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US Stem Cells Contaminated
Croaking Toad writes "According to The Register, US-based scientists using stem cells has hit a brick wall. The stem cells apparently have been contaminated for quite a while with animal proteins rendering them useless in the treatment of human illnesses. New stem cell harvesting was outlawed in the USA by a 2001 Executive Order from President Bush." To be precise, stem cell harvesting wasn't outlawed; the usage of federal funding was outlawed. Several states and research institutions have been using their own money to undertake research. The AP coverage is up as well. Update: 01/24 19:40 GMT by J : Carl Zimmer has a fascinating description of the sugars we humans lack that contaminated the stem cell lines. What a curious genetic heritage we have...
This was mentioned back in the Presidential debates. Bush said we have X Stem Cell Lines available, while Kerry said that the available lines are contaiminated with mouse DNA and probably other DNA.
The embryonic stem cells have certain desirable biological characteristics, such as pluripotency. In practice, it's somewhat difficult to separate non-federal funding from federal financing. E.g, previous federal grants may have been used to build and equip a laboratory, necessitating the building of separate, redundant facilities.
New stem cell harvesting was outlawed in the USA by a 2001 Executive Order from President Bush.
This is slashdot, with the journalistic integrity of Dan Rather.. I should not have expected any different.
Stem cell harvesting is not illegal, so harvest away. What you can't do accoring to that 2001 executive order is harvest stem cells and expect the government to pay for it. It's like saying Bush outlawed cars because he won't buy you one.
That's fine with me anyway, it's beyond me why the government pays for reasearch that does not go into the public domain. Let pfizer pay for their own research! They don't need my subsidy.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Which is itself a bit of a misleading statement, as stem cell research is a very recent thing. It would be like saying "President Britany Spears III was the first president to fund time travel research" in the year 2145.
And since everyone is claiming that research using these stems sells will cure every known ailment, the major drug companies should be fighting each other to give money to every last researcher.
Oh wait... they're not? And the $4 billion in funding in California was heavily pushed and lobied for by the private research companies who will be getting the funding?
"...any researcher who touches them can kiss his [Federal] funding good bye."
Very important distinction.
It's amazing how many people believe that stem cells come from abortions. The religious right does an amazing job of spreading bad information and nobody ever promotes correct information with as much zeal or money.
Stems cells are very much "byproducts from fertility clinics". When married couples pay for in-vitro fertilization, the clinics fertilize many eggs in a lab. After a certain ammount of time, the healthiest embryos are chosen and implanted. The rest of the embryos are destroyed as medical waste. That's it. No abortions. Those embroys were never destined to be born. Why not help people with them?
-B
I wonder which lobby would have more influence -- corporate or Christian? Right now, I'd say Christian cause the funding is not there.
You'd very likely be wrong. Bush's tax cuts have plainly delivered tens of billions to rich individuals and corporations already (with the deficit climbing precipitously largely due to these changes). His various regulatory policymakers have made it easier for polluters to pollute and tax cheaters to cheat.
As for policies that would suit the Falwell/Dobson wing of the Christian Right...hmm, the fed. money stem cell research is one small step. Partial birth abortion ban would be another small one. But he couldn't even begin to get "marriage is between 1 man and 1 woman" enacted as a Constitutional amendment (died on both chamber floors), and recently declared the federal DOMA ("Defense of Marriage Act") law would be sufficient to stop gay marriage, while it obviously isn't (states' rights, people, states' rights). And what's he starting with this term? An abortion ban? Nope, Social Security privitization, a boondoggle for brokerage houses, not the Christian Right. He may serve two masters (the moral conservatives and the fiscal conservatives), but he knows who's gonna cut the check.
RW
The contaminants cause human antibodies to attack the transplanted cells. This has been demonstrated in experiments. All of this was covered in "TFA." This makes them dangerous and probably useless for human beings without some dubious attempts to remove the contaminants. I say dubious because they are unlikely to succeed, and in addition likely only handle the particular contaminations we already know about.
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To all of those that jumped up and said that only Federal money is withheld no law is passed against stem cell research (their emphasis not mine) I should point out the obvious that...
frontline research is conducted with mostly Federal money coming out of the NSF, DoE (you name it) and not the private sector (unless subsidized by... Federal Grands).
Why do I always have to point out the obvious to people that don't know what they are talking about, but have a clear opinion about it, and are so happy to accept whatever the prevailing truth of the day happens to be, as long as it fits their very clear and concise perception of reality?
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
You're talking huge amounts of research (read: huge amounts of money) before any useful, practical results are produced. Very few private companies have the resources, let alone the desire to fund such a venture. It costs about $1 billion just to develop a new drug, without radical new technology like stem cells. Much, much more fundamental research is needed before any profits can be made.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
As inflamitory as the following may be to you, you post is equally inflamitory to me. In my viewpoint pregnancy is a medical condition, and a cureable one at that. It should not matter if that cure is morally offensive to you or I as we are not the one making the decission. Morals are a personal thing and I don't believe they should be forced upon others. You may want to compare it to murder, but in my mind I can see a difference. If you are morally objectional to abortion, please don't have one, but please do not try to make that decission for everyone.
blah blah blah....
drightler@technicalogic.com
Not true. Some Germans cared, some didn't. To say that no Germans thought that mass murder was wrong is simply wrong.
>>The slaveowners actually thought they were doing a service by beating their slaves and forcing them to labor.
Only those who believed their own lies. Just because you keep up a front doesn't make it the truth.
What I find most ridiculous is that the same group of people who said that a black man is less than a white man and that kidnapping and enslaving africans was the "white man's burden" are the same group who pretend that they are the worlds single moral authority, and claim that as the basis for everything they are for. Infanticide has a longer history than civilization. Longer than our species. As far as opinions go, mine is that the fetus isn't a child until there's brain activity. None of this "potential" tripe that so many people bandy about. Until then it's just a lump of flesh.
You want to rail against "child murder"? How about the foetal deaths caused by pollution? How about all those dead kids in Iraq? Conservatives have no moral authority because they have continuously contradicted themselves.
If murder is murder, why have a death penalty? Why start preemptive wars? Political convenience, that's why. It's all a lie.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
If I still had mod points I'd mod you into flaimebait oblivion.
As it is I am personally pro-life. My vote, however, is firmly pro choice. Why? Because as soon as you legislate what is acceptable and what is not (as to when an abortion is legal when normally banned), you will inevitably run into a condition where an abortion would make logical sense, but is not covered by the law, and thus is illegal.
I am pro-life because my mother had me ten days after she turned 18. I was put up for adoption, and was loved and raised by a couple who could not have children. They are mom and dad. I now enjoy a wonderful relationship will all my parents, (I have three "dads", two "moms", and one step-mom). I know full well I could be an aborted fetus, but I'm not, thus I'm firmly pro-life. I will not, under darn near any circumstance, impose my belief on another, thus my vote being firmly pro-choice.
You're trying to equate the Holocaust with abortion. While abortion is abominable, even in my eyes (partial birth particularly so) it is not the Holocaust. The Holocaust was about eliminating a human genome from the planet, a far more insidious thing. Get over your bible belt, moralistic, dictatorial views on abortion.
Roe V Wade was a Good Thing (tm) and should be allowed to stand.
-nB
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Never the less, the executive order in question is reprehensible. Bush is using tenuous, illogical, religious grounds to justify denying a large category of funding to a promising area of scientific inquiry. Hundreds of potential stem cell lines for research are being destroyed daily from aborted fetuses. If Bush is in favor of destroying existing resources (human tissues) instead of using them to advance science and save lives, why not ban organ donation? Does anything in the bible say "thou shalt not help fund researching [new, human, embryonic] stem cells if thou art the [federal] government?" If this research is immoral, why only ban government funding, as opposed to all funding, or the research itself? If this is about abortion, why not oppose abortion, rather than research? Can anyone make sense of this policy? It scares me, not in how sweeping the effects are, but because The President, the "Leader of the Free World," is using executive orders to dictate where scientific research funding goes based on personal, nonsensical, unpopular religious motives.
I think the rest of government should do what the Pentagon does, and ignore it. There's no basis in law for "executive orders" anyway. I doubt any president would allow a case based on violating an executive order to go to court, in case the Supreme Court ruled that Executive orders don't exist. Chances are, Bush can't do anything but get grumpy if the whole Federal Government simply ignores his ban.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I guess it makes you feel superior to those on the other side of the debate by defining a pregnancy, even one in its embryonic stage as equal to a fully-formed and developed baby regardless of whether or not that pregnancy has developed to the stage where it has a viable chance of life outside the womb.
I find it funny that the same people who are so adamant that abortion is murder are almost always the same people that are opposed to the dissemination of methods of birth control as well as the same people who are quick to make single mothers the scapegoats for all of society's ills.
And what right do you have to tell a pregnant woman, regardless of how her child was conceived, just what exactly she is allowed to do with her own body?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I don't have much of a problem with the state funding the research, but dammit, we don't have the money to be doing this right now. That $3B borrowed will cost the state $6B, possibly more if the state's credit rating doesn't improve in the next few years. Lets get our house in order, and then wait a couple of years before we go into this.
:/
Not to mention the questions about just who would be profiting under this.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Since the original comment was censored by right-leaning moderators, here is a recap:
It's technically correct, but also misleading, to say that federal funding of embryonic-stem cell research is all that has been banned. While technically true, the reach of federal funding extends so wide and deep in the research community that the net effect of banning embryonic stem-cell research by any group, organization, or individual is indistinguishable from outlawing it completely to most organizations.
It isn't just federal funding for stem-cell research that has been banned. Federal funding for any research, related or not, bans any embryonic stem-cell research from being conducted, anywhere, by anyone associated with the organization involved. Nearly every research organization in the country receives federal funding in one form or another. If the lab across campus doing physics has a federal grant, you can't do embryonic stem-cell research (except using the existing, contaminated lines).
The effect is the same as outlawing stem-cell research for 99.9% of all research facilities, a fact the fundies and Republican apologists like to play down or dismiss entirely. However, it doesn't make distortions like those in the summary any less obnoxious or inaccurate. There is at least one entirely privately funded research facility in California that is doing embryonic stem-cell research, our superstitious, less-than-intelligent, ever-so-less-than-competent president notwithstanding.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That doesn't make any sense. There would be no need to conceive only to abort. There are plenty enough abortions occurring to supply plenty of stem cells for research. It's a bogus argument that's used to shield a religious motive.
To be consistent then you have to be against invitro fertilization. As the techniques necessitates a certain amount of waste in the production of fertilized eggs which have to be destroyed anyway, and their is really no way around this (the irony, a way for invertile couples to have a baby requires the destruction of fertilized embryos). Protest and try and ban invitro-fertilization if you believe that life begins with fertilization and thus destroying fertilized eggs is immoral, but if you choose not to do not split hairs protesting stem cell research.
Umbilical cord stem cells are not a replacement for embryonic stem cells, though they are still useful. Also to say that one form works while the other doesn't is trying to second guess the research, as extrodinarily enough the stem cell research is designed to find out how exactly what the stem cells are capable of and what they are useful for, so we don't know what each type of stem cell will work for a particular situation and that is one of the reasons for doing research.
U.S.A. did not BAN stem cells. They banned fetal/embryonic stem cells.
Furthermore, many of the great stem cell achievements, (if not most) have been from non-fetal stem cells.
Please fix this post and make it accurate instead of re-iterating media bullshit agenda. Thank you!
This whole stem cell fiasco has been a hammer to pound President Bush on the head, and I think every sane human out there has seen it for what it is
Yes Bush is being hammered on this issue, and rightfully so IMHO. I do not think that is the purpose of the issue, though. This is a complicated issue with many diverse opinions. Implying that only the people who agree with you are sane is an example of why we aren't finding a common ground. Leave the rhetoric out of it, please.
Let's stop politicizing science and just approach it with objectivity and skepticism for once, folks.
Agreed. Unfortunately, the issue is considered a moral issue for many, which makes it both a) political b) impossible to keep objective. By its very nature it is a subjective debate. Remember that it was President Bush who first politicized the issue on a national level by banning federal funding of new fetal stem cell lines. It was brilliant political strategy. It is a polarizing issue and one that plays to the neo-cons political strengths.
And please, when science starts stretching the bounds of morality, let's make the right decision to limit science and not limit morality.
That should be the whole point of the debate. Science has always stretched the boundaries of morality. Usually there is a furor, then acceptance, then a moving on to the next boundary. Ask Galileo, Darwin, etc. What scares many of us,is that many sincere people think of morality as an Absolute delivered from on high, and not a growing and changing societal standard.
That's what makes us different from the research that German and Japanese scientists did in WWII.
Congratulations, you have just activated Godwin's Law. You lose.
I.V.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
You may be correct that solutions will be found that do not involve abortion -- but they will not come first, and faced with the choice between "living in a glass coffin" and accepting something that's already controversial...
Look at the end game. "Abortion cured my Alzheimers." "I wasn't ready to have a child, but I was ready to save a life!" That kind of thinking ends the war. Sure, you'll have boutique procedures developed for those who want to remain ethically pure, but they'll initially be less effective than "the real thing".
And what happens when kids become involved? It's one thing to refuse treatment for yourself, but for your child? Even if you do refuse the treatment, should the state respect your will, given that it's clearly not in the best interest of the child? We've already seen some of this with those sects that refuse blood transfusions, or even any modern medical treatment on their children.
The only X-Factor is if the first cure from stem cells comes from an ethically sound source (adult cells, mainly). I don't expect this, but it's not impossible. If it happens, fetal sources would be put on the defensive -- if it was so much better, why didn't it have the first cure?
parent is (99%) correct:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp
A couple goes to IVF(in vitro fertilization) clinic; an operation is performed to extract oocytes(unfertilized embryos). These oocytes are all fertilized and then frozen. The (now)embryos are thawed one at a time and incubated. When they have passed a critical point (the stage at which a genetic disease would develop for instance); the embryo is surgically implanted in the female.
The embryos that are unused are very much THROWN AWAY. So all of those activists out there that are attempting to convince you (including the president who said that stem cells crossed a "fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life.")
I'm sorry Mr. president, but that line gets crossed every time an embryo from an IFV clinic gets thrown away.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
A zygote in a Petri dish is not part of a pregnancy. Without a pregnancy, you cannot have an abortion. It's patently obvious that the attempt to classify the discarding of unused IVF zygotes as "abortions" has nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with political posturing to an ignorant public. This resembles Humpty Dumpty redefining "glory" to suit his whim of the moment; it debases the very purpose of language, which depends on agreed-upon meanings.
I could get rich mining irony ore here. If you mean that it's an issue (and a problem) that a large part of the American public is taking a highly-emotional political position based on what amounts to a large number of partial truths and outright falsehoods, then you begin to understand. Your problem is that the facts are opposite the stance you appear to be backing.Sustainability and energy independence essay
Whose purpose? The "purpose" of sex is to make a baby, so rubbers are illegal? All those living, human sperm cells (and that lonely egg cell), doomed to death when they were faithfully obeying their purpose. The purpose of marriage is to make a baby, so childless couples are criminals - divorce is a crime, girls who don't put out on dates where my purpose is to get laid are criminals.
--
make install -not war
There are two things that puzzle me about the United States of America: fear of human sexuality and fear of progress.
Blowing things up on TV and showing violence on the news is okay. People start complaining only if a part of a naked female body appears on the tube or if those *damn* scientists try yet another method that could potentially save us from suffering and premature death. Whoever thinks that U.S. is a country of freedom has never tried to get an abortion in Mississippi or teach evolution in Georgia's public schools. I do not even want to start talking about stem cells...
Although federal funding is cut, I suspect that it will not stop research in the long run. I hope that my state decides to follow California and raise its own money for embryonic stem cell research. And if I ever become a millionaire, I know where I am going to spend my money. Moreover, you do not have to be rich in order to achieve something. Although I do not have education in biotechnology and other related fields, I think that there are some kids at MIT and Harvard that can achive something that I can't. If we provide enough financial support through small donations, we can fund public labs that rely on money, not religious influence of our government. If this country was able to raise millions of dollars for the victims of the recent tsunami, I believe we can rase enough money for small scientific projects. Once these projects start returnig results, companies will jump on the bandwagon and the industry will be able to support itself without Mr. Bible's say.
I've seen about a hundred posts arguing about why or why not the research is something that is equivalent to killing babies, and as many arguing the federal research ban only stops institutions asking for money for the research...
First, to get it out of the way, the "ban" is not a law against research, but a funding rule that is implemented such that any facility receiving federal dollars (every public hospital, college, reasearch center, ~99.9% of the US research facilities) is barred from conducting the research on new lines. If you get federal dollars for anything at the facility, you can't do the research, period.
Now, the type of stem-cell reseach being debated uses discarded eggs from In-Vitro Fertilization. Regarding the radical right religious regime's belief that a Day 5 blastocyst is a person, complete with a soul, etc... Sure, if they want to 'believe' this, they can. The problem arises when they try to selectively (read: politically) apply laws to support their religious beliefs.
Apparently, many people (including a bunch of folks here on
So, shouldn't the radical right religious regime be even more adamantly against IVF ? While a handful of cells used in research seems to get them in a panic, they ignore the simple fact that thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed every month as part of normal IVF treatments. Why aren't they calling for the elimination of fertility clinics ? Are these couples who pursue IVF mass-murders ?
Where's the logic here ? If stem-cell research should be banned because allowing a Day-5 blast to arrest is killing a baby, why do they not have any issue with, or even debate over the effects of the IVF treatments where the stem-cells for this research are obtained ?
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I've seen about a hundred posts arguing about why or why not the research is something that is equivalent to killing babies, and as many arguing the federal research ban only stops institutions asking for money for the research...
First, to get it out of the way, the "ban" is not a law against research, but a funding rule that is implemented such that any facility receiving federal dollars (every public hospital, college, research center, ~99.9% of the US research facilities) is barred from conducting the research on new lines. If you get federal dollars for anything at the facility, you can't do the research, period.
Now, the type of stem-cell research being debated uses discarded eggs from In-Vitro Fertilization. Regarding the radical right religious regime's belief that a Day 5 blastocyst is a person, complete with a soul, etc... Sure, if they want to 'believe' this, they can. The problem arises when they try to selectively (read: politically) apply laws to support their religious beliefs.
Apparently, many people (including a bunch of folks here on
So, shouldn't the radical right religious regime be even more adamantly against IVF ? While a handful of cells used in research seems to get them in a panic, they ignore the simple fact that thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed every month as part of normal IVF treatments. Why aren't they calling for the elimination of fertility clinics ? Are these couples who pursue IVF mass-murderers ?
Where's the logic here ? If stem-cell research should be banned because allowing a Day-5 blast to arrest is killing a baby, why do they not have any issue with, or even debate over the actual IVF treatments where the stem-cells for this research are obtained ?
To me, there is no logic, it's just politics, plain and simple. The radicals pushing for the "ban" don't really respect life so much, they do respect power and influence and seem to want to use it to force themselves on others.
p.s. If you have questions or want more facts on IVF, please feel free to ask me and I'll try to point you to some answers.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Instead of relaxing, maybe those people could spend some time in a NICU, taking care of the babies who were born and are kept alive in neverending pain because "life is precious". I do not believe in late term abortions (my son was born at 24 weeks gestation, just over 1 pound, and nobody can tell me he was not alive and aware of his surroundings at that stage) but placing a unilateral ban on any type of pregnancy terminations will result in more pain for more people than you could imagine.
How about here?
Whether or not a little network of nerve cells that can fly a plane can reasonably be considered to be conscious (and I think that the universal answer among neuroscientists would be "no"), these cultures at least have one crucial feature--there are actual neurons present, which are certainly necessary, albeit not sufficient, for consciousness.
But at the early stage at which stem cells are harvested, the embryo doesn't have any neurons.
STOP IT already. Embryonic stems cells do not need to come from abortions. A typical source is leftover blastocysts from IVF treatments. Misinformed people who mistakenly associate embryonic stem cells with abortion helped sway the election in the U.S. even. If you want to call a leftover fifty-cell blastocyst a baby so in order to support the embryonic stem cells = abortion claim, that's fine. I think you're wrong though.
end of line
You obviously don't know how it works... they culture lines of stem cells, they don't use them directly. They replenish themselves and don't require lots of new material. There will never be a 'demand' for more, at least not a demand that even comes close to outpacing the avaliable eggs. By the way, they ALL go to waste now, thousands per month or more.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin