Made in the USA", "Organically Grown", "Kosher", "Good customer service" or otherwise not offending the person's sensabilities.
I don't read AC 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
Archimedes beat everyone to it.
We just forget about him for quite a bit.... dark ages and all.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
In making your incindiary response to his, you seemed to have missed that what he said was at least accurate, where as you initial post was just insulting and at best, ignorant. (I'm being optimistic and assuming you were not purposely trying to spread mis-information about those who believe differently than you in the hopes of smearing their beliefs, using an unrelated example to prove you are right.)
The original claim bandied about during the election and during the debate on this topic is that people like Christoper Reeves could one day walk again if only we would do research on embryonic stem cells. The government has never funded this type of research, and was asked to fund it. The government declined, saying that other stem cells could do the same job without the ethical problems.
Fast forward to today. Non-embryonic stem cells - from a umblical cord - were used to fix a paralized spinal cord. This proves the claim that other stem cells could do the work of embryonic stem cells.
How is it unethical to use what is already dead-never-gonna-grow-into-life tissue?
It's a question of how it's harvested. Embryonic stem cells come from the harvesting of fetal tissue, usually from abortions. So it's a little different than organ donation, for example.
Again, it's not a religious issue, it's an ethics issue.
But in the end, it's all a moot point, since the most promising results have come from adult and umbilical stem cells. So exploring fetal stem cells is just a waste of time, anyway.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Of course, that depends on what you mean by science and what you mean by religion. There are those who claim scientism as their religion and spout things that have less true scientific evidence than much of what is classically known as religion.
Take a look at the book Darwin on Trial if you are interested in learning more about the modern myths propogated by some "scientists". This is not specifically about Darwin, rather it's about some of the preposterous things that are claimed by neo-darwinists today.
Also, an objective study of western history will show that belief in an unchanging omnipotent, was the instigator of most scientific research throughout the renaissance and great awakening. Without such a foundation, people tend to worship volcano gods and mountains, rather than investigating creation, because they have no foundation to base their research. For instance, if there is no trancendant, why would one trust in logic? What makes logic so great? Could not it have evolved errant? On the other hand, those who believe in an omnipotent creator, begin to study his handywork in an effort to learn more about him. So, at least in some cases, Religion is the instigator of scientific research.
"There has never been proposed or discussed a ban on stem cell research in the US."
Wrong. The administration is busy pushing a ban by international treaty, as a rider on the UN cloning treaty. Such a ban has no chance of passing, so the only effect is to scuttle any international cloning treaty. It may be intentional, so Bush can tell his supporters he is "pro-life" when he only pushes measures guaranteed to fail, but to say there is no proposed ban is misleading and false.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
The claim was that only embryonic stem cells could solve this problem - spinal cord injuries and the like. Critics claimed that the government was using bad science on purpose. The government claimed that other non-contraversial cells could do the same work.
This proves that embroynic stem cells are not the only stem cells with research value, which is what the government said. The government said they would only fund non-embryonic stem cells and that we should exploit fully the stem cells that do not come from fetuses.
Actually, the calculus was invented more than a millenia earlier by Archimedes. Google for plimpsest. Who employed Archimedes? Oh, and what about Leibniz?
There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late.
it he did in fact support and push for a UN Treaty that would have banned it
No, that is false. Bush never supported such a ban. He did support an international UN ban on cloning, including a ban on any type of stem cell for the purpose of human cloning.
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.
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.
This proves that embroynic stem cells are not the only stem cells with research value
True, but this discovery has no effect on the research value, if any, of embryonic stem cells.
It may be intentional, so Bush can tell his supporters he is "pro-life" when he only pushes measures guaranteed to fail, but to say there is no proposed ban is misleading and false.
Have you read the proposed text? Because I have, and the text nor any riders does not ban stem cell research. If you have some text or a link I will gladly post a retraction.
I know that bush did not end stem cell research, but limited it to the existing stem cell lines. I am curious, are these lines sufficient? My impression is that they are not. One of the problems I have heard mentioned is that as cells are reproduced over and over again, transcription errors can occur, yielding inferior cell lines, and thus introducing increase error variance into experiments. Does anyone know if this is true?
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
All of the required "embryonic" stem cells can come from the 1000's of 8-cell blastocytes that are destroyed or frozen every day as part of the in-vitro ferilization process.
There is a problem with that. The scientists dont want to limit their research to humans with fertility problems. They also want to be allowed to create their own blastocysts via nuclear transfer to study patients with paticular illnesses.
If any of what I've said doesnt make sense then watch the Science Network's symposium on Stem Cells. Stem Cells: Science, Ethics and Politics at the Crossroads. They explain all the issues and technologies repeatedly and in a way normal folk can understand. I watched the full version but there is a new edit that might be good too.
Right, and I never said it did. I am simply saying it bolsters the conservative claim that other types of stem cells have suitability for a specific purpose - treating spinal cord injuries. The claim from the left was that federal funding was NECESSARY and that ONLY embryonic stem cells - often referred to as "stem cells" - are suitable.
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
We might. While this woman is now able to walk, which rocks, I would think she'll be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of her life. The stem cells aren't her own.
The best therapeutic outcome would come from stem cells with the patient's own genes. It's not yet known whether pluripotent adult stem cells could fit the bill, or if therapeutic cloning (involving embryonic stem cells) would be necessary.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Embyronic stem cells have more potential due to their undifferentiated nature but they pose significantly greater problems than do adult stem cells.
First is the issue of rejection. You're putting foreign genetic material into your body. Chances our your body will reject it without massive immuno-suprresants. This of course makes you more susceptible to infection.
Second is the issue of unregulated growth. Large tumors seems to be one of the main results of animal tests with embryonic stem cells.
Third is this fact. Adult stem cells work and are actively being used in therapies.
Now, repeat after me: There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research. While people love to vilify the Bush administration they seem to forget that this was the first administration to actual provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The only limit was that new lines could not be created or used in federally funded work.
As for the Ronald Reagan angle you can also check the research and see that most scientists do not see any therapeutic use of stem cells for Alzheimers.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
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.
Exactly what part of the Constitution says so? By my reading, they should provide national defense, police protection, and a judicial system. Thats all. Protecting individual and property rights is all the Founding Fathers intended.
Why don't the rest of us get to say what our tax money is spent on? Hey! 60 million people voted for him, that's why!
An eensy-weensy clarification.
The President's position, officially, is that the harvesting of embryonic stem cells when there is no -- zero--no scientific evidence of medical use for them is ethically dicey. Therefore, federal funding is available for any type of stem cell research anybody wants to conduct except research that involves the harvesting of stem cells through the destruction of living embryos.
Existing cell lines are available for research, and at such time as that research indicates potential medical uses for embryonic stem cells, the President will reconsider the funding policy.
I write in my journal
So, if science is so great, howcome it took them 2000 years to catch up?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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.
Seoul National and Chosun Universities are in South Korea. I know, I've been there!
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
This meant that more children were born to newly arrived groups such as Italian, Irish, Eastern Europeans, etc. and the country would lose its Anglosaxon heritage to "unworthy" peoples.
And yes, if blacks and hispanics were the majority users of abortion, the bible thumpers would be screaming for the government to provide abortions for free.
They commented that the treatment that the girl received could not help Christopher Reeves because too many years had passed since his accident.
AFAIK, this program was on several years ago.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
And each line may be a separate patent.
So we can have government create more things for corporations to impose IP restrictions on. Because there is a greater chance to profit from Embryonic stem cell research than other kinds, that is why corporations want it funded. But they will want to put the last piece of the puzzle in and patent and license the product.
And I don't think your history is correct. Sometimes people working for the government came up with inventions, but they weren't being paid to do them.
Linux managed to be written without government funding. BSD wasn't done via a grant to do BSD. And bureaucrats then make the decisions on what to research, not the scientists. And FSF or opensource model would do far better than government to fund "basic research". NASA might be the least bad example, but note the argument about Hubble and the failed missions.
Prop 71, baby! Let the red states suffer quietly as their biotech industries all leave for California, which is willing to put its money where its mouth is.
sulli
RTFJ.
Sorry. I attempted to have a discussion on the issues, and you appear to be incapable of it. Good day.
and I never said it did.
Well let's take a look at what you did say: "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."
You didn't add the caveat, "have suitability for a specific purpose - treating spinal cord injuries", until this post. I hope you can see how your original post can be misread to say "We don't need embryonic stem cells." Good day.
"Anything I missed?"
Only the entire issue.
So these researchers are just amoral monsters who want to experiment on embryos for no reason? I suppose only conservative warriors like yourself stand between them and experiments on live children.
This is such classic conservative FUD. You know the public generally supports the research, and is not buying your right to life arguments, and so you spread FUD about the usefulness of the research itself.
I don't know the particulars of which research is more promising, but I sure won't get my technical information from you or your blog.
I do NOT support embryonic stem cell research, but not because the research is supposedly 'useless'. I am opposed to it because:
1. An embryo is not a human being, but has the potential to become one and IS a form of human life. It is vastly different from a child (or even a fetus), but it has a complete (and unique) set of genetic material. Therefore, I believe it qualifies as something more than a clump of cells or a donated organ.
2. The research requires the embryo to be destroyed. Once you have sanctioned the destruction of this form of human life, you have crossed the line marking the start of the slippery slope.
3. The argument that "these embryos would just be discarded anyway" breaks down when you have a breakthrough, and suddenly need to produce embryonic stem cells on an industrial scale. At that point you are creating embryos with no purpose other than to be grown and harvested.
IANAC (I am not a conservative), but I generally agree with them on this issue. What I don't agree with is their all-too-familiar tactics: when you can't win the argument on the merits of the facts, start calling the facts themselves into question ( voting "challenges", Iraq War, "Death tax", etc, etc.)
I think you're taking me a bit to literally. I'll clarify...I meant eggs fertilized outside a human body...invitro, in a test tube in a lab. Unless implanted..will not ever develop into human life. And all cells are living things. But, I don't believe one or more cells of a fertilized egg in a lab is a living, breathing, cognizant human being....nor would it ever become one in said lab setting without implantation into a female host.
Until these cells multiply and differentiate substiantially enough to form the complex organism that we call a human being, I think we're talking about groupings of cells vs human beings. At the stages we're talking about, this grouping of cells isn't much different than any other embryo on earth....frogs, cows...etc. Mostly DNA differences...
And again...I'm talking about invitro fertilization, where this all takes place in a lab setting, so, here yes....ONLY potential life, if scientific intervention takes place. I'd think it would be better to use these embryos for some scientific good, rather than just flush them down the toilet. Which do you think would be a better fate for the frozen embryos out there?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Your last statement hit the nail right on the head.
People tend to forget that the path from basic science to miracle cure is long and arduous.
There is a lot of basic science that still needs to be done to even start asking questions of viability.
In any case, none of it ends up being a waste of money if ultimately we better understand how these processes work.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
people tend to worship volcano gods and mountains, rather than investigating creation...if there is no trancendant, why would one trust in logic?
Ha ha ha ha ha! Wow, thanks, that was really funny. People worshipping Vulcan, the god of fire, are probably the most refined example of logical and reasoned discourse. The Romans and Greeks had a much better understanding of logic and reasoning than most scientists and Slashdot posters do today. As far as monotheism or strong religious beliefs in general as a correlative for scientific or reasoned thought, well that is just not backed up by history. The Ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Mayan civilizations all advanced scientifically beyond the norm. If anything, a tolerance for a plethora of religions corresponds well with reasoned discourse and logic.
People trust in logic, because it works and is useful. I'm not saying that religion is not important, or that a reasonable person cannot reasonably have religious beliefs. But logic need not have any sort of religion to lend it credence, it stands well on its own merit.
And isn't a knee-jerk moral debate better than no moral debate?
More seriously, we'll never know "if adult stem cells can do everything (that embryonic stem cells can do)" if we don't know what embryonic stem cells can do. And how long should we wait for a cure (while people are dying/suffering) before we 'give in' and do research on them?
>> Who was the last non-christian president.
Bush. I can't think of a commandment he hasn't broken ten times over.
>> When were federal offices last closed on Kwanza?
Kwanza is a fake holiday invented in 1966. You might as well blame them for not being closed on your birthday.
>> Why were blue laws on Sunday?
Blue laws were never nation wide.
>> Our foriegn policy has continued to support Isreal (for no good reason)
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.
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.
Since the process for extracting and multiplying stem cell lines is essentially cloning I don't know how you could say this is false. Whether you like to admit it or not, that treaty would have hindered(by hindered i mean make impossible) private embryonic stem cell research. Whether or not Bush said explicitly has no bearing on the fact that it would have been effectively banned embryonic stem cell research.
As a faithfull agnotistic I would have to say that:
It is possible for God both to exist and not exist.
It might even be in very nature of God to do so.
And to further the anology, saying you don't need embryonic stem cell research because you have adult stem cell research is like claiming nobody should ever learn machine language since we have high level languages (which ignores that it is necessary for at least SOME people to know machine language because they work at a very low-level. I fully expect someone designing a CPU to know machine language, for example.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Perhaps it is just a sign that I have a job? I am not sure what you want me to follow up on. I am not sure how the Christian dominance of the United States proves that there is or isn't a God.
Plus your posts would rather more responses if they were halfway literate. I don't have the time to try to translate your jibberish.
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."
I can't speak for all of the Christian world, but I have to take issue with a couple of your points above:
1. If God made things a certain way, then that must be holy.
In fact, the Hebrew scriptures (read Old Testament) and the New testament affirm that the world in which we live is flawed as a result of the sin of Adam. Humans - as they are naturally - are not holy. In fact, humans are not naturally able to relate to God. It is only through the combination of God's reaching out to man and man's response to that call that give people any hope of relating to God. (There are many internal discussions about the nature of that call, and man's ability to respond, but the core belief is that man as he is born, is unholy.)
People are born with a prediliction to reject God in a myriad of ways. Some alcoholism has been shown to have physiological roots, but that does not prevent the church from condemnation of abuse of alcohol. Even if homosexuality is demonstrated to have a physiological cause, it will not mean that the church needs to change its stance.
Homosexual behavior is condemed by the church, as is idolatry, lying, theft, greed, slander, swindling, gluttony, and much else.
Why are these behaviors condemned? Because God made us, and He knows how we work. You can drive nails with a Rolex, but it wasn't made for that. There are many things you can do with and to your body - but it wasn't made for those things.
The maker - designer - knows what is good for you, and what is not. He can set whatever standards He wants. God gives us the free will to follow His direction or reject it. I'm sure that the Rolex folks won't recommend driving nails with your watch. If you do it anyway, there are consequences. It's the same with God.
As it stands, the revealed word of God says that sexual acts outside of marriage, and also with two people of the same gender are not acceptable. In fact, Jesus Himself said that when a man looks at a woman lustfully he has already sinned - and that sin carries the same penalty as homosexual acts do!
2. with embryonic stem cells there is no sper involved
I believe that you misunderstand the definition of embryonic stem cells. An embryo is the joining of sperm and egg. Evangelicals typically believe that life begins at conception, not at a later point. When life begins, it must be protected.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
While I agree with point you are trying to make, I think you have no idea how much of South Korean politics is dependent upon the president of the U.S. South Korea is a U.S. satellite state set in opposition to North Korea, a former U.S.S.R. and Chinese satellite state. North Korea can and may invade at any time, and the presence of a large number of U.S. troops, that Bush has promised to remove, are one of the major things preventing it. When the U.S. says "jump" Korea says "how high??"
Not quite true. I think it was in The Selfish Gene where they pointed out that traits that may not benefit an individual may still help propagate the gene itself if it profits relatives. If one could argue, say, that a homosexual male would be better at acting as a caretaker for children (And no, I don't have any argument in that area), then having an individual like that pop up periodically would mean that relatives of his (nephews, nieces, etc) would be more likely to survive, quite possibly carrying large amounts of his genetic code due to the common ancestry.
Perhaps a more practical example might be the argument that homosexuality occurs as population control. (Supposedly, studies have shown that homosexual behavior in animals increases as a population starts to outgrow its space. Perhaps related, it's been shown that the later a child is in birth succession, the more statistically likely it is for them to be homosexual) By reducing the chance of population overgrowth in the area, the gay person increases the chances of survival for their relatives.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
With embryonic stem cells there is no sperm involved.
Er... where do embryos come from in your world?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I'm no expert, but I do pay attention to issues like this. I have never ever heard someone make that claim.
I have heard people say that we need to research embryonic stems cells because they are different than adult stem cells, and thus may treat some things better, or have different uses, but that's a completely different argument.
First, on a technical level, after conception, the egg has to go through implantation. Due to semantic juggling, that's why "contraceptives" like the Pill don't do anything to conception. Rather, they prevent implantation.
Secondly, there's a variety of things that can happen after conception that prevent birth from spontaneous abortions (the body absorbs everything back) to miscarriages and other in-womb deaths. Although, arguably, the baby is still "born" in the latter two cases, just not alive.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
2 - It doesn't matter whether Sagan is right or not. What matters is that he's the author who wrote the novel Contact and they insulted him by writing an ending to the movie with a message directly opposite of the one he gave while still alive. It's a travesty because it's an insult to the author of the work, much like if Peter Jackson had decided to have Sauron win the war of the ring in the movie version of JRR Tolkein's work.
3 - What about Einstien?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
By the way, Sagan, while brilliant, has been wrong before. Look at his black hole theor which her changed to the opposite of the original last year.
You really mean Sagan, and not Hawking?
Note: This is completely aside from whatever your post was about (I didn't really read it) so this probably has no bearing whatsoever on the overall correctness of your post.
faithfull agnotistic
Parse error.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Somewhere you missed that ES cells don't come from babies aborted for the purpose of developing stem cells, they come from embryos that are already being destroyed (incinerated usually). If you're against abortion, fine; it's a tenable position, though one that I don't agree with. Neither do most Americans agree with you. So fight (by voting, writing, preaching, whatever non-violent means you choose) against abortion if that's what your religion or ethics tell you to do.
/.er would come up with an absurd counter, no doubt) are motivated by finding life-saving treatments for injured people--surely that's not objectionable to anyone but some radical 'christian scientist' types (I mean here the christian sect that rejects medical attention, not scientists who are christians).
But why insist that there be no medical benefit from what, under our current law, amounts to waste? And why demean the researchers working on stem cells? Most of the researchers and doctors working on ES-based treatments (I would say all, but some
As for your IP--researchers just want to murder people and patent their genes--bullshit, I should point out that most researchers working on medical problems never get extra money for their work that gets patented. If they make a significant discovery at an academic institution, their university owns their research. The university may sell the technology to a drug company for development (so called 'technology transfer') who will probably patent it. Most researchers (leaving Craig Venter and his ilk aside for the moment) don't benefit from patenting research or results. Indeed, when a researcher publishes an article in a scientific journal, it becomes essentially public domain for other researchers to build on and borrow from. Researchers are even required, as part of their publication agreement, to provide strains and other materials used in their methodology to other researchers upon request.
So you've pointed your finger wrongly twice in your post. Because many people's lives and quality of life hang in the balance of what is unfortunately becoming an issue dominated by public opinion rather than good medical or ethical considerations, I urge you to reconsider your stance.
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard, be evil.
I didn't say he wasn't incendiary. I said he was acurate. One can be both, and being one does not imply the other.
Nice. We don't have to call people Hitler these days to smear them. Yes, some folks have an agenda. That doesn't change the fact that your original post made it sound like the story was crediting embryonic stemcell research, or that the original response that we've branched off from called you on it correctly, or that your response to that response totally over looked that he was correct in that much.
You have the right or use all the profanity you want here. I don't have to repeat it. It was a choice I made about my post. There's a difference there. Remember, shiny side out.
Impeding and not funding are different things. An imposition is banning or blocking or imposing harsh regulations.
If they just declined to fund research proposals involving ES cells, you would be right. However, the ban on federal funding of ES cell research is more restrictive than that. Most labs have several sources of funding and multiple projects going on simultaneously, and almost all basic science biology labs get funding from the government. If I were in a lab doing ES cell research, even work that was privately funded, I would essentially have to work in a separate facility from everyone else. I couldn't use the lab centrifuge, geiger counter, refrigerator, incubator, etc., because those were bought with federal dollars. On a practical level, it's extremely difficult, if not possible, to work under those conditions. So in practical terms, it is a ban.
The bottom line is that the issue here is the future development of "factories" of human bits and pieces. It frightens people. Embryonic stem cells are thrown away, but we both know that in short order they would be harvested efficently and clinically with absolutely no regard to their nature: much like antibodies or animal specimens are harvested today.
That's a silly, alarmist view. Or maybe it's true. Maybe ES cells will lead to both matrix-style baby factories AND the cures to terrible diseases. Couldn't we just ban baby factories?
It is hardly disturbing that the government would elect not to fund a practice which is very fairly consider contraversial for a pay-off that is available through other means or highly hypotethical. Bush has said repeatedly that if other avenues are exhausted or the circumstances warrant it a revisitation of the issue can be made.
What you're saying here is partially misguided and partially factually incorrect. I would argue that the only reason it is controversial at all is because politicians decided to make an issue out of it. We've been throwing the cells in the trash for years, and nobody cared! Bush wants to appear somewhat flexible on the ES cell issue because he KNOWS that the ban will be lifted in the future, because it will very quickly become politically unpopular once the Swiss (or whoever) cure diabetes (or whatever). This, really, is what bothers me most. Bush is not an idiot, and he understands the promise of ES cell research. He even knows that his opposition to funding the work is bad for the US (but maybe only a little), but he's willing to do it because he knows it will win him votes among people who don't understand the issue. Unfortunately, only about 2% of the general public understands the issue.
As far as the promise being "available through other means or highly hypothetical," the evidence right now is against that. We can cure some diseases in mice using ES cells, and there are things we can only do with ES cells, etc. I would say that if you can cure a disease in a mouse, it's not "highly hypothetical" to think that you could use the same strategy to treat a human.
To talk of a thing existing or not, you have to finish your definition of it. If the only way to say god might exist is to use an unfinished definition, then you aren't really saying anything other than "something that I haven't told you what it is yet might exist" - which is a totally meaningless statement. I could define my car to be god, and TA-DA! God exists, and I drove him to work today and parked him in a parking ramp. It really sucks that I have to pay $8 to get my god back at the end of the day like that, but what are you going to do, eh? Too many people each own their own god in this town and it's really congested downtown with all the gods all over the place. Perhaps I should look into a public form of shared God instead.
If the only way to support a god potentially existing is to leave the definition unfinished, then it's not at all signifigant to state that you should keep an open mind that this god might exist.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
This whole thread is about the existance of God. Take a look. Your reading comprehension isn't much about your writing ability. If you want to participate in the other thread I recommend you post in that thread. I believe the ground has been well covered, however, and am done with it.
And it isn't just your spelling errors that makes your writing jibberish. It is the abundance of disjointed thoughts and non-sequiturs along with your childish ad hominem attacks.
LOL, haha, that's too funny. I guess the american gov't is then supporting land theft and terrorism by staying in america right? That's too funny. I can't believe you said that. hahaha, land theft, hahaaahaahaa.
YOu live in church country not christian country. Christians don't go around killing people for ANY reason.
Hey! I saw this same woman on Benny Hinn last night. Which was it.. science or snake oil?
FYI... Benny Hinn is a religious charlatan.
Then don't draw *an* arbitrary line, just do what every other computer scientist / mathematician does when they can't find a tight bound on something: draw 2 arbitrary lines!
If you believe that it's obvious that a small hunk of cells is decidedly not human, and if it will be flushed and will thus not become a human, then that's ok for research.
A newborn baby is obviously already human and has the potential to develop further so we'll say no killing newborns.
There. No single arbitrary line. The trick is, to me, to just go with what is definately OK, and leave the more questionable stuff alone. That way you have no absolute declaration of when life/dignity begins/becomes valuable and thus no slippery slope.
Comfy?
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
My favorite argument against the existence of an omnipotent god goes something like this:
Q: Can god carry any weight?
A: Yes!
Q: Can god make anything?
A: Of course!
Q: Can god make something so heavy that he himself cannot carry it?
A: Yes, er.. Ummm. Nevermind...
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Sentient means responding to stimulus. This happens long before birth.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
First, CA just approved a multi-billion dollar fund for this research as a way to attract companies.
Second, the private groups are spending their money working with adult stem cells (this includes the umbilical cord cells used in the described treatment) as they are actually producing results.
Remember that old saw: "you have to learn to walk before you can fly"? Well it may seem a bit backwards but the walking work for stem cells is to work with the adult ones first. You still have to tackle differentiation issues with them and methods of implanting and controlling but you don't have the immune system issues and you don't have the current horrible experimental track record that you do with embryonic stem cells.
This is all before we even go into the whole ethical "destroy a life to create the cells" issue.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
It's a question of how it's harvested. Embryonic stem cells come from the harvesting of fetal tissue, usually from abortions. So it's a little different than organ donation, for example.
Sure, but given that abortions will always happen, is it more ethical to just toss the cells, or to use them for study/medicine?
But in the end, it's all a moot point, since the most promising results have come from adult and umbilical stem cells. So exploring fetal stem cells is just a waste of time, anyway.
Exploring something which is not entirely known is not necessarily a waste of time. We could find that fetal stem cells are better for certain treatments, or find a way to use them to better all stem cell related treatments. Who knows? But, since the material will always be available, why not use it?
Over 50% of the US population is against abortion. We don't need to promote more abortions so that babies can be a consumable that is harvested. Why? We can get stem cells ethically from umbilical cords, so why kill babies?
[From The Morning]
[FromTheMorning]
But, I don't believe one or more cells of a fertilized egg in a lab is a living, breathing, cognizant human being....nor would it ever become one in said lab setting without implantation into a female host.
Ah, so now we just need to agree on a definition for "human life". If you ask the Nazis it is anybody who isn't Jewish. If you ask an American from the 1700's, it is anybody who isn't black.
Keep in mind that many retarded people are going to fail to meet some criteria that you'd tend to propose for human life (ability to reason, etc.). Young children (up to a year or two in age) would fail to meet many criteria related to ability to survive on their own, etc.
Right now the legal definition is that a human life is effectively a fully developed infant which is no longer in its mother's body. This leads to strage practices like partial birth abortion where as long as at least a few hairs are still inside the birth canal the newborn has no legal rights.
If it were easy to define human life, there wouldn't be any debate at all. The problem is that it isn't easy. Does it start at birth (thus leading to partial birth abortion, and how anybody can differentiate between a child ten seconds before and after birth escapes me)? Does it start at conception (in which case do we probably have an ethical obligation to try to rescue children who fail to implant properly)? You can probably come up with a rediculous scenario for any definition that you come up with.
...and say "no fucking shit?".
I don't know about anyone else, but helping a paralyzed woman walk again by regrowing parts of her damaged spine sounds quite miraculous. All hail the scientist champions of our human species!
Surely, we must give to them unlimited resources so that they may cure all of the plagues of the human experience!
Right?
Well, Leibnitz I think was part of George I's court when he was still elector of Hanover. It's not clear who had priority, but Newton's formulation of calculus was idiosyncratic, IIRC, and Leibnitz was closer to modern.
And don't forget Euler, who invented the modern notation for calculus (d/dx et al), as well as giving us the ever popular e . He spent most of his career in St. Petersburg under the patronage of the Tsar.
Oliver Heaviside, on the other hand,invented vector calculus while either working as a telegraph operator or as a person of no visible means of support living in his parent's house.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I welcome the concept of an internal biological system rewiring the body's network. Damn well about time someone did some human research work- all those !frog amputees can walk for years, but not one human till now. Anyone remember Nanette Davis, who had her network rewired externally so she could walk- in the 1980's ? I worked with Dr. Petrofsky's brother at the time- he wrote all the code on an Apple II with a Z80 board, and used a set of donated F-5 radar antenna gyros as a basic three axis inertial controller for the young lady. It was a hell of a hack for the 80's. Now- can we use those cells to rewire my home network ? Or do I have to use plants and wires ?
Faith is not "the belief of things with no evidence".
It is "the belief of things with no proof". There is a big difference and I hope you see it.
--- Tao
From what I've heard elsewhere, there's also a shelf life issue with these IVF "leftovers." If we were *really* serious about saving these "babies" we'd either be locating host mothers for them, or we'd be investing in some good LH2 storage to increase their shelf-life instead of the LN2 currently used, maybe even fractions-above-0K storage. Either those possiblities, or we could outlaw IVF unless the couple agreed to implant ALL embryos, eventually.
I know those options are all absurd, but so is trying to take an ethically complex situation and force a simple answer.
Another poster on this thread suggested that he would have been aborted had his mother not been strongly pro-life.
A different poster on this thread mentioned his two IVF children.
These two situations are flipsides of the same coin. IVF is almost intractably tied to abortion, unless you want to commit to fertilize-as-you-implant and/or implant-every-embryo as a matter of rigidly enforced policy.
Personally I'm pro-choice, and I don't believe ANYONE is really pro-abortion. I don't like abortion, (the later it's done, the less I like it.) but IMHO there are *worse* things, and one of them is pretending this is an ethically black-and-white issue. As a result of this, I find myself in disagreement with the Catholic Church. (I'm not a Catholic, but I'm married to one.) But I will grant them this: On the subject of fertility the Church is consistent.
The Church does not approve of abortion.
The Church does not approve of IVF.
The Church does not approve of the Pill(*) or IUD.
*A little research finds that the low-dosage Pill, the only kind in common usage since the 80's, works by impairing formation of the uterine lining, so a fertilized egg can't implant. Effectively it's a very early abortion. I don't have a problem with that, since it's an undifferentiated blob of cells, but the Church does.
To be truly consistent, we would need laws to outlaw the Pill and tightly regulate IVF.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The most promising results have come from adult and umbilical stem cells. therefore exploring fetal stem cells is just a waste of time.
Which logical fallacy is that?
We both agree that adult and embryonic stem cells are different. To you that means look only at the most promising one, and ignore the less promising one. To me that just means that we should look at both, since they may be better at different things.
Would you agree with the following?
But in the end, it's all a moot point, since the most promising results have come from antibiotics. So exploring stem cells is just a waste of time, anyway.
I mean, antibiotics have proven cures for how many diseases?
Yeah, comments like "Bush will just declare that Alaska is harboring weapons of mass destruction and invade it, then drill for oil" would always be perfectly acceptable here (I've seen such things, tehy get modded "Funny"), but shots at Michael Moore are trolling. I see. You people have your heads that far up your asses huh?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I think a person can honestly disagree, but I hope such a person keeps in mind that many people think of "embryos" as "little babies". It's not so much of a stretch, and that really re-frames the discussion. If I suggested that scientists should try grinding up little babies because it's possible that the ground-little-baby paste might possibly help some people with certain medical disorders to some degree, I think everyone would realize where the ethical concerns are coming from. Those concerns are accentuated by the hope that similar results may be possible by using relatively small tissue samples from adults instead.
So, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the president's position, but I think it's far from radical, possibly a wise position to take, and considering he's of the view that "life begins at conception", it's pretty progressive.
Hey holmes. What exactly IS the point? What are we talking about here? (Keep in mind that I've got a bumper sticker that says "Science is not a Crime")
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
There is an issue here. Best health for the newborn is generally achieved when time is allowed for as much blood as possible to drain from the placenta through the umbilical into the newborn. Care must be observed not to shortchange the baby in an attempt to help someone else.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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!"
I'm sure that many churches *do* teach it incorrectly.
My understanding is that the word 'sin' in the original language was a word used in terms of target shooting that means 'to miss the mark.'
Applied to our lives, it's anything that causes us to miss the mark of holiness and purity.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I'm not interested in arguing the merits of abortion being murder or not murder. I argue that if it doesn't affect me it's none of my concern, and if it does affect me it's my concern and no one else's (unless they are similarly affected).
Confused?
A woman who I have never met aborting her pregnancy is none of my business. If she or someone else along the line sells the tissue for fun and profit, it's also none of my business. I don't find it offensive or immoral.
If I do know the woman, or if I am the woman, it's my problem and you, stranger, should mind your own business.
On the other hand, a large, well organized gang with a lots of awesome firepower going around telling everyone that they may not abort their pregnancies, or can only abort their pregnancies through these approved channels is something I find very offensive, very immoral, and something I will resist vehemently.
Take your life/not-a-life rules and shove them. I don't care.
Now, lets see some cures you baby-killers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
What you're proposing is to ignore the moral/ethical quagmire and do the research, then have the moral/ethical discussion. That just seems backwards to me.
True today, but this has little bearing on the value of researching them, especially if we can unlock the secret of what triggers the cancer response over the generation of healthy adult stem cells.
The ethical distinction you are making between embryos that would be destroyed and embryos that would not be destroyed doesn't matter to them, because they believe that destroying _any_ embryo means ending the life of a sentient being. Sentient beings die all the time, but for those who believe that their ethics affect their future existence, there is a huge distinction between taking ownership of the death of a sentient being and the fact that the being has died, or is going to die. That is, if you kill the being, it's your problem; if I kill the being, or benefit from its death, it's my problem.
You're absolutely right; that is how many, many people think about this issue. What I'm trying to do, though, is to change minds and force thought on the matter. True, it's hard, but it isn't futile. Part of what drives the opposition to embryonic stem cell research is that certain groups of people have very effectively distilled the issue into a simple, easy-to-digest format that goes down easy and doesn't give you gas. I'm trying to shake that back up--to muddy those waters that should never have been made clear--and force people to think beyond their own spheres of comfort. Do this often enough and persistently enough, and there's a chance we can re-inject some of the complexity that is so essential to arriving at a sound resolution of this issue. To this end, I'm not strong enough butt heads directly with the masters who whip up these false dichotomies--rather, this kind of situation calls for an end run of the artificial discourse. Call it guerilla discussion.
In short, I'm trying to change public discourse, one person at a time. Sure, it's a shitty and often hopeless job, but unless somebody does it, we're fucked as a thinking society. Part of my strategy is to simply skirt the talking points and introduce angles for which people haven't been indoctrinated one way or the other. Overall, it is effective; all it takes is a shadow of a doubt to get people really thinking about something, and I've managed to force a good number of people to at least back their EZ-Dose Talking Points with facts and reasoning--which I count as a victory, even if I haven't changed their conclusion.
When we try to base our actions on how things should be, as opposed to how they actually are, we undercut the effectiveness of what we do.
I disagree. The biggest reason things "are" as they are is that a small, dedicated group of people based their actions on how they thought things should be.
If you're in Denver and you want to get to Salt Lake City, you don't get pissed off at the mountain passes between the two cities - the mountain passes don't care what you think. You suck it up and cross them. The situation here is no different.
Absolutely right. What you do instead is work hard and toil for years, build roads, build tunnels, build machines to clear three feet of snow in an hour, build aircraft to fly above that pass. One day, you realize that the mountain pass is no longer an issue, and you move on to the next challenge. I'm toiling to make this particular debate irrelevant. It's hard, thankless work, but at some point, the combined forces of science and persuasion will render this hot potato as irrelevant as the debate over which celestial body is at the center of the universe--so long as enough of us keep working at it. The more of us out there, the sooner we can move on to the next pass.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Until then, you're Pro-birth, not Pro-life.
Yeah, right.
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
What I don't get is, how is there a 1 in 4 chance that my child may not be my child? I know that you are speaking geneticly, but where do those number come from?
I say that, because It seems unlikely that there would be 25% chance that my child may not share a large portion of my genes.
Ok, so you also say that the clan benefits from having a person that is not going to have children. So then can the clan also benefit from having an uncle or aunt that is a homosexual?
How does this benefit the clan? The non-homosexual that doesn't have kids, and the homosexual that also won't have kids.
Fascinating stuff.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
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
To be honest, perhaps GP post didn't phrase it precisely, but it seems to be correct on the issues - Bush got elected. In an ideal world, that means that the majority of voters agree with the majority of his platform. Which, in his second term, includes everything he did in his first term. His re-election is proof that USA has accepted what he did, including, but not limited to, ban on funding of new embryonic stem cell lines, invasion of Iraq, etc.
So you're right in that taxes are for the good of the whole, but only the majority gets to say what's the good of the whole.
As for your claim that "[n]o matter what comes of it, researching embryonic stem cells will provide a benefit to society", you're merely sidestepping the issues: the primary issue is whether the destruction of embryos is a valid method of harvesting stem cells morally and ethically. Sidestepping the issue is really stating either that you don't see any moral or ethical quandaries here (i.e., the embryo isn't human, and thus is undeserving of human rights, protections, and personhood under the law), or that the ends justifies the means, or both.
There are, obviously, people on both sides of the debate. But what is good for the whole has yet to be authoritatively decided, so all we are left with is the issues. Those that believe in democracy, regardless of which side of the debate they're on, would say that a) Bush was elected, and b) until the issues are solved, we should hold off on this research simply because it's a genie that you can't stuff back in the bottle. Of course, there are likely very few people on either side of the debate that believe in democracy on this issue...
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.
the stem cells are from an adult, rather than from fetal tissue (bone marrow in this case).
You might already be aware of that - but there's so much garbage flying around this story I thought it should be clear.
Clear, Dark Skies
Here on Brazil a woman walked and can speak before stem cell have been implanted on her brain. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/ciencia/ult306u 12664.shtml/
http://www.michel.eti.br
The old testament, and new testament affirm nothing.
Have you read the Bible yourself? All of it?
While you may believe that it is merely a collection of nice stories that are used to prove a point, I would suggest to you that your belief may not be completely accurate.
The Bible is quite remarkable in terms of ancient literature. There are many many 'holy books' that are revered by religious peoples around the world. None of them have had the impact on Western culture and society that the Bible has.
We know that what is written there has been preserved since its original versions because of the vast number of copies that we have. There are more accurate copies of the Bible than ANY other ancient work. (The alleged discrepancies that many of you want to point out as you read this are completely irrelevant to all major doctrines of the Christian faith.)
To suggest that it's merely a collection of stories on a par with mother goose is a bit...unreasonable.
In terms of disease, the Christian faith teaches that we all are diseased, and are in need of an ultimate physician to heal us. The disease is sin, evidenced by our selfishness and pride. This is what separates us from a Holy God.
God does give us free will. Doing what He says is wrong is, as I mentioned in my last post to you, akin to smashing your gold Rolex on a galvanized nail.
If you do what God says is wrong, you can expect that there will be consequences. That's the way it is. You don't have to like it, but you can't change it, either. The only way to avoid the consequences is to believe that you are imperfect, recognize that perfection is required to have relationship with a holy God, and ask Him to accept you in your imperfection, beacuse of Christ's sacrifice on your behalf.
This is completely unrelated to procreation. Procreation is not at issue if you look lustfully at a woman, and Christ called that sin, too.
WRT your embryonic stem cell point, I believe that you are mistaken. This site states that embryonic stem cells require a fertilized egg.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
About half of all embryos are spontaneously aborted.
According to the anti-abortionist argument above, this is a terrible mass death -- every day!
What's worse is that there is no medical research into how to save those embryos, which are half of all the people dying!
What's interesting is that not even the anti-abortionists argue that a large fraction (much less half) of all medical research should go into how to stop those deaths!
A contradiction.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
2000 years!? What about that one guy I see on TV every morning? Science, eat your heart out! :-D
Disclaimer: The above comment is intended to be humorous, and in no way implies belief in the referenced televangelist.
---
"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...
Maybe if they cut funding to adult stem cells and then got half the country to think working with them as moraly reprehensible maybe the embryonic stem cells would have a chance to catch up?
Or maybe you could just say any reseach that doesn't pay off in, say, 10 years should just be counted as a failure? What the hell are we doing messing around with fusion research anyway? It's obviously far less useful than fission because, ya see, only fission actually produces any power.
Or maybe we could just let science do its job and ignore all the people that think giving a pint of blood is moral, but giving an 8-cell grouping is murder?
TW
Amniotic fluid may hold 'ethical' stem cells
*bankrupts the business this anonymous GNAA member works for so that he can no longer afford an Internet connection*
Support my political activism on Patreon.
People are rushing to correct you and they can't even see that this is a joke.
Why can't we just get the stem cells from plants? Stems are abundant with them!
The article says that embryonic stem cells tend to form tumors. Therefore if you you tried to repair someone's severed limb with embryonic plant stems, there is a chance that the person wouldn't grow their limb back, but an oversized tree limb which would be offensive to pro-lifers and environmentalists alike.
Over 50%? I don't believe that for a second, so please, back this up with a real poll. Depending on what sort of question is asked, most anyone could be construed as being against abortion.
Another problem, you ignored the fact that promoting stem cell research isn't going to significantly increase the number of abortions being performed. Not one single additional abortion has to be performed in order to enable this life-saving research.
Finally, you fail to distinguish the utility of embryonic cells vs. the cells harvested from umbilical cords. The latter are useful, but have already gone through some cell differentiation, and are therefore poor substitutes for many sorts of research.
It seems like you didn't even read what you're responding to.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
By your logic, then, some forms of birth control (such as the morning-after pill) are murder as well, as egg and sperm have bonded, but are prevented from becoming a viable fetus.
I can't imagine holding a murder trial for a morning-after pill. I cannot agree that the death of a couple of thousand cells fewer than 24 hours old is the moral equivalent of putting someone in a gas chamber or a gulag.
If you are absolutely against considering a human embryo with a two-digit number of cells as somewhat lesser than a human being, your minority vote is hereby duly noted.
You do realize that if you took a poll and asked that question, probably 40% of the US population would be in that minority. We're not talking about the two crackpots in town who opposed upgrading the sewage system that was leaking into people's lawns. We're talking about a group of people more populous than New York City.
You're assuming that life is defined by sentience. Many people do not agree with that definition. Many retarded people would fail that test.
The fact is that there is a huge disparity of opinion on this topic, and the debate really isn't furthered by everybody just refusing to associate with those they disagree with...
I really, really (really) hope these guys are on the up and up.
However it seems very unlikely to me that after 20 years this poor lady's leg muscles COULD be revived enough to allow her to walk. I know of a documented case of a man that was in a comma for 20 years before regaining consciousness and, with no neurological issues, is still bed ridden years later. I smell something rotten here (unfortunately).
to be potential embryos than your skin cells are.
That's one of the things that are still very poorly understood. We still don't really know how a cell "knows" that it should be a skin cell or a nerve cell or anything else. If we understood that then we'd be able to grow replacement organs (or complete clones) on demand.
Clear, Dark Skies
What, you mean prayer doesn't actually help the blind to see, the deaf to hear, or the paraplegic to walk again?
You mean the solutions to these problems are found in *science* and *medicine*, not in religious voodoo and mysticism? Incredible! God forbid!
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
They said the stem cells came from umbilical cord blood.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
How about a name? This AC bullhockey is annoying. How can anyone be sure that they are having a conversation with the same person when you post anonymously?
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
I was actually thinking of Leibniz when I wrote that. He developed his (independent) version of the calculus, along with the notations and symbols we use today, while in Paris, as a fellow of the (crown-supported) Royal Society and working with the (crown-supported) Academy of Sciences in Paris. He was also not being directly paid to create it, but that wasn't my assertion - only that the government gave him a kind of stipend, thus freeing more of his time to think up things *like* the calculus.
However, you're correct that Newton was at home when he developed his version of the calculus.
Having said that, though, Newton was supported (financially and otherwise) by the crown throughout his research career. All of the institutional positions he held were at crown-supported universities and foundations, and even the calculus was written during a forced leave (due to plague) from the crown-supported University at Cambridge, which by the way, he attended thanks to -- financial aid.
So, while I accept the statement that the calculus was not directly developed using royal funds, I think it is still fair to call Newton a government-funded researcher, which is all I actually said on the subject. (And I was, as I mentioned, thinking of Leibniz in any case.)
In any case, I think we at least both agree that Industry had nothing to do with it, which was my primary point. For the occasional man who can perform this act of creation alone and without financial support, that's great! But if outside funding is needed, then for basic research it should come from a public source, not a private with-strings-attached source.
I'll bite. After all Bush is such an easy target. Bush has used "creative" funding policies to effectively ban embryonic stem cell research. Don't believe me, take a look at the few universities willing to do such research, they have all made public statements about their planned court battles. Or how about the destruction of NIH funding? The day after the election the research labs down the street were told the news. All federal funding was to be cut in half. That includes diabetes, HIV, Parkinson's, MS, Prions, everything. What Bush says he supports and what he actually supports, you know with funding and by preventing restrictive patents on things like genes, are completely different. The current administration has done more damage to scientific research in this country than any other in recent history. But hey what do I care, I work in a field largely supported by military funding and anti-terror dollars, so I have job security.
Pull your head out of your butt and look around. America isn't so free anymore, and it sure as heck isn't the world leader in science anymore. We're falling behind because of one simple thing...greed. Bush may have made statements in support of umbilical stem cell research, but he did not do so to advance science or help people. He did so to get votes from the religious-right, by providing an alternative to embryonic stem cell research. It is just a game of three card monty. We should be researching all types of stem cells and reaping the benefits thereof, not shutting down research because it can be turned into some sort of religious vote swinging issue.
"No one capable of getting themselves elected president should, on any account, be allowed to do the job." Sadly this is more true than ever.
Fascinating.. but fairly off topic. A 25% chance isn't that large. Large cross-cultural studies of blood types and other markers show that about 10% of all children globally don't have the father that the birth cert (or whatever) says thay have. 25% seems reasonable in the hunting/gathering communities that seem to have shaped a lot of our behavior patterns. Those hunting parties are sometimes gone a long long time and that effeminate geek that stays behind designing a better arrow point may not be as gay as he looks.
The clan certainly benefits from a smallish percentage of "uncles" that don't provide for their children, but rather for the nieces/nephews or the clan at large (still mostly relatives).
There isn't the same benefit for lesbians though. They certainly know that their children are theirs. Seems to me that game theory would predict gay men but only bisexual women. A good bonding behavior for when the men are away hunting, but guanteed 50% progeny is too good a bet to select for completely gay women. I'm sure there is a dissertation in there for someone...though you'd need to fing the right grad advisor.
obOnTopic and in the desire for full disclosure, the author of this article holds long positions in GERN and STEM. Go Stemcells! Go Telomerase!
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
"Um... Isaac Newton invented calculus when he was still a student at Trinity College."
"There was no government funding involved in his inventing calculus, sorry."
Oh, I see. And Cambridge University wasn't supported by any government at the time, was it. I mean, it had no support at all from England and its King at the time...
Fair enough.
Embryos are little babies. It's not so much a matter of a point of view as it is a matter of dispassionately facing up to an uncomfortable fact of life.
Ah, but you see, many of those who don't see a problem with embryonic stem cell research don't view it that way. To them, an embryo is some tissue, a piece of organic material, that, in some circumstances could become a baby. It really isn't a simple case of one side or the other being in denial. Whole world views are tied up in it. The question of what life is is tied up in it. It's not so easy to resolve definitively, and I think we would do well to accept that these are two ways of looking at things, each determining a different set of "ethically acceptable actions".
To those who are in favor of embryonic stem cell research, viewing this as simple biological material, not proceding with the research is viewed as unethical. They tend to believe something like that this material is equivalent to "medicine", and we're throwing the medicine away rather than making use of it. After all, you're often talking about samples that, if they are not used for stem cell research, these samples will be destroyed/trashed anyhow.
However, as I've mentioned, on the other side, you're talking about grinding up babies. The idea is so repugnant that talk of positive consequences is ghoulish. It doesn't matter if you can save people with ground-up babies, you just don't go around grinding up babies.
So the question becomes, how do we resolve this in a way that best satisfies as many ethical points of view as possible. I think that's what Bush has been trying to do (at least that's what he says he's trying to do), and it makes sense to me to look for some sort of a balance.
Ah, you have that backwards, I think. See, we already use adult stem cells to treat lots of maladies. Some scientists hope that stem cells harvested from babies can be used to treat even more maladies, but that sort of begs the important ethical questions.
Well, IANAE, but the strength of stem cells in treatments seem to be that they are not yet differentiated, and so they can fill in and take the place of other damaged cells. Embryos have long been the obvious choice for undifferentiated cells, and the face that you can pull stem cells from the placenta is largely an extention of this idea (being involved in reproduction and all). However, it is relatively recent that it's been found that undifferentiated stem cells can be pulled from adults. It is still widely held (at least since last I've heard) that undifferentiated cells pulled from adults is not as flexible as those from embryonic sources. What I mean by "not as flexible" is, though they're not differeniated, there seem to be greater limits on adult stem cells as to what sort of tissue they can become, which limits their uses. However, there are a lot of unknowns thrown in here, and we're getting outside my areas of expertise.
I think what I'm working around to saying is, this is not an uncomplicated issue. I think we'd be better off if both sides would at least acknowledge this. I don't trust people who oversimplify and dumb-down in order to convince me, even though they may be trying to convince me of something they believe is true.
If you aren't a biologist, don't attempt to pass off your views as fact. Just because you read it in Discover doesn't make 100% correct. I don't pretend I'm a nuclear physicist. Stem cell research, on all levels, is highly promising. The big deal with not giving scientists access to aborted embryos/fetuses is simply a matter of scale. It's much easier to harvest several million stem cells in one shot from an embryo/fetus than grabbing a few from millions of living people. Fewer fetuses = fewer stem cells to work with.
Once the primary research is completed, then almost all stem cell treatments will be from the patient's own stem cells. Thus, the need for embryos/fetuses will greatly decrease.
To all the religious nutcases:
All biological life has the same value - very little. Humans are simply apes with less fur and bigger brains. To piss and moan about fetuses brings us back into the dark ages.
It's funny that people chortle with glee at the murder of hundreds of thousands of sentient beings who live half-way across the globe, yet mention one fucking clump of cells or fetus being exterminated, and suddenly it's "wrong."
If you eat meat, you have no recourse in arguing against any type of murder. Murder is murder, regardless of the species. Guess what? I don't have a problem with it. Perhaps your screwed up social view needs some readjustment.
Hypocrisy is the last resort of the damned.
You people make me sick.
I cant beleive all of the President Pussy supporters we have here.
;)
"Bush hasnt banned stem cell research, he only decided that the federal government will not fund it"
HAHAHAHAHA... What a load of shit. How convient for the Bush supporters. An amazing story comes out of South Korea and all of the sudden our Bush supporters are like "oh well.. uh well he didnt ban it!" Give me a fucking break.
It sounds like the Bush supporters are flip flopping
Dont worry Bush w will ban it if he is as religious and as stupid as we all think. (we should be affraid)
Bush wont ban it, if he owns stock in large corperations doing stem cell research.
The man is a peice of shit. I cant beleive we have people here bending over backwards to make up excuses for them having voted for a fucking moron.
This is from the blue states to the red, "nah nah, nuh nah nah"
Fucking morons.
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?
You're absolutely right; that is how many, many people think about this issue. What I'm trying to do, though, is to change minds and force thought on the matter. True, it's hard, but it isn't futile. Part of what drives the opposition to embryonic stem cell research is that certain groups of people have very effectively distilled the issue into a simple, easy-to-digest format that goes down easy and doesn't give you gas.
So what you're saying is that there is a large group of people who simply don't understand where you're coming from, and if you could just somehow explain to them where you're coming from, you would be able to convince them that your way of doing things is best.
The problem with this position is that it starts out from the assumption that they are wrong. But you don't have any proof that their position is wrong. What you have is a lack of proof that their position is right. This lack of proof isn't proof that they're wrong. You're certain that they are wrong because their beliefs conflict with your beliefs - you find their position inconsistent with a scientific worldview, so it must be wrong.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with them because they're obviously wrong, but you can't go toe to toe with someone in a debate if you don't have any way to prove that that person's position is wrong.
I will take this one step further. People want refuge. Life is harsh. Death is a reality. Most people are raised with some kind of refuge - a way to think about their situation that gives them comfort, and, they hope, actual protection from the suffering of this vale of tears. The dominant refuge in the U.S. is Christianity. Even those of us who were raised athiest, as I was, hold to a value system that's largely Christian in its basis, with a lot of bizarre Protestant guilt thrown in for seasoning.
I would go so far as to say that most people who take refuge in Christianity don't know why. They don't have a logical basis for thinking that it will protect them. They've just been told that it will protect them since they were old enough to speak, both by their parents and by their friends, and by society at large. So the refuge they have is weak, because it is based in tradition, not logic.
When you engage in debate with someone like this, they aren't going to play fair with you. They aren't even going to listen to you if what you have to say conflicts with what they believe, because in order to accept your worldview, they have to accept that they are going to die, and that that will be their extinction, not just a transition. Whether this is true or not is immaterial for your purposes; you simply can't win a debate with someone like that by telling them about the scientific worldview. As far as they are concerned, the scientific worldview sucks compared to theirs, because its essence is a complete lack of refuge. If you could get them to listen, it would benefit them, either by showing them that they need to strengthen their refuge (that is, find reasons why they have refuge, as opposed to just blind faith) or by showing them that they are wrong. But they aren't going to listen to you, so this benefit is purely hypothetical.
Then there's the people like me, who have refuge that's based on logic. I'm always interested in debating about stuff like this, because if you can pick a hole in my way of thinking, that either shows me that I'm mistaken, or shows me where my refuge is weak, both of which benefit me. So you can debate with me, but unless I am actually wrong and you can prove it, that's not going to get you anywhere. You should debate with people like me, though, because it benefits you, too - it helps you to understand how to talk to people who don't share your belief system but who are nevertheless rational. You don't have to accept my worldview to debate me, because I'm willing to have a real debate with you.
And finally there are people who really aren't taking refuge in this stuff, but
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 don't think the scientists doing the research have ignored the "moral/ethical quagmire". There are fairly stringent ethical controls on experiments. It is just that some people don't agree with those....
After all, if it was so "bad", why didn't Bush ban all research on the existing lines? Perhaps to attempt to look good to everyone (while ending essentially ending research in the US but not the so-called ethical/moral dilemma?)
Next you'll be telling me some messiah was brougth back from the dead...
Hell don't believe that crap..
truly amazing... there's no doubt in my mind its true..
people are definitely under estimating the power of what stem cells can do..
President Sadaam Bush seems to be running things using a very religious morale.. not good.. first he appoints some chick who was a nun to start making federal medical decisions like taking birth control off the market, not letting women decide what to do with their body's, and a number of other different rights that are in direct violation of our constitution.. lets not forget the advancement of human innovation and technology I.E. stem cells..
for those of you techie people out there, (that goes for anyone who is even registered on slashdot) its quite contradictory for you to be supporting a person like Bush, because of my reasons listed above..
you don't want a software giant like microsoft running the industry, yet you don't mind Bush being in office making horrible decisions based on CATHOLICISM????? CHRIST!!!!
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
i also wanted to add, if "God" thinks its wrong to murder somebody, but encourages people help one another, than where does that leave abortion??
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
The grandparent was making fun of the whole "You shouldn't kill babies for research" thing tagged to embreyonic stem cell research. The "missed point" was that this is *adult* stem cell research, which is based on stem cells existing in matured tissue, harvested without harming any individual organism or group of organisms (where a single cell at the point of conception counts as an organism). Bush bashing is riddled throughout this thread from clueless liberals who think this is the same thing as embreyonic stem cell research.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Love is an emotion. If you are saying that God exists in the same sort of way that love does, then sure, fine. God exists. As an idea, or inside people's heads.
Now if you were to tell me that Love is some living being that talks to people and writes books telling us what to do, I'd start to think you were a bit strange..
You also seem to not understand what the words subjective and objective mean. Regarding how we define God, obviously we have to define God before we consider whether God exists or not, and then the question is an objective one.
Subjective means "Existing only within the experiencer's mind". Objective means "Having actual existence or reality".
Are the embryos in the clinics fertile? I have heard about eggs that are stored, but not fertilized and grown embryos.
jason
Ah, but you see, many of those who don't see a problem with embryonic stem cell research don't view it that way.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five, you say? No, the answer is four: calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.
You can refer to an embryo in whatever clinical, dehumanizing terms you want. Call it a "scrap of tissue," call it a "bunch of cells," call it an "unwanted growth." Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is a baby.
Likewise, calling it a difference over terminology or conflicting worldviews or whatever doesn't change the essential fact that embryonic stem cells are harvested from the corpses of dead babies.
Does that terminology make you squeamish? Rightly so! The killing of a baby for medical research, even if justified by the possibility of wonderful results, should never be undertaken lightly. We must always stop and say, "Woah, is this really something we want to do?" before becoming 21st-century Dr. Mengeles.
Hiding the essential fact of the experiment behind verbiage --it's "just tissue" --is a great way to become a monster without ever realizing it.
I think that's what Bush has been trying to do (at least that's what he says he's trying to do), and it makes sense to me to look for some sort of a balance.
Agreed, absolutely. The correct balance is what everybody's looking for.
the strength of stem cells in treatments seem to be that they are not yet differentiated
That's a much more complicated issue than you might think. There are lots of different kinds of stem cells. The ones you find in babies are called pluripotent: they can become any type of cell found in the body, under the right conditions. The ones you find in adults (like in bone marrow) are called multipotent. They can become any one of a specific set of cell types. Bone marrow stem cells, for instance, can become any kind of blood cell.
To take advantage of adult stem cells, basically all you have to do is take them out of a donor and put them in a recipient. This is what we do in a bone marrow transplant. In fact, the body "auto-transplants" bone marrow stem cells when the marrow is diseased; that's why people with diseases of the bone marrow develop splenomegaly. The stem cells are migrating from the bone marrow to the spleen where they keep right on producing blood cells.
But the thing is, there's no environment in the body where you can drop a pluripotent stem cell and have it turn into something useful. Usually it just turns into a teratoma. If your patient is very lucky, the cells will just die.
So right now there is ZERO medical use for pluripotent --i.e., embryonic --stem cells, but there is extensive use for multipotent stem cells.
I appreciate the effort, but you need to learn a LOT more about stem cells, I think. You've got some of the basic ideas right, but others you've got very wrong. (Like the idea that we've only been using stem cells therapeutically recently. In fact, we've been doing stem-cell transplants for more than 30 years.)
I write in my journal
For the occasional man who can perform this act of creation alone and without financial support, that's great! But if outside funding is needed, then for basic research it should come from a public source, not a private with-strings-attached source.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I love hearing about government-industry technology transfer programs because of this, as long as the patents on inventions and discoveries paid for with public money are held in the public domain.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
"The government either needs to stop making moral issues legal issues."
Moral issues? You mean like murder, theft, and rape? All legal issues are based on moral issues. Where would the law come from if it wasn't originally from people morals? Making something law puts a official government stamp of approval on someone's set of morals.
Creative Demolition
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five, you say? No, the answer is four: calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.
You can refer to an embryo in whatever clinical, dehumanizing terms you want. Call it a "scrap of tissue," call it a "bunch of cells," call it an "unwanted growth." Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is a baby.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five, you say? No, the answer is four: calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.
You can refer to an embryo in whatever personifying, emotive terms you want. Call it a "baby", call it a "person", call it a "lifeform". Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is not a sentient being.
You might like to note: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=baby ; at best, a fetus could be called a baby. But a fetus is not an embryo.
um, it isn't just the morning after pill. regular birth control pills can also cause a fertilized egg from being successfully implanted in the uterus. "the pill" does several things to prevent becoming pregnant, this is one of three "countermeasures" (can't remember the other two - you can google for 'em). i was raised in an evangelical church and it really is annoying that all those "pro-lifers" are running around on the pill...
.... whit which Christians curiosuly nowadays, specially in the US, are amusingly unaware off: "don't do into others what you don't want done nto you".
Do you want to kill sombedoy? THen the natural pricnciple begs the question: do you want to be killed?
Thousends of years of common culture and experience have molded an overwhelming "no" for an answer.
That is not a figment of our imagination, that is human natural law in action.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... about what is moral, the goverment can and should legislate.
When there is not an agreement, the goverment should get out of the way and allow free individuals to reach their own conclussions and act in consequence.
The issues you mention are universally acknoledged as moral ones independently of religious or cultural bias.
Abortion is clearly not, thus the state should protect each individual decissions regarding tis matter and not even think about criminalization.
Only in a fascist leaning state will the goverment of the day impose its morals into the whole population (i.e one child only policy in China for example).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You're right, that calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so. However, when I talk about Crime and Punishment, I say it's a great piece of literature. Someone else might come along and say it's not great literature, it's just a stupid book. Who's right? Of course, I'm going to say I am. However, when I argue with the man who says it's just a book, it will do me no good to deny that it is, in fact, just a book. It is just a book, but it's also other things, including a great work of literature.
Maybe you won't understand this example, so I'll give another that's more solid. Arguing about which it is-- it's not like arguing whether something is a leg or a tail. It's more like arguing whether a coke can is a coke can or if it's a hollow cylindrical object made of aluminum and filled with carbonated sugar water. The whole argument is a little stupid, but if each side would just stop and listen to the other, they'd find the other side wasn't so wrong in what they were saying, and that neither side's way of talking about it was exclusively true.
I appreciate the effort, but you need to learn a LOT more about stem cells, I think.
Forgive me if I don't believe you outright, but you're going against many reputable sources that I've read and heard speak, and I've run into my fair share of people on /. who speak authoritatively about things they don't really know all that much about. (even me a little) I'm not even saying you're necessarily wrong on all the facts, but implying that embryonic stem cells are useless in the field of medicine goes against too much that I've heard from researchers, and fits too nicely with your apparent political views.
And remember, I'm not against you. It was me who originally used the terminology of "grinding up babies" here. I just think that when you look at things fairly, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
"This was the original basis for modern anti-abortion agitation. Not that killing a fetus was immoral, but that white middle and upper class families were having fewer children."
:) (As the state of Indiana did.)
... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism." That damn sentimentalism! If not for that, we'd have had the morons long ago segregated and sterilized, so the New Race could prosper without being burdened by them (or the yellow hordes)! Right? Wait ... that sounds like racist eugenics!
Well, you could also say that among the original basis of the pro-abortion agitation was the fear on the part of people like Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) of what they perceived as the reproduction of inferior people, as she put it (in this 1924 article) "those parents who are least fit to reproduce the race." (That article also lists the conditions without which, in her view, children should not be born; granted, most people can probably come up with some conditions under which they'd prefer children not be born, but "most people" aren't also in favor of involuntarily sterilizing those deemed unfit, so it's necessary to think of her conditions not as idle chatter, but as rules she would have been willing to enforce
From The Pivot of Civilization:
"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying
(The Pivot of Civilization is available from Project Gutenberg, along with Sanger's "Woman and the New Race")
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Natural rights come from a very basic principle whit which Christians curiosuly nowadays, specially in the US, are amusingly unaware off: "don't do into others what you don't want done nto you".
Yes, so what? I'm sure the male black widow spider would just as soon live, too. The bottom line is, THAT'S A MORAL PRINCIPLE.
Do you want to kill sombedoy?So what if I do? I won't, because it's a grossly IMMORAL THING TO DO.
Thousends of years of common culture and experience have molded an overwhelming "no" for an answer.That is not a figment of our imagination, that is human natural law in action.
However you want to slice it, humankind has constructed a MORAL CODE that prohibits murder.
Again, what about all of the other animals in the animal kingdom that indiscriminantly kill their own species, even their own young? If it were truly a natural law, then this wouldn't happen.
But the point is, it's not. It is a MORAL PRINCIPLE that we as a species have adopted. A relatively obvious one, yes, but one nonetheless.
It's not difficult to understand. They regulated it by cutting off some avenues of research.
Pretty simple.
What we will get without those avenues is definitely at most exactly what we would get with those avenues, and very very likely less.
It is disingenuous to pretend that you can't see how restricting research can have at best a neutral and very likely a negative effect on the developments.
Thus, restricting the research is not a good thing. Unless of course it violates your religious principles and you feel everyone should live according to your principles.
I'm glad someone was helped with non-fetal cells. Seriously I am. But just because something else shows promise doesn't mean we shouldn't look into fetal cells. If both methods work equally well, be sure that the non-fetal cell version will win out in the marketplace due to the abundance (cheapness) of non-fetal cells.
As to the California thing, that's a different issue. I am Californian, and I voted against the $3B corporate welfare program. I feel that if these treatments really do show promise, then we will find plenty of companies that are willing to invest some money to get a reward later. There's no reason to throw money at the probem. But that doesn't have any reflection on the actual merit of the work.
seems pretty amazing... i can only imagine how far this might come in the next few years...
Get your torrents...
So the test is "sentience" now?
I gave sentience as an example of a very significant difference between an embryo, and what people usually think of as babies (as it happens, I believe that sentience is the most important factor in determining whether a thing should be treated as an individual entity with its own rights, but I realise that other people have other viewpoints). And yes, if it were proven that babies were not sentient, then I wouldn't have a problem with people killing them. But I'm not convinced that this is the case - for starters, babies have functioning brains, unlike embryos which have nothing of the sort; and this is not something that I'm advocating here (for similar reasons, you won't find me advocating late stage abortions, except for life threatening cases). The difference is that it's plausible that babies may be sentient, where as there is no way that an embryo has sentience (at least, without resorting to arguments like "for all you know, this brick wall could be sentient").
Citing a dictionary, incidentally, is an excellent way of demonstrating that you have no idea what the conversation is really about, or for that matter what dictionaries are for. But since you brought it up
You brought up the definitions game, by claiming that embryos are babies, and when someone suggested that some people view the situation differently, you said that they were simply wrong, because it is a fact that embryos are babies.
So since you are making the claim that an embryo is a baby as a fact, it's fair game to point out evidence to the contrary.
True, the definitions of baby include "very young child" and "unborn child", but I don't consider an embryo to be a child either!
This is a popular argument, but I'm not sure if I buy it in this instance. True, this kind of research is not the type typically adopted by biotech and pharmaceuticals because it is long-term, and high risk. However, a unique situation has arisen because these companies can invest in technology the academic sector does not have acess to and will not be able to obtain patent rights to(a much wider range of better stem cells). Also, they can play the game that Japanese industries played in the 80's by closely monitoring the progress of academic labs working with less sophisticated technology (existing cell lines) - saving time and money on early stage research as these companies are already used to doing. Additionally, the massive media attention, miraculous promises, and dramatic preliminary results thus far achieved have likely created a milieu of eager investors.
ôó
According the Center for Disease control: "The abortion ratio for black women (491 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (165 per 1,000)".
In terms of raw numbers, abortions by white mothers outnumber those by black mothers, but this may just mean that a black minority is disappearing ever so much faster.
I would bet that humans are one of the few species that kill members of their own species on a regular basis. Sure, if an aligator is starving, it might kill a young one to eat, or it might kill another adult that is trying to Bogart its meal, but rarely does it kill for no reason or out of malice. I don't think you can compare two non-human animals killing one another with two humans killing one another for that reason. Man does so much more harm to members of his own race at a much more fantastic rate than any other animal species; I'd be willing to be dollars to donuts on this.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
I was just reading about what is allowed in my own country, and it seems that we do allow embryonic stem cell research, as long as those embryos are leftovers from IVF treatments, and they are used with the parents consent. Article Here:
STEM CELL RESEARCH AND CLONING: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
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.
Wait, what? You're saying that you can point to God and say, "Look, there he is, he exists," just like you can point to FDR's physical wheelchair?
It is not possible for god to both exist and not exist, so that is NOT a subjective issue.
Your thinking appears to be rather limited. If there is-isnot a God entity that created this entire fiasco we call a universe, it would be quite possible for this creator to both exist and not exist. It could exist entirely or partially outside the universe in various ways, such that we will never be able to scientifically interact with or prove its "existence". Who are you to tell the creator of the universe what it can do, if such creator exists-notexists? Just because we don't have a word for a state of combined existence/nonexistence doesn't mean it can't be part of this universe. Never heard of quantum mechanics?
But what about all the helpless umbilicle cords that have been slaughtered for generations by uncaring, unthinking evildoers who want to separate the mother from the child? What about all the evil male circumcisions that have marred young male children for centuries? Who will cry for them? Oh my god this is all so terrible! Boo hoo hoo! ;P
Seriously dude. Get a grip.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
To me that only reinforces my argument that the morality of murder is an entirely man-made concept. When an animal does it, it is presumably for some hard-wired instinctual reason, with no contemplation or remorse. Only we can weigh the decision intelligently (or not) and come down on one side or the other.
In order to acheive the embryo in the first place, you take a mature female's egg and allow it to be fertiziled by male's sperm. At that point you then dissect the blastocyst (destroying it), and those cells are the "embryonic stem cells" as they have yet to differentiate.
So, there definitely is sperm involved, and if at any point the blastocyst is implanted into a human female's uterus, it will attach and draw nutrients, continue to grow, and eventually produce a baby. Religious people infer that since the blastocyst is viable from conception forward, then the destruction of the human life at any point is morally concerning, doubly so since its being done to get its cells for experimentation. After all, science has been conceiving babies in a petri dish for almost 30 years, and like you said, the only difference is that we allow them to mature.
'at least not in the sense we are talking about'
Well, at least not in the sense that 'your' talking about. You see different people have different views:
my view is that the whole living dead thing is just a pile of shit, I'm no different from a stone when it comes down to the quantum level, so why should I elevate myself above the level of a stone.
A fundamentalist Jews view is that the God created the earth, we are made in the image of God, you cannot eat or do anything unclean as per Leviticus and Deuteronomy 14 (that means don't eat shell fish, pork and no taking up the bum please).
Now since most of 'western' culture is based on a mutated fundamentalist Jewish view and I'm not a fundamentalist Jew you would hardly expect me to be talking in the same sense as you.
Now, I wonder does Bush eat pork and shell fish?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The side-effects of the TriPhase treatment are convulsions and fever, followed by death!
It's usually a symbiotic relationship and sometimes hard to tell where the Bactrea/virus stop and the human starts.
Try giving a china man milk?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Yes, it is an oxymoron that makes it so much better to have as your religious basis.
;)
But as usual the slashdot crowds need winking smileys to tell if something is a joke. So here it is
It depends on how you define national defense. Personally I consider fighting/preventing the next Black Plague to fall under that category (okay, so bio and chem need to be researched) and nukes probably fall under that category (that's physics).
Scientists already know that embryonic cells hold much more flexability and promise than other sources
The results that we have today are not coming from embryonic stem cells. No matter how many times you talk about promise and flexability, the fact is that other sources are yielding results TODAY.
The problem is that Humans are great at picking out patterns. This ability served us well when trying to plan a harvest, or follow a mammoth migration, but it can also cause us to see connections where none exist. All religion started as superstition.
You are arguing against a point that I never made.
Have I, at any time in this discussion, brought up religion or the soul? No I have not.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"When God says "You shall not...", that seems pretty clear too, doesn't it?"
When the bible says that you should stone a disobedient child, that seems pretty clear, too.
Deuteronomy 21:18 "If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,
Deuteronomy 21:19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.
Deuteronomy 21:20 "They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.'
Deuteronomy 21:21 "Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear.
So, believers have two choices. Either they follow all the rules of the bible, and start stoning disobedient children, or they don't follow any of the rules of the bible, and don't try to force those rules on others. You can't pick and choose what rules to follow based on how you feel about certain issues. Well, you can, but then I can call you a hypocritical idiot.
Since the process for extracting and multiplying stem cell lines is essentially cloning
You need to research the issue. There is no way that the process of extracting stem cells could be called or confused with cloning. It simply isn't. There is no DNA manipulation. No sub-celluar modification. No reproduction.
The UN move would not have banned all embryonic stem cell research except for the purposes of human non-therapudic cloning.
Since they didn't actually ban or restrict the use of fetal tissue in research?
Clear, Dark Skies
You're wrong. Children under the age of one are not sentient, as near as we can tell given that the term itself has basically no rigorous meaning and that, if it did, it would be utterly untestable.
I'm pretty sure that makes you a monster.
You're the one claiming that babies are non-sentient beings, no different to machines without feelings. Sentience is hard to define, but let's talk in terms of any of the following: ability to feel pain, consciousness, the ability to have thoughts.
Now, I'm well aware than a baby brain is not fully formed. If there is proof that a baby brain has nothing we might consider sentience at all, you'll have to show me some URLs or whatever.
You yourself admit that this is something that is untestable - hence we cannot be sure, but the fact that they have working brains just like adults have working brains gives us a clue that they may be sentient. On the other hand, an embryo has no brain. We can be far more certain that it is no more sentient than a brick.
Put it this way - sometimes when people are born with non-functioning brains, or brain death occurs but the body is still alive, some people (including myself) argue that killing such people (letting them die by starvation, whatever) is okay. Would you say that such people are human/baby killers, or tell them "I'm pretty sure that makes you a monster"?
Wait. Hang on a sec. Before we go any further: How old are you? If you're too young for your reproductive instincts to have kicked in yet, that'll explain a lot.
That you can't make an argument without resorting to personal attacks?
So so far you've implied that it's okay to kill babies and people with brain damage or organic brain disorders. Anybody else you wanna get rid of?
I haven't argued that it's okay to kill babies, or anyone with some form of brain damage or disorders, since I believe that all these are sentient, thinking beings.
OTOH, see above - people do advocate allowing people with brain death (where the thinking part of the brain is dead, and only the part which controls bodily functions remains) to die. Whilst you may disagree with their point of view, you should understand that they exist, and they are hardly the same as "baby killers".
Look, I understand that you're being sincere and all that, but you DO know enough basic history to realize that societies that have chosen to make such life-and-death decisions have rapidly spiraled into the deepest sorts of depravity, don't you? [...] Are you prepared to go down that road again, just trusting that this time we'll know where to stop?
Okay I see your point - but why draw the line where you draw it? Why not go even further the other way, and don't kill any animals. Wait, plants are living too. If we kill them, who knows where it may lead.
What does "the definitions game" mean?
I mean that you started saying it was a fact that embryos are "babies", when it is dubious that this is true, and many people do not use the terms in this way.
Well, I'm real close to not considering you human, either. Does that mean it's okay for me to argue for your summary execution? If your answer here is anything other than "no," I think you really need to reconsider your values system.
My answer is "no". If an embryo started having a discussion with me on Slashdot, I'd change my point of view on the nature of an embryo.
You should realise that not everyone has the same viewpoint as you. I'm curious what your exact viewpoint is here - is it that all human life should be protected? If yes, I could start asking you about if torturing animals was okay, and paint you as some kind of "monster" for advocating that. If you said all life should be protected, then I'd ask the same question of plants - is it okay to eat them, or maybe torture them by chopping down a tree, or stamping on them? What about bacteria?
I've read some about the various stem cell stuff but my own background is a programmer so yeah, I'm not specifically knowledgeable about this stuff.
From my understanding, there are a multitude of issues when dealing with embryonic stem cells. Their very "plenepotent" nature tends to lead to uncontrolled growth with the result being tumors. Their "foreign cell" nature means that you have to deal with the whole range of rejection issues that come with any tissue transplant. I've also read that areas like the spinal chord are more sensitive to foreign tissue than other areas.
Thus, these issues add increased complexity when it comes to developing therapies that would use embryonic stem cells.
Meanwhile, more and more sources of adult stem cells are being found and used in therapies. The fact that the cells can be harvested for the person who is being treated avoids the whole rejection issue. The restricted range of cells that they can become also seems to address the uncontrolled growth problems that have been encountered with the other stem cells. This means that doctors and scientists can concentrate more on the actual application of the cells than in overcoming the tumor and rejection issues.
Thus, "walk before you run."
I may be grossly oversimplifying this, but the point was that industry is voting with their checkbooks as well. The therapies that are actually working are coming from adult stem cells so maybe we should concentrate on them and understand what we can do with those.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
As a relatively devout Protestant, yup, you are bang-on.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
The problem with detecting sarcasm is that it requires that you can tell if the speaker is smart. If you don't know if the speaker is smart, then you can't tell if the silly thing he just said is a joke or just one of those silly things that stupid people actually sincerely believe. That is especially true when it comes to sarcasm about religion. There is no discernable difference between sarcasm and a Jack Chick tract, for example, until after you learn more about the person authoring the material.
And you *did* say it was possible for god to both exist and not exist (which isn't the agnostic position, by the way), so it could have just been that you were an idiot. I couldn't tell the difference from here.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You are confusing "objective" with "provable". They are not the same thing. It is possible for something to be objective but unprovable, which is pretty much what agnositicsm says about god existing. To say that god's existence is subjective is closer to Unitarianism than agnosticism, (and this attitude is what I see as one of the logical flaws with Unitarianism.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You refer to the "main english translation" There are a great number of english translations. I would not call the KJV the "main" translation. I don't use the KJV - I prefer other translations for readability and style. There's nothing inherently wrong with the KJV, and there are not substantive departures between the various accurate translations that are available. Some that I consider accurate are the NASB, NIV, NKJV.
For the sake of argument, let me agree with your assertion that the KJV has been "revised many times." What is the reason for revisions? Archaeology has given us more copies - better access to more accurate information from antiquity about the original texts. When that occurs, revisions *should* occur. As far as I know, those that have occurred have not been in any core areas of Christian doctrine.
The core of Christian doctrine is consistently taught in the different translations. Other holy books have had revisions that significantly affect core teachings. Christianity has not had that occur.
WRT other works of antiquity, there are 5,000+ manuscripts of biblical texts. To reject the Bible on the basis of lack of copies means that you'd have to reject Aristotle's poetry, Plato's tetrologies, Heroditus, Tacticus, Caesar's Gallic war - all of which have fewer than 100 manuscripts. In addition, you'd have to throw out the Illiad. It has FAR more than other works, but still has only ~600 copies.
In addition the biblical copies come from a time much closer to their time in history than ANY other work of antiquity. The average gap between original composition and the earliest copy of most works of antiquity is ~1,000 years. The new testament has fragments from within one generation, whole books within 100 years, and the entire new testament has documentary evidence within 250 years of its authorship.
religions are extremely dangerous
I agree. The test of a world view, however, is not whether some crackpot (or large groups of crackpots) can engage in horrible acts in the name of a philosophy. The real test of a world view is what happens when people follow very closely the teachings of a religion. I submit to you that when people really follow the teachings of Christianity, society and culture are far more emotionally and physically healthy. The same cannot be said for many other world religions.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
On what do you base your assertions? Do you have documentary evidence?
The number of copies of scriptures that we have over time makes capricious changes of scripture impossible.
The dead sea scrolls are an example of the kind of verification we have that the Bible has *not* been changed over time.
It may be convenient for you to believe that the Bible text has been changed on a whim, but the facts don't back it up.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Holiness...is entirely subjective
Says who? If there's no objective standard for truth, I agree. However, I beleive that there is an objective standard for truth.
The idea that someone should decide on behalf of someone else what is holy and what is not is deeply immoral.
What is your basis for morality?
It's only inappropriate if the one doing the deciding does not have that right. By definition, a creator would have that right.
The very fact that you appeal to morality (an absolute) to defend relativism undermines your belief in relativism.
Homosexuality is, deal
I must confess that I don't follow your point. What does that mean?
That there are homosexuals? Unquestionably.
That you disagree with my perspective on homosexual behavior? OK. That doesn't make it OK with God or a good idea either, for that matter, but you're free to have your opinion.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
So the test is "sentience" now? Two things: First, please quit moving the goalposts. Second, surely a newborn is no more possessed of sentience than a newly fertilized zygote. There's absolutely no way to know for sure, but even the most optimistic estimates are that self-awareness doesn't begin to emerge until after the first year of life. Are babies younger than one year of age not really babies? Should it be okay to kill them?
A newborn certainly is more sentient than a zygote. Sentience does not require self-awareness; the two terms are not synonymous by the way. A newborn might not be self-aware *, but it is sentient. There is a thinking being in there.
There is not a thinking being in a zygote or embryo, however.
Is it moral or not to kill non-self-aware beings? That is a tricky question. My answer would be that if nothing else, since other humans highly value the lives of infants, it is considered, by generally "all" people, wrong to kill them. Their lives are valued. Personally, I find it immoral because they are sentient humans, which should not be killed regardless of how others value them.
Unborn brainless human collections of cells, however, have differing views attached to them. Some people value the lives of all embyros; others do not. That's where the moral differences come in to play.
* Self-awareness is a tricky issue. People often talk of things as either being self-aware or not. However, I do not think self-awareness just "turns on" at some point in a child's development. It is either always on (from when neurons start firing) or it gradually develops.
I think awareness develops when the brain starts operating, and awareness of oneself develops over the course of time. Hence, self-awareness is not a good place to start when considering rights.
But since you brought it up, definition #1 is "a very young child." Embryos naturally meet this standard.
If we're going to play the game of looking at definition #1 (which I'll join because the game is fun), let's look at dictionary.com's definition #1 for "child." That is, "A person between birth and puberty." And embryos certainly don't fit this category.
But that's if you play the game of looking at definition #1. And we both know that using dictionary definitions to twist through moral issues is a pretty retarded thing to try.
Just like using weighted terminology can add weight to your words, but it can't add weight to your argument.
Now I have to quickly answer your other post since it is more convenient to do it here:
You can refer to an embryo in whatever clinical, dehumanizing terms you want. Call it a "scrap of tissue," call it a "bunch of cells," call it an "unwanted growth." Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is a baby.
Likewise, calling it a difference over terminology or conflicting worldviews or whatever doesn't change the essential fact that embryonic stem cells are harvested from the corpses of dead babies.
If an embryo is not a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead embryos.
If an embryo is a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead babies which are in the embryonic stage.
Does that terminology make you squeamish?
No.
Rightly so!
Huh?
The killing of a baby for medical research, even if justified by the possibility of wonderful results, should never be undertaken lightly.
Replace "baby" with "embryo" and I would still agree with you. So let's not undertake the research lightly; let's only do research on non-sentient babies. Embryos and zygotes fall under that category, so why would there be anything wrong with research on them?
(Disclaimer: I am against embryonic stem cell research. I am arguing against your arguments, not your opinion.)
A newborn certainly is more sentient than a zygote.
Oh, lord. First there was talk of sentience, and now it's sentience on a sliding scale? You're dealing with a concept that doesn't even have a useful definition, and you're trying to establish degrees. Is the abject absurdity of this really lost on you?
Where did this whole "sentience" idea come from, anyway? Is it possible that you've been reading too much bad science fiction? They call it fiction for a reason, you know.
Unborn brainless human collections of cells, however
You misspelled "babies."
I think awareness develops when the brain starts operating
So sometime around age one, then? Say somewhere between twelve and eighteen months? Before that, grind 'em up to bake your bread, right?
If we're going to play the game
We're not.
If an embryo is not a baby
That's like saying, "If a tail is a leg," or "If the sky is purple and full of can openers." It's a hypothetical contrary to fact. (Which, incidentally, means it's also grammatically incorrect. We use the subjunctive when discussing hypotheticals contrary to fact. You'd say, "If an embryo were not a baby.")
let's only do research on non-sentient babies.
That's a meaningless sentence. "Sentient" is a word we can't even define in any useful sense, nor can we test against it. In order to determine who is an who isn't sentient -- or, according to what you said earlier, who's more or less sentient --we basically have to take your word for it.
Nuh-uh. Ain't gonna happen.
I write in my journal
If you do what God says is wrong, you can expect that there will be consequences.
I know this is off topic, but may I ask your opinion on the book of Leviticus?
It seems to run contrary to what I understood to be Christian principles, but then I may not understand Christian principles very well, not being of that faith. From what I know of Leviticus, though, it seems like the rules in it don't apply (things like rules for owning slaves, eating shellfish, burning bulls...) How do Christians view this book of the bible? I thought Leviticus is also where the anti-homosexuality comes from (?), so obviously it is being looked to for guidance, but I think there are a lot of things in that book of the bible that are quite frankly appalling. I would be very interested to know how this book of rules fits in with modern Christianity, in your opinion.
Voices--Art, Poetry, Photography
The parent is not entirely flame-bait IMHO. While passionate, we all know that this topic is bound to spur passionate posts.
I would like to respond.
The question I pose is: By what means does greater self-awareness merit any sense of morality at all? By reducing humanity to purely biological matter or mammals, we admit that by nature's perspective there is no means. We would be saying that we should be governed only by natures laws.
Anthropologically speaking, our "greater self-awareness" enables human culture to exist, and morality manifests itself in different cultures in different ways. Surely you wouldn't say that a culture that practices infanticide and mandatory euthanasia is moral! However subjectively speaking, no one should be able to make any judgement on these activities on any basis other than concensus of the largest set of self-aware meat bags. So, all that is needed to change immoral to moral is a shift in consensus.
As for the pathetic belief in "god", I'm afraid world-wide you are far in the minority. I would reason that cultural definitions of things like murder stem in there most basic parts not from greater self-awareness, but from a self-awareness and corporate-awareness of human beings as being far more valuable than ordinary meat-bags. Many times this awareness is based on the perception that man is unique. Your assertion that humanity is not unique is also not shared by the majority of the world. What is in question is what make our uniqueness valuable. Is it intelligence, self-awareness, evolutionary progress, or is it a dignity endowed by our Creator in the inheritence of an eternal soul?
Without the intrinsic dignity of humanity, survival of the fittest is also the most "moral" course for the race (ensured survival).
Pro-lifer's speak much of the culture of death. The culture of death is a culture that does not recognize the uniqueness of the human being and therefore creates a morality that is subject to the shifting whims of the populus to the expense of some innocents that have been defined as inconvenient, unwanted, useless, or undesirable.
I for one find more hope in the possibility of a Creator God to bring some absolutes into this murky picture of subjective morality, lest you or I be on the wrong side of the consensus some day.
w2^7me out.
Even by that standard, abortion is not always unethical.
The "but what if the mother is dying" approach is the very first tool in the abortion apologist's toolbox. Here's why it fails. I'm gonna go slow here, because it's tricky. Ready? Here we go:
The fact that an unethical act may be the less objectionable of two unethical alternatives does not magically make that act ethical.
Got it? When the mandate is to do no harm, killing a patient is unethical. Period, end of discussion.
The fact that doctors sometimes have to choose between two unethical options doesn't mean that one or the other option is somehow ethical.
(Incidentally, in all but the very most rare of cases, hyperemesis resolves by week 16. It's virtually never life-threatening to either mother or baby, and in even the worst cases, treatment with fluids is 100% effective. In other words, the only way for your contrived hypothetical to emerge is for the mother to be among an exceedingly rare group -- the incidence is less than five per hundred thousand --and for the mother to deliberately neglect her own health by refusing the standard treatment protocol. Dumb example.)
I write in my journal
Your definition doesn't differentiate between the cells on the skin of my right little finger and me personally.
A reasonable definition (which doesn't assume magic like spirits, etc) is that to be a human from a legal (etc) perspective we need a functioning brain (or at least that there has to have been a functioning brain).
If there never has been a working brain, there has never been a person.
I don't care about the rights of my skin cells that die and fall of; I don't care about an embryo -- I care about a child when it's born.
(Where is the limit embryo/person? That is another can of worms -- but it should encompass a working brain.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
First, let me say thanks for a well reasoned post.
Quickly, while I agree I am in the minority, that doesn't mean I'm wrong, or more subjectively, wrong to think the way I do. Round earthers were in the minority once, but society evolved. I hope something similar will happen.
As far as the worldwide belief that humans are special, I honesty don't care. It's simply arrogance, nothing more. Humans got lucky in the race to the top. We won't be here forever, at which time I'll be proven right.
Now, for the final thought. Sadly, I have spent a great deal of time working with people who have very little or NO mental functioning. If you were to spend time observing them, and then went to the zoo, the similarities in behavior would shock you. Dignity, a human construct, is nowhere in these peoples thoughts, but rather is imposed on them by others with higher functioning.
What people don't understand is that to argue that god exists with me is the same as trying to argue Zeus exists, or Santa Claus. To me, there is no difference, as one type of mythology is as good as any other.
I do not recall Jesus saying that his version of Judeaism was anything but another interpretion. He didn't preach "Christianity"
With all due respect, I don't think that your memory is serving you well. Under Judaism, man was able to have and maintain a relationship with God as a result of two things, personal 'righteousness' through compliance with the Mosaic (and rabbinic) law, and through blood sacrifices to atone for his shortcomings.
Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the father except by me." His sacrifice, according to his teachings, was a complete and perfect one - the animal sacrifices before then were a symbol of the sacrifice that He was to become.
Jesus was a Jew, but he also claimed to be God himself "I and the Father are One" and he accepted worship from men - something that only God can do, according to Jewish teachings.
Jesus' teachings about religion were far different from the Judiasm of that day.
a strong religious belief helps people do terrible things even if the belief is totally wrong.
Agreed. Strong religious belief helps people do a great deal of good, whether or not what their religion teaches is good, too. As an example, I believe that Mormonism leads people away from God because of their unbiblical teachings about the nature of God. However, the LDS church has an excellent track record of building strong families, and they teach parents how to love their kids with words and deeds - arguable a good thing, even if the ultimate teachings of that organization are wrong.
The true test of a world view is the logical outcome of having adherents follow its teachings to the letter. Crackpots exist in every religion. What happens to marriage, family, government, the rights of the oppressed, the poor, those in prison, and society as a whole when people are completely committed to living out the teachings of their philosophy?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Again I ask you on what do you base your assertion that there is a lack of clarity in Jesus' teachings?
The Christian church, while it has legions of denominations, *does* agree on the fundamentals of the faith, and about Jesus' teachings.
Of course there are fringe groups that believe differently a la David Koresh and the Jesus seminar, but those do not represent mainstream Christian thought.
The text of the Bible is well documented and the canon is consistently understood across Christendom with the exception of the RC apocyphal books. Other writings, like the gnostic gospels have never seriously been considered or accepted by the Christian church.
The books recognized as a part of the canon a few hundred years after Christwere not a new collection, but reflected the writings that were already commonly understood to be a part of holy writ.
To suggest otherwise does not do justice to the facts.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
But somehow, there is no effort to shutdown these fertility who are deliberately "creating life", just so they can throw most of them away.
So if they're going to throw embryos away, we might as well use the cells for something useful.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Just a little side note... Contact was a book before it was a movie, using movies as a way to prove a point makes you look, well stupid. Using a book on the other hand....
fund an activity which more than half of the population might have a disagreement with?
Given the number of Catholics who have sex before marriage with condoms, I'd say "more than half" is a VAST overstatment.