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Stem Cells Mend Spinal Injuries
Darkman, Walkin Dude writes "New research shows that rats that had their spinal columns severed were able to regain use of their hind legs through the use of stem cells from embryonic rats." From the Wired article: "Spinal cord injuries can be caused by accidents or infections and affect 250,000 people a year in the United States alone, costing $4 billion annually, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders. Whittemore's team took specific cells from rat embryos called glial restricted precursor cells -- a kind of stem cell or master cell that gives rise to nerve cells."
Oh, that's right... the frozen embryos have souls or some such shit. Yes, this is a hateful post because I simply can't fathom why this scientific area can't be advanced without controversy in the US. I really, really don't get it. I'd love for somebody to explain it to me. Please!
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
...because we have snivling bio-ethics people who cry about 'playing god' when these same morons get the sniffles, they want the most powerful drugs in existance to not only kill their bug - but to blow it's ass to mars...
Like you said, the frozen embryos and the stem cells taken from them aren't ours to screw around with like this. They do (and should) belong to the organism they were taken from.
When it comes to human stem cells, that organism is another human life. It's a simple path from "We want the paraplegic to walk again" to "we will kill humans to allow others to walk again". I don't see the obvious connection that makes those two completely disparate scenarios the same, but it seems all too many see it as the same thing
*shrug*. and people wonder why this country is going downhill
There's far more involved than just regenerating some relatively simple structures like a rat spinal column when the goal is human spinal injury.
I've had a lamenectomy. It's a procedure where tissue has to be removed from between discs in the spine. In my case, I herniated the tissue during heavy squats (word to the wise from a lifetime power lifter, don't do squats, they're too dangerous.) In my case, the tissue was pushed through the fibrous outer sheath that holds the spinal column together. The only possible way to "heal" this would have been to somehow take all the pressure off that part of the body (prevent all muscle movement and stretch the body on a rack), push the tissue back inside then seal the fibrous outer sheath.
Would I pay for such an option? Yes. Is it possible? No. Would some form of simple application of stem cells allow my body to rebuild the missing tissue? Probably not. Not only is a human spinal column far more complex than that of a rat, so are human brains. The human body also lives far longer and the human body is more articulate.
This is nice news but it's just the start of what would have to be a long, long, long process. There's no way to have perfect regeneration of plant tissue yet. Thinking human tissue would be able to regenerate any time soon is silly.
Now all we need to make things really pick up steam... but it's not easy depending on the private sector to invest in unproven sciences and/or projects that won't guarantee a return on their investment. Should american voters turn to their governments and demand subsidy increases for industries involved in stem cell research ?
It won't matter what you say, what you write or how professional you sound on the telephone, your congressmen and representatives don't give a shit what you have to say. They have a guaranteed vote from their freakishly religious base.. They appease them first, then maybe, maybe, if you're really lucky, will listen to whats on your mind.
What we need is a bulldozer to run over the children of every republican congressmen (at the state and federal levels,) not enough to kill them.. just force them into a fucking wheelchair, permanently. Then we'll see some opinions change.. until then, these scum sucking bastards will keep on promising their hardcore religious base that they'll protect america from the insidious & godless liberal infiltrators, fuck science, fuck progress, and fuck you america -> I'm getting elected again!
You're not alone.
the current german government has forbidden stem cell research.
the funny thing here is that the conservative christian party wants to allow it
Every other week or so there is some big success story regarding the regrowth of neural tissue using spinal stem cells, but hardly a word about embryonic stem cells. I understand that there is a ban on using government funds to pursue embryonic stem cell research, however I would like to know whether such research is taking place anywhere. And if it is, why aren't the dramatic results we see with spinal stem cells also being trumpeted by embryonic stem cell researchers?
There are many people who could ultimately benefit from this research, and it certainly shows much promise. I know several people personally who could stand to regain some quality of life if doctors could regrow nerve tissues in humans.
Are spinal stem cells better than embryonic stem cells at growing this type of tissue, or is it simply a case of too little money going into embryonic stem cell research?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Like you said, the frozen embryos and the stem cells taken from them aren't ours to screw around with like this. They do (and should) belong to the organism they were taken from.
Wonderful, said organism is frozen and 99% likely never to see any functional life.
When it comes to human stem cells, that organism is another human life. It's a simple path from "We want the paraplegic to walk again" to "we will kill humans to allow others to walk again".
Do tell, Anonymous Coward, why is taking stem cells from a donated and otherwise perpetually frozen embryo equal to killing a human?
*shrug*. and people wonder why this country is going downhill
Obviously, because of MTV.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Because.. you (as a country) voted for Bush?
Would that be a desperate attempt of Schröder to win the next election?
Speaking of bioEthics... are we going to spend less than 4 billion on stem cells for 250,000 people?
A blog about stuff.
I read today Senator Frist went against Bush and is now supporting stem cell funding and research. I really hope the American public can put enough pressure to get the White House behind saving American lives and repairing damage such as spinal cord injuries
How dare you.
This is America. How dare anyone presume to step into the shoes of God by improving the conditions of or completely healing those who are sick or disabled. Man has no right dictate and change what God has obviously deemed his will by employing ridiculous and sinful medical practices.
Unless you live in the midwest and you're trying to knock your wife with the funky teeth up with nine babies. That's totally fine.
Because it is the obligation of good christian women to offer up their fertile wombs for implantation of these harvested embryos and carry them to term whilst burning at the stake the women who donated them in the first place.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, let's see, there IS the question of when life begins. You can't have seen any discussion of embryonic stem cell research without encountered that aspect.
There's also a very valid concern about preventing trafficking in human tissue. Just as there are lots and lots of controls on organ harvesting and donations, there needs to be a way to prevent pregnancies simply for the sake of harvesting embryos to gain such tissue.
There are also a lot of concerns about ensuring this is actually a path with true possibility of results rather than a ghoulish battleground over the value of life and a macabe sideshow. Think of how the Nazi and Imperial Japanese performed experiments on living people. Where is the line drawn? It's a very serious issue.
Monstrously irresponsible snake-oil statements like that made by John Whatshisname (yeah, he was even "my" senator, shows how much he did for NC) that if John Kerry was elected President quadraplegics woudl stand up out of their wheelchairs and walk again are...shall we say...far less than responsible.
On the other hand, if the comments Senator Frist made are true that it is now evident that stem cells are not capable of endless regeneration and there are far fewer than the original 78 strains of stem cells available for federally funded research, perhaps allowing collection of stem cells from those which are left over from invitreo is a good idea.
Your post shows you don't really know much about this.
There is no restriction on private investment into stem cell research.
There are sources of human stem cells other than killing human embryos. Given the current belief that human embyonic stem cells cannot replicate indefinately, they are actually a poor source of the genetic material.
(Sidebar: there are very, very, very few human cells which can replicate endlessly. I don't remember the anem of the woman from whom one strain was harvested and is used for bio research. Virtually all cells have a limit to the number of tiems they can split.)
Prior to President Bush's plan of 4 years ago, there was no Federal funding for this research at all. A lot of what you would be seeing in the common media is not scientific, it's political.
Ronnie were still alive, and say 30 years old so he could put George W. into a headlock until he submits and supports stem cell research. I'm republican, but bush's stance on this issues makes me fucking angry. Ignorant fuck. I think before someone can even be allowed to be against federal funding of stem cell research, they should have to care for someone with Alzheimer's for a week. As it stands I hope everyone who is against (even a little bit) stem cell research doesn't get Alzheimer's, but I hope every single person they care about does, and they have to watch the carnage.
I wonder if something like this would work for birth defects like spina bifida and so forth?
It is great news as it also may have implications for the large number of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients.
As you may already know MS is a chronic automimmune disorder where your body attacks the protective sheath around nerve cells causing them to degrade slowly over time. It is not yet curable. This type of damage is smaller than if your spinal cord was ripped apart in an accident and thus it may be easier to repair.
If this therapy proves to be useful in MS it will help a large number of people and save billions for countries.
Standards Schmandards
Flamebait???
:
/ bush-vs-kerry.html
yes, I'm the same AC.
Stem Cell Research
Kerry will lift Bush's Federal restrictions on stem cell funding, puting science before ideology.
Bush has imposed federal restictions on stem cell research hindering efforts that could lead to miraculous medical breakthroughs.
http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media
Mod this whole article as flamebait!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I think we have a bit of hope though. In a speech in front of the Senate, Bill Frist, the leader of the Senate Republicans, used the "s"-word when discussing this issue. "It isn't just a matter of faith, it's a matter of science." Yeah, I was shocked too. If we're lucky, the bill in question will be passed so we can be done with Bush's inane stem cell research policy.
need to start making "I broke my spine and all I got was this aborted fetus" tees
sorry to post anonymously, but parent actually has a point...
you just have to live in central Florida (or some other such place) to understand it...
We have a renowned ski hill and last year another well known local suffered a spinal cord injury. A local yoga teacher, mother of two, no use of her legs.
This, obviously, really fucking sucks. I hope these people and others can soon benefit from this research.
Posting AC as to not whore the human interest story.
"We want the paraplegic to walk again" to "we will kill humans to allow others to walk again"
I don't think this will always be the case. Maybe initially, because this field of study is relatively new. It might get to the point where we won't even need embryonic stem cells to do stuff like this.
However, the field needs to first be given the opportunity to get to that point. I hate to use such an obvious cliche, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs (no pun intended). I'm not 100% comfortable with the idea of preventing a life from being born, and I seriously doubt you'll find a great many who are, but eventually you have to ask yourself what's more important: life for the sake of living, or the quality of the life being lead?
To quote a famous Jaffa master:
"Life for the sake of life means nothing."
Mod this whole article as flamebait! I totally agree, any possible useful scientific discussion by this article has been driven away by the flamebaiters. Alot of people on both sides of this issue are ignorant in their rhettoric.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
Why is this flamebait? As my foggy memory recalls it was due to the direct intervention of Bush that the stem cell research was banned in the USA. In some of the recent National Geographic issues the main topic was stem cell research.
According to them, there are 155 stem cell lines in the world atm, 78 out of them can have federal support in funds, and 22 out of them is usable for research AND can have federal support for them, thats mostly because most of the stem cell cultivations are just too old already and were created with old technology. In the UK for example researchers are experimenting with a new method to get rid of the current method of handling those stem cells. Currently it's very resource intensive and costy to maintain the existing lines, but since the law doesn't allow for new stem cells to be harvested and to get federal funds for them, it means they need to deal with the old ones.
A five day old impregnated zygote is smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence.
It has no unique features and there is not even a trace of nervous system. Clearly, people opposing stem cell research should first familiarize themselves first with the "baby" and "murder" they are talking about.
NG quotes some Marie Dooley, who offered her surplus embryos after artificial, in vitro, fertilisation to stem cell research. She said something like that "If they would have a heartbeat, the whole situation would be completely different, but those embryos are only groups of cells and they would have landed in the sewer if not offered for research." or something of that effect. the NG review is very long, it details the issue through 23 pages of informative description from all viewpoints. I'd recommend it for everyone.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I remember seeing this on Eyes of Nye last night. Any coincidence this shows up the day after? Seems to me the news is somewhat old.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
You're on crack. Seriously, it takes absolutely no effort to find people who are 100% pro-choice.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'll start with saying that it is good to see scientific progress, but is it possible to do this with adult / cord stem cells too? Second, everyone says that Bush is against stem cell research. He is only against federal funding to embryonic stem cell research. That doesn't mean he wants to ban it, well he does, but that is besides the point. All he ever did was say the Government can't support it. Third, other than this, I have yet to see an example of Embryonic stem cell research actually working and adult stem cells don't work, or where Embryonic stem cells actually work at all. If adult stem cells show more promise, and don't involve the taking of a human life (the reason this is all contriversial in the first place), why not use them. About the "how can we support a president who is against scientific progress" issue. It isn't that the pro-life people are anti-scientific progress, it is that they don't beleive science should be working against the betterment of humanity. At least they don't think killing for progress is right.
Do you have a soul? Do you believe in God? To many people, their ethics are more important than science or cars or money. You might be able to tell me at what speed an object falls to the earth, but can you tell me why it falls? Something as simple as gravity? Science is observing events and trying to predict what will happen. Science does not purport to understand why something happens.
The fact that you refeer to soul and "some such shit" in the same sentance leads me to believe you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong, and that you should be the one who decides where my tax dollars are spent.
All that Bush did was listen to his constituents, who said they don't want their tax dollars being spent on embryos that came from abortions.
If there is a woman, who is pregnant and scared, and 50% of her wants an abortion but 50% of her wants the baby, what will happen if someone tells her- "Your abortion will be put to good use, we can find cures to diseases with your embryo". That might be the extra push that convinces her to get an abortion. Even though there are no gaurentees that there will be any breakthroughs.
Bush did not outlaw research with embryos. Bush just simply said that no government money will be spent on NEW embryos. There are still so many embryos frozen in university research centers that are grandfathered in, there will be no shortage of embryos for the foreseeable future. And if there are enough people who believe they can find curse using embryos, then there will be lots of money to be made, and perhaps these people can form a private research group.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
> Wonderful, said organism is frozen and 99% likely never to see
> any functional life.
Tell that to the tens of thousands of kids born every year from frozen embryos. You would shoot them in the head now because they 99% shouldn't live? No? Why would you kill them as embryos then? What gives you the right to decide that?
Answer that. WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DECIDE.
How complicated is stem cell treatment?
Every time I read about it, I get the impression that the subjects are simply injected with stem cells and they magically get cured. Is it really that simple, or are there additional invonveniences, like unwanted tissue types, or surgery or drugs needed?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Well that's just it, why does *science* need to be *political*? One thing they teach doctors early on is all of the things they can do "ethically", and they do this with engineers and the such as well. My question has always been "Why stop science because a bunch of people don't like it?". Science is science is science and will always be science. The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.
So the most unethical regime in the history of mankind (IMHO) created the best science, enhancing what we knew in hundreds of different fields, pushing everyone else to the limit. Remember, it was actually German scientists who won us World War 2.
Even though this technology does have the ability to be used misappropriately, one would have to admit to him or herself that doing so in a scientific field is not good for the country and for science over all. With tremendous strength, comes tremendous responsibility, and I think the United States has shown more than anything that they're too afraid of responsibility to develop the strength scientifically, but if it's got uses as a weapon, we'll go to no ends to improve it.
Perhaps the researchers should apply for weapons grants, stating that the technology they develop will be able to help countless soldiers on and off the battlefield, returning them to war quicker than ever before. That'd probably stur the couldron a bit.
I just think it's stupid that people like Christopher Reeves has to die because we won't condone the research nessicary to keep these people alive. I mean, they've already shown us that being paralysed does nothing against intellegence (Stephen Hawking), what better reason do we need to research something as dramatically lifechanging as giving someone who's paralysed the ability to walk again?
My entire arguement is that Politics shouldn't showboat science as it's bitch. Science needs to happen for the good of the human race, while politics does everything possible to stand in the human races' way. Let the damned scientists work.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
ARRGGH... when are you clueless people going to figure it out. Repeat after me.. Stem cell research is not banned in the United States. States and private companies are free to continue stem cell research. They just won't receive federal tax dollars to do so. Quit repeating what the blathering dimocrats are spewing and read something other than /.
Answer that. WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DECIDE.
Well, for starters, I post with my user account.
Honestly though, why is every human life precious? Have you ever eaten eggs before? That's one life that will never have a chance to experience this wonderful beautiful world, all because of your senseless "hunger".
Even if you don't, if you mean to tell me that you've never killed anything ever? What makes the life of a fly or ant that you've most certainly killed less precious than the frozen embryo that never developed into a human? What gives you the right to decide that?
You can call this rationalization but I call it using your damn brain. I will choose to help the people that are suffering over bringing another life into the world any day of the week.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Well, let's see, there IS the question of when life begins.
... Whoo hoo? Yay for only being a little dumb? And I'll point out here that he said "without controversy," not "without the government forcing people not to research."
... Virtually all cells have a limit to the number of tiems they can split.)
8:31:46, EST.
There's also a very valid concern about preventing trafficking in human tissue. Just as there are lots and lots of controls on organ harvesting and donations, there needs to be a way to prevent pregnancies simply for the sake of harvesting embryos to gain such tissue.
And the incredibly obvious future "no getting pregnant for embryos" law covers that nicely. Considering the difficulties and dangers in actually doing that, though, it will be a completely unnecessary law.
Think of how the Nazi and Imperial Japanese performed experiments on living people.
Oh, you're a troll. Sorry. I wish I'd noticed earlier.
There is no restriction on private investment into stem cell research.
There are sources of human stem cells other than killing human embryos. Given the current belief that human embyonic stem cells cannot replicate indefinately, they are actually a poor source of the genetic material.
"They don't replicate forever, so we should use ones that have been replicating for a while."
Your post shows you don't really know much about this.
Are you even replying to the parent? 'Cause he didn't say anything that required knowledge.
(Sidebar:
(Sidebar: Everyone knows that.)
Prior to President Bush's plan of 4 years ago, there was no Federal funding for this research at all. A lot of what you would be seeing in the common media is not scientific, it's political.
Whoo hoo, again! It could be slightly worse! Good 'nough, now let's get hammered!
Well, let's see, there IS the question of when life begins. You can't have seen any discussion of embryonic stem cell research without encountered that aspect.
The Bush government is pro in-vitro fertilization, a practice which by design produces large amounts of unwanted embryos, blastocysts really, which are frozen down and eventually thrown away, since they can only survive for so long in a frozen state.
If your position is that human life begins at conception then I fail to understand how this practice is morally sound whilst abortion is not.
It's better to put these cells to good use methinks.
A witty
I can't fathom why the govt. funds PBS (e.g. Monty Python, Benny Hill), yet won't fund embryonic stem cell research.
The government funds NPR (radio typically enjoyed by a minority of Americans), yet won't fund something that might arguably benefit all Americans. Furthermore, the benefits of the funding go to private people, not the govt. itself (Australia is different in this way).
The inconsistent policies of the government are irritating; funding all or none, or perhaps using some market mechanism to decide what to fund -- all those would be more consistent than the current system.
Also, if you know how the research works, it is really ridiculous. A researcher has his pet interest. Over the decades, he pitches it as, "good for Star Wars missile defense", "good for internet" then "good for anti-terror" -- whatever it takes to get the money. That's really irritating.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
And we're going to use the frozen embryos that will never get a chance to be born to do this research on. These embryos are going to be thrown away, they will not be born. They are going in the trash, their owners no longer want them.
Do you want to adopt an embryo? Maybe you can get married and your wife can be a mother to as many embryos as she possibly can. If you aren't saving and adopting these embryos, YOU, are killing them. You could save those potential children, if only you would adopt them all and save the lives.
Of course we only have a few dozen embryos at least for every in-vitro fertilization procedure, so if you and your cohorts get started now on turning your wives into baby farms I think we can save those potential lives from the horror of not-living.
when are you clueless people going to figure it out. Repeat after me.. Stem cell research is not banned in the United States.
When are you clueless people going to figure out that even the most dimwitted among your opposition knows that? It's short-hand. Quit being so God damned pedantic.
...welcome our new soulless, embryo-munching overlords.
Argh.
Other posters have brought up a good point. These children being born, being brought forth from the miracle frozen embryos, are given life by the in-vitro fertilization process. A process that wastes dozens of "lives" in order to create one of those IVF children.
So why all the outcry about embryonic stem cell research? Why not go after the people who are wasting and killing all these embryos in the first place? The infertile people "playing god" and destroying embryos in the first place? They are endorsing killing embryos, as it is inherently part of the process of IVF. But yet the outcry is against the research on the remains of the IVF process... where is the logic in this?
It is because we haven't had time to adequately address the moral concerns such activity raises.
It was largely agreed at the end of the second world war that the human experimentation that went on in NAZI germany was wrong. This is despite the numerous real medical advancements that were made as a result of such experimentation. Most reasonable individuals agreed that the societal cost performing compulsory experiments on essentially random members of society was greater than the benefit of the resulting medical knowledge.
It has since been agreed that, to some extent, animal experiment is okay as long as certain moral guidelines are followed. This is because cruelty toward animals has a dehumanizing effect on the human participant (as evidenced by the fact that most serial killers got their start with animals).
This puts us in a tricky situation when it comes to embryos and cloning. On the one hand, it is well established that an embryo is not the same as a person, on the other hand, an embryo has the potential the become a living, breathing member of society. So where do you draw the line? If experimentation on embryos is not human experimentation, is is certainly the cousin of human experimentation.
I'm not saying that the cost is not worth the benefit, I am only saying that there is a cost, and that we need to decide how far down the path toward human experimentation we can go before the costs outweigh the benefits.
I've never seen credible evidence that a person with a personality gets created before there is a working brain. Would love to be contradicted here with a few references to e.g. Nature? (-: Or even a few bible verses with claims that life start at conception...? :-)
I am, frankly, not holding my breath.
Now, someone might argue that a process is started at conception which would end up with a functioning human. The potential is critical. There are a few problems with that position:
- When a fertile woman smiles back at me (-: it has happened
:-), there is a potential for a new human
- Soon, all our cells will be potential humans with a little "twist"...
- Half of all conceptions ends soon with a spontaneous abortion. That means, according to the bible belt, that half of all people dies at an age of a few days. To be consistent, the believers should argue that half of all medical research should try to stop this mass death!
I could go on. (The potential argument is pathetically blurry and compare amateurs like Stalin and Hitler with tens of millions dying from spontaneous abortions... every year.)Your correct (IMHO) point is that given the assumption that life starts at conception, the rest of the religious people's position is logical. My point is that they are quite easily described as fuckwits with the same basis as "Son of Sam" had for his world view.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Snippings from this article:
... The announcement by Frist, a transplant surgeon who is considered a likely contender for president in 2008, contradicted recent signals that he would oppose the legislation, and word of his decision Thursday night caught his Senate colleagues and the White House by surprise. It also was an unambiguous sign that politics had tilted in favor of research advocates and against Bush and the social conservatives who are the core of his political base.
... Catholic League President William Donahue called Frist "a hypocrite." In a written statement, Donahue said: "His change of heart has nothing to do with any scientific breakthrough.... What's changed is that Dr. Duplicity wants to be president."
... One Republican ally of both Frist and the White House said Friday that Bush's position had proved impossible to sustain. The ally, who requested anonymity because of increasingly "raw" feelings in the party, said the president's position was not held by rank-and-file Republican voters. ... In Congress, Republican supporters of stem cell research said they were optimistic that Frist's support would persuade other Republicans to switch their position.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) announced that he would support legislation allowing the federal government to finance research using a broader range of embryonic stem cells. His decision substantially raised the odds that the bill would win approval in Congress and face a presidential veto, which White House strategists had hoped to avoid.
Frist said he would back legislation allowing the government to fund research using embryonic stem cells no matter when they were created.
Frist's stance appeared to put him closer to the mainstream of public opinion. In a May survey for CBS News, 58% of respondents said they favored embryonic stem cell research; 31% said they opposed it.
Commentary
I can't help but what what the political and scientific ramifications of Frist's recent actions. I wonder if Frist is really being confrontational with the White House and GOP, or could this be part of a plan to broaden Republican appeal...
Personally, I suspect the latter. The embryonic stem cell stance is one of the most-often criticized things used to criticize Republicans in general, and this could be a way of putting a damper on that criticism.
I think this will hurt Frist's chance of getting the GOP nomination, but if he gets that, it'll increase his chances for the actual 2008 election, assuming he can get people to forget about his silly remarks during the Schiavo case. I still doubt I'd vote for him myself, but I know many people would.
Because I have karma to burn...
The exact quote from John Edwards is, "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
I don't find anything particularly monstrously irresponsible about this quote. He doesn't imply that people will get up out of their wheelchairs a week or two after Kerry would have been elected. I think most people, like me, are smart enough to realize that curing spinal cord injury is a while coming.
However, personally, I'm convinced that if we put our collective ingenuity in medical research towards finding a cure for spinal cord injuries, we will get real and tangible results, as this article demonstrates. It's not a cure, but it sure is progress.
The election of John Kerry would not have necessarily accomplished this goal during his presidency, and I don't think that Edwards's quote was implying that it would. After all, John F. Kennedy said in 1961, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Even if he had not been assassinated in 1963 and re-elected in 1964, his goal still wouldn't have happened while he was in office.
It is certain that the election of George W. Bush has hindered the goal of finding a cure to spinal cord injury. He has shut down a major source of funding in an area of research that, as we can see from this article, is directly relevant to finding a cure.
The really frustrating thing is the reason given for shutting down this funding—some misguided notion that an embryo is somehow morally equivalent to a human being. I find it interesting that most of these fundamentalists have no problem at all with killing highly complex organisms such as rats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on in the name of scientific research, but a clump of nondescript cells with no capacity for thought, feeling, or any sensation at all; a clump of nondescript cells with no past, present, or future; a clump of nondescript cells very similar to the kind that we wash off in the shower every day without even thinking; is somehow sacred.
What if these same fundamentalists had insisted that researching advanced rocket propulsion techniques in the '60's was too similar to building a Tower of Babel, attempting to reach to heaven? Would John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson have cowered to this weird religious-based belief and let the Russians unilaterally own space today?
I hope not, just as I hope that in the next election, we manage to get some leadership who is willing to stand up for science that can make our lives better instead of trying to push America further and further into a new dark age of technology because of religious fundamentalism.
Whoever "they" is, they are absoutely 100% ok with killing for progress. Especially if "they" happen to be certain Republicans in the executive branch of the American government.
We take human life all the time. We take it when we have people work in extremely hazerdous conditions - like mining, or in the old days, building bridges. We take it when we decide we need a regime change. We take it when we allow the sale of tobacco products, or alcohol. We take it when we allow people to operate motor vehicles. WE take it when we revolt against an oppressive government.
As a society, we routinely accept the sacrifice of human life when we believe the benefits to society outweigh the sacrifice, and sometimes even if not.
It is simply not logical to be OK with sacrificing american lives and spending billions of american taxpayer dollars blowing thousands of living, breathing, thinking, feeling, walking-around Iraqi children to little bits to potentially improve Iraqi society and at the same time have a panic of conscience at the suggestion that millions of federal dollars be spent sacrificing a few hundred embryos smaller than a pinhead that are going to be discarded anyway to potentially provide medical relief to hundreds of thousands of American citizens.
paintball
An early embryo does not have even a single functioning neuron, so certainly it can't have any kind of conscious existence, and it is a far stretch to say that it has a "soul".
The reasoning seems to be that it has the "potential" for becoming a human being. But once cloning is perfected, every cell in our bodies will have the potential for becoming a human being, no different from an identical twin. So every time we shed a few skin cells, we are discarding millions of potential human beings.
In this sense, a pre-neuron embryo is no different from any other mass of tissue in our bodies.
Perhaps we should take these people's reasoning to its logical conclusion, and forbid the destruction of any tissue at all from our bodies. To which senator should I mail my feces for preservation?
Super...now we can go help Christopher Reeve walk again!
What...
Oh...
Sorry...
My
Now, of course, if you really want to get into a sticky situation, imagine if some well intentioned doctors developed a technique for reembedding miscarriages. I'm sure it would be considered a modern miracle for women who are having trouble getting pregnant. If this technique became well known and successful I'm sure we'd see some people claiming that women who fail to get the procedure are negligent. Now not only would some states being telling women they can't abort a pregnancy willingly, they'd also be saying that they can't abort a pregnancy naturally. Knowing this is likely, is it ethical for a researcher who develops a technique for reembedding miscarriages to suppress that research?
Scary stuff.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There is no logic involved.
Republicans love babies.
Embryonic stem cells have never been used as an effective treatment.
Adult stem cells, the stem cells taken from parts of an adult person, have been used many dozens of times with wonderful results.
There is even some speculation by scientists that embryonic stem cells would actually cause cancerous growth that could kill the person it is trying to heal.
Why do people keep trying to bring up this embyronic stem cell research when adult stem cell research already has a proven and effective method?
(By the way, I'm liberal and not a "Pro-Lifer")
what I don't understand is how people see serious ethical issues in using some primitive frozen cells but then don't consider the countless mice (a fully developed creature with feelings and a certain degree of intelligence) that are tortured and killed for experiments like this in any way.
Really, I don't get it either.
You could save those potential children, if only you would adopt them all and save the lives.
Usually the embryos legally belong to the parents, and most parents do not want to let anyone else have them. Maybe it is because they don't like the idea of having an unknown number of (biological) sons and daughters running around out there.
And anyway, if this is turned into an actual therapy, then it will probably done with embryos created for the purpose using genetic material from the patient. If someone finds this morally objectionable, then it makes sense for that person to be against this stage of research.
> What makes the life of a fly or ant that you've most certainly killed less
> precious than the frozen embryo that never developed into a human?
The same thing that:
- makes _your_ life more precious than said fly
- made it precious when _you_ were a _human embryo_
I really, really don't get it. I'd love for somebody to explain it to me. Please!
Because I love Ayanami Rei.
Actually, the skin is way, way, way more complicated than the spinal column is. Layers upon layers, each having their function. The spinal column is complex, but it's mostly uniform. Not a lot of structure there. The complexity is all in the operation of the individual cells and such, not in the architecture and layout of the thing.
We've got no business causing spinal injuries to animals, or any injuries for that matter. Test them on humans if humans are who they aim to benefit.
Right... Aside from inappropriate use of new technology, I suppose trying to change eye color with needles and dyes or doing sterilization experiments on people in concentrartion camps is fine as long as the goal is science. I suppose you have never been to see Auschwitz? Blue eyes good, brown eyes bad...
So why all the outcry about embryonic stem cell research? Why not go after the people who are wasting and killing all these embryos in the first place? The infertile people "playing god" and destroying embryos in the first place? They are endorsing killing embryos, as it is inherently part of the process of IVF.
The Catholic Church is against IVF, largely for that very reason.
But yet the outcry is against the research on the remains of the IVF process... where is the logic in this?
Two reasons:
First, no one is proposing that the government spend billions of dollars promoting IVF. So it is not exactly a hot news topic.
Second (and more important), the news focuses on politicians. Politicans and political parties tend to take positions that will get votes, rather than positions that are morally consistent.
BTW, I highly recommend NOT forming one's moral views based on any political platform! It will make you go crazy.
"However, personally, I'm convinced that if we put our collective ingenuity in medical research towards finding a cure for spinal cord injuries, we will get real and tangible results, as this article demonstrates. It's not a cure, but it sure is progress."
That's fine, as long as we don't yield to the temptation of taking shortcuts to our goal. That's the point about bringing up the Nazi's. They got results as another poster pointed out, but it was because they effectively took shortcuts, instead of say the harder path wich would have given results without so many ethical dilemas.
"The really frustrating thing is the reason given for shutting down this funding--some misguided notion that an embryo is somehow morally equivalent to a human being."
Can you prove otherwise, without using a lot of "maybe's" and "ifs"?
"I find it interesting that most of these fundamentalists have no problem at all with killing highly complex organisms such as rats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on in the name of scientific research"
We're talking human beings.
"but a clump of nondescript cells with no capacity for thought, feeling, or any sensation at all; a clump of nondescript cells with no past, present, or future"
Kind of hard to have a future in the present day environment, isn't it?
"a clump of nondescript cells very similar to the kind that we wash off in the shower every day without even thinking; is somehow sacred."
Hmmm, yes a "clump of cells" as long as it wasn't the "clump of cells" that turned out to be you. Strange how the "human" dividing line moves so.
Do tell, Anonymous Coward, why is taking stem cells from a donated and otherwise perpetually frozen embryo equal to killing a human?
Interesting. Do you think that a human embryo is not human?
Is a human foetus human? How about a child? Or an adolescent?
What defines human for you?
Is it the presence of intelligence? In which case do you consider people less intelligent than yourself less human?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
...but what's in it for the embryo?
Look it's great that they can use cells that were supposedly going to be thrown out anyway but what happens when demand increases and that supply runs out?
If stem cells cannot yet be extracted without killing the host where is that going to lead?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This is why slippery slopes are so dangerous. It starts with the reasonable (why don't we do this...), and ends with hell on earth.
Problem is that our society is conditioned to instant gratification. We want it YESTERDAY! We don't want to take the more difficult path to our goals, even if pursuing that path in the end, will lead to less ethical consequences.
A lesson quoted and 10 points of Ari. Not a popular position but then the fruits of neglecting that position are all around us.
---
The "are you a script" word for today is problems.
Every sperm is sacred
Did you have something meaningful to contribute to this conversation?
So if the argument is that you can't kill a human baby because a human baby is not property then it's a total strawman argument to claim that it is ok to kill a zygote on the grounds of what it is capable of. You have to face the argument, is a zygote property? To answer that question I think we have to agree on a few things. I own my own body, you own yours.
This is a false dichotomy. The reason that humans are considered different from other animals is that we are sentient. That is the distinction. So it is completely reasonable that the law considers a human embryo, which is not sentient, to be property while a baby is not. And it's important to note that this is already the position that the law takes. Embryos are considered the property of the people who produced them. Many (if not all) of the embryos that are currently used for this research are ones that were about to be destroyed.
If we define a woman's body to include anything that grows within it, regardless of how that growth is initiated, then it is clear that until a fetus is removed from her body it is her property.
But that isn't how a woman's body is defined. This is a non sequitur.
I wonder how your memory morphed the fact that Bush's executive order actually provided the first federeal funding for embyronic stem cell research into "a ban on stem cell research".
I guess you could use a few injections yourself.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Republicans love embryos .
Democrats love babies and their mothers (as well as their fathers).
Take someone sufferring from a chronic autoimmune disorder and place them on massive amounts of immuno-suppressive anti-rejection medicine.
What's wrong with this picture?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The same Bill Frist who insisted that Chiavo was not in a vegetative state?
There's no question on when life begins. Adults, teenagers, children, babies, fetuses, embryos, sperm , and egg are all alive.
It's all a question about when to give legal status to life.
Do you really want to endow an unborn fetus with the rights reserved to an adult? Be prepared for reckless endangerment lawsuits filed on behalf of the fetus against the mother, filed by a concerned party (the father). Which sounds improbable until you realized that it would be a very nasty move to make during a divorce.
Also, women's rights would suffer huge setbacks because smoking and drinking when pregnant would be akin to bodily harm on the fetus. Casual inspection of a woman isn't sufficent knowledge of whether she is pregnant, so officers that intend to enforce the law will have to demand pregnancy tests from all smokers and drinkers.
There's a million new legal possibilities for just giving fetuses rights, and none of them are very pretty. And a partial set of rights probably won't make any difference, as the right to live and continue living is the one right that will create the most nasty legal scenarios.
And if you give legal protection to fetuses, why stop there? I mean, sperm and egg are both living, and you've already broke the legal precedent that rights are to be given to autonomous independantly acting / thinking life.
Adult stem cells ftw. My friend who had leukimia had a bone marrow transplant with adult stem cells and he is kicking ass again these days thanks to adult stem cells.
the Political Inquirer
Actually, it is obvious from this discussion that quite a few people don't know that.
Oh, and shorthand shouldn't be the opposite of the truth.
There are two types of stem cell research currently being conducted. Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The only most people hear about is embryonic, which, as I'm sure most of you know, kills the embryo. This type of stem cell research seems to just now be taking off.....in rats, not real people. HOWEVER, adult stem cell research has had quite a bit of success over the past few years. Real human people have benefitted from this research. Stem cells are taken out of the adult who has an injury (for example from the spinal cord) and are reinjected into the host and, many times, regain the ability of whatever it was that was lost. Embryonic stem cells are usually rejected by the recipient due to different types of whatever, I don't know exactly, I'm not a scientist. Adult stem cells are never rejected because they come from the person. Adult stem cell research does NOT kill anyone or anything. If only the government would support adult stem cell research and not embryonic I believe we would have seen many more advances in this area.
There is a product called Ambertose that has helped me greatly. I had a ruptured disk in my neck that damaged the nerve root controlling muscle on the top and back of the right shoulder and the bicep. It took 6 months to be able to raise my hand over my head. Since taking this product I have reained about 70% use of my shoulder.
This product seems to stimulate stem cell production in adults. Go to mannatech.com and check out the reasearch. It works for me and might help you, I'm not trying to sell anything.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
What is: GWB starts federally funded research. There is no ban on the research.
What was stated: "due to the direct intervention of Bush that the stem cell research was banned in the USA"
So you're saying what was stated is shorthand??!? It is the opposite. I don't think you understand the definition of pedantic.
Not all people think that moral concerns with animal experimentation come from the "dehumanizing effect" on researchers. Some of us think that animals have rights or at least moral considerability in themselves.
Much of this debate could be solved by once and for all agreeing that the mere fact that the research subject is human is not morally significant. Right now, many people are willing to grant a cell rights because less than 1% of its DNA is different from all other organisms save other humans. That's ridiculous.
A better approach is to ground the high moral consideration we give humans on their developed traits, such as self-consiousness, a capacity to suffer and enjoy, and a desire to live.
On this model, an animal would have some moral considerability (it can feel pain), but arguably not enough to enjoin medical experimentation that can improve human lives. And a clump of cells has zero moral worth.
This result matches many people's moral intuitions. All you have to do is give up the notion (originated in the same places that today's fundamentalists cite) that being a human makes you automatically special, from the moral point of view.
Its possible to take a cell and inject a nucleus into it. That nucleus doesn't even have to be from a single person. It can be engineered from combined DNA.
If that's too 'Blade Runner' for some, it can be the clone from something that we know is not viable. (end of moral argument because we take the cells from the cadaver of the non-viable source and grow function fractions in agar.)
As for Bush's ethics; I'll stay out of that quagmire, thank you.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The embryo is part of the species homo sapiens. But it is *not* entirely the same as a sentient creature we usually think of when using the word "human".
Most people would be against killing the latter for the benefit of others. The former? That isn't so clear, but in any case don't mix those togheter when discussing stem cell research.
- These characters were randomly selected.
doesn't 'end' at the same point. Its all just a continuum. We are not creating life. Merely a terminating branch.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I find it interesting that most of these fundamentalists have no problem at all with killing highly complex organisms such as rats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on...
Heck, forget the monkeys--what about their bland willingness (or even outright blood lust) for killing non-christians? "Thou shalt not kill" isn't all that hard of a concept.
It doesn't say "thou shalt not kill people who look like you".
It doesn't say "Thou shalt not kill except for oil."
It doesn't even say "Thou shalt not kill unless they started it, in which case it's fine to open a little Whoop-ass on their sorry Is-le-amic butts."*
I wouldn't mind the fundementalists (of any flavour) nearly as much if they actually pratciced what they preached instead of running around like a bunch of anti-social nitwits, blowing up buses and abortion clinics and killing people--or voting to have somebody else's kids go kill them--in the name of their god.
--MarkusQ
* What it does say about "they started it" is "turn the other cheek."
This sort of research has been done over and over since the 1970's, with various levels of success. Not to say that it isn't good, but a cure is always 10 years away and I don't see any real cure available for at least 50-60 years.
Mice are different from humans and just connecting nerves don't work as you have to connect the right severed nerves together. Mice can't tell us how the "repair" feels is the movement just relex is it controlled?, it has been shown that a human can still walk if only 5% of his spinal cord still functions (which 5% i don't know?, but that don't mean he is not affected in other ways and functionality is severly impaired ). With nerve repair you could get a case of reflexes wired incorectly and constant spasm occuring or your soft touch nerve conected to the pain nerve channel causing extreme discomfort at the slightest touch. The grey matter of the spinal cord does alot of processing of nerve signals before it gets to the brain and how can this processing be programmed correctly?
Apparently salamanders can fully regrow lost limbs and their entire nervous system, this don't mean that humans can though.
in summary:
research = good
spinal injury = bad
mice!=men
Warning independant examinations have shown that upto 48% of what I say can be WRONG
embedded linux
I mean, they've already shown us that being paralysed does nothing against intellegence (Stephen Hawking)
Well, duh. Being paralyzed is a huge dexterity hit, intelligence doesn't enter into it.
~Will
sig?
"A five day old impregnated zygote is smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence."
You don't get it. Just take a microscope and you will see a little baby girl, crying "Mommy, why don't you love me??".
I think the reason for the rapid tech advances during WWII was the fact that we were at war and necessity is the mother of invention. Same for the Germans.
2 001/cov_08162001.html
In a normal market where commodities are manufactured, research is hard to fund. It's been monopolies like Bell Labs and the National Gov't which have really pushed things forward because they had both the cash and the desire to do so.
1984 was pretty dead on. The govt funds science and technology because we need to compete with other nations economically and ultimately, millitarily. It is this threat which forces polititians to rely on science rather than simply make up and propagate their own facts. The government doesn't fund science because it wants to cure cancer or diabetes or help us understand the universe. It does it mostly so that we stay strong as a nation and can defend ourselves. A society which turned away from science and technology would eventually fail to defend itself. All research is supposed to support American industry or the American millitary.
Perhaps the researchers should apply for weapons grants, stating that the technology they develop will be able to help countless soldiers on and off the battlefield, returning them to war quicker than ever before. That'd probably stur the couldron a bit.
At the end of the day, unfortunately, that's the whole idea. If you don't believe me, check out the justifications for the Baye- Dole act and technology transfer acts to see what polititians thing the role of science should be now that the cold war is over.
The Baye-Dole Act of 1980 is significant, he explains, because it allowed ownership of federally-sponsored inventions to be taken from the public, and sold to corporations. "Before, if the feds invested in university research, the assumption was, whatever product was invented belonged to the people of the United States-the taxpayer pays, the taxpayer gets a result." Now, says Minsky, the product of a federally-funded project can be sold by a university to a private corporation "which then owns a product produced by taxpayer money, to be sold back to the taxpayer, at any amount they decide."
http://www.newtimes-slo.com/archives/cov_stories_
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Well anyone critical of stem cell research should be refused any treatment that exists as a result of research.
I'm sure Bush would invent some reason why he should be allowed treatment if he were to lose the use of his legs. Doing gods work or something similar.
A five day old impregnated zygote is smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence.
I don't think the problems were ever biological with this research. Although normally I find myself squarely on the side of scientific method in every discussion (I'm talking to you, creationists), I'm not as certain in this debate. Its a question of spirituality here. The real question is, assuming the presence of an immortal human soul or some kind of presence which exists beyond the failure of the biological support system, at what point does that spirit become attached to the embryo?
I think you'll find very few people with an issue with stem cell testing based on technical grounds, all of the objections are, in the heart of them, spiritual. There is no doubt that in terms of biology, the 5 day old embryo is in no way human. This is not what's up for debate.
I recall reading a story long ago, where earth was at an advanced stage, and was being tested for its fitness to join the "federation" of sentient species. The president was showing the investigators around the achievements and splendours of this hi-tech wonderland, the neatly organised and marvellously efficient society that had been built. The investigator noticed that there was one group that still had old rituals, funerals, and weddings, although the president tried to keep him from seeing them.
At the end of the tour, the president was dumbfounded to be told to return earth to the level of the group that had some level of spirituality, or the planet would be destroyed. Now I'm not advocating any particular group's faith or rituals here, or some atavistic luddite return to the ploughshare and the crozier, just pointing out that we know very very little about the universe and it's nature, all told, and we should take into account that there might in fact be something to these spiritual beliefs, and by ignoring them we might be inviting a far greater disaster than a mere nuclear exchange. And no I'm not talking about aliens blowing up the planet either. I mean only a few short centuries ago, radio waves and electron beam guns would have been invisible witchcraft.
but those embryos are only groups of cells and they would have landed in the sewer if not offered for research.
Because currently they are worthless. But do you really want to create a market for aborted embryos?
So how do human embryos differ from flies and lab rats? In my view of the world, not greatly, but life is a contact sport, and I'll eat beef with the best of them.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
For the same reason why we would find it unfathomable to harvest the organs of a fetus for adult use. They do have perfectly functional eyes.
"What?" you say. A fetus is nothing like a frozen embryo. A frozen embryo is just a bunch of cells. It's not like killing a fetus, which has a beating heart and a working set of neurons.
So why is an embryo less human than a fetus? Because it can't think? Is thinking a prerequisite for being a human? Because if so, there are a lot of comatose adults out there who could be put to good use.
Maybe because it doesn't look like a human? I won't even go down the slippery slope of killing things that look imperfect.
I might also add that the best embryos for any one person's use come from their siblings or children. It's a lot different when it's your potential kiddo's cells you're harvesting.
These embryos were created because we as humans stopped the process of development. Given the right conditions, they would have developed into fetuses after a couple of months. Religion aside, souls and such aside, we cannot dismiss the ethics behind this science.
What was stated: "due to the direct intervention of Bush that the stem cell research was banned in the USA."
What it was obviously supposed to say: "due to the direct intervention of Bush that public funding for stem cell research was banned in the USA."
Three words, whose implicit inclusion was obvious to anyone who at all cares about the issue, were left out. Same meaning, shorter sentence. Short hand. You can feel free to keep screaming, "It's not banned," but you're just going to make yourself look dumb, 'cause everybody already knew what he meant.
...by someone with a PhD in this area, experimenting with embryonic stem cells is a lot like figuring out how to write a computer program in raw machine language whereas experimenting with mature stem cells is like programming in a high-level language with an already-developed set of standard libraries.
The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.
It's not true. Tell me one are in which German science of the Nazi age was ahead of the rest of the world. Experiments done in the death camps carry no scientific value, just because they're not repeatable -- you can't do it again and check if Dr Mendele was not fudging the figures. If you know about any medical treatment which was based on these results, please tell me. The reality is, science needs ethics (not politics). Germans let the ethics go and managed to create such bizarre "advancements" like Hueckel's bison.
So the most unethical regime in the history of mankind (IMHO) created the best science, enhancing what we knew in hundreds of different fields, pushing everyone else to the limit. Remember, it was actually German scientists who won us World War 2.
Bullshit. The Germans expelled their best physicists, rendering themselves unable to construct the atomic bomb (assuming they would have enough uranium...). Those Germans who fled to the West were good because they were... good, not because they were permitted to carry out unethical research. And it were not only Germans who helped the Allies to win the war: Polish and British mathematicians broke the Enigma, Brits invented the best radar then available, Polish officer invented the first practical mine detector , Americans invented long before the war mass production of machinery and outperformed both Japan and Germany, etc. etc. German physicists like Einstein were very important for the atomic bomb, but it was also done by people like Silard and Feynman, and Oppenheimer.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
And then you bring in cloning and Nazis, which have no place in this discussion beyond propaganda puffery.
Serial killers? They hurt aniimals because they are already dehumanized. Their cruelty is an effect, not a cause.
+5 Insightful? This might have been the most dumbass post in the whole thread. It's one of those ideological spews that seem rational at first glance, but when you pick it apart, there's nothing there but ignorance.
There are also a lot of concerns about ensuring this is actually a path with true possibility of results rather than a ghoulish battleground over the value of life and a macabe sideshow. Think of how the Nazi and Imperial Japanese performed experiments on living people. Where is the line drawn? It's a very serious issue.
Yes, where is the line between stem cell research and Nazi experiments on living people? Oh, where is the line!?
This is a serious issue. We need to find out where this line is before we continue. After all, we might not know where it is! If we really don't, then we might someday find ourselves doing Nazi experiments on living people! Because we didn't know where the line was! After all, if we don't know where the obscure line between stem cell research and Nazi experiments on living people is, we might as well consider the two inseperable. If there's no line between the two, they are the same thing!
Our mission is clear: find the fine line between stem cell research and Nazi experimentation on living people. And after that we can try to find the line between stem cell research and blimp accidents, free fire war zones or small pox! If we don't, then we might find ourselves shooting down blimps or giving ourselves small pox if we approve of stem cell research. Only once these lines are found can we continue.
Is it just me, or is the pro-abortion/pro-stem cell argument based on the dimishment argument? "It's only a clump of cells", "the only difference is 1%". Oddly enough most atrocities historically commited by mandkind likewise started with the dimishment argument ("it's only a jew","it's only a savage"). Apparently it's hard for humans to kill something that they hold in high esteem.
Well that's just it, why does *science* need to be *political*? ... My entire arguement is that Politics shouldn't showboat science as it's bitch. Science needs to happen for the good of the human race, while politics does everything possible to stand in the human races' way.
Too true.
I see two main reasons science becomes political:
1) Scientists want government money.
2) Politicians want to control everything. They generally do this by giving out money.
I heard government money referred to yesterday as "free government money", but it's not, even though people think it is. It always comes with strings attached (vote for me or you'll lose what I'm giving you!)... and it's always taken out of someone else's pocket.
I like to donate to a local big-name childrens' medical research facility when I can, and that's the way I think it should be done, through private donations. Let the scientists convince the citizens that the research is worth the money. Unfortunately, I can't give any more than I do. Too much of my money is being taxed away from me. That's not boasting, or excuse-making, it's just the way it is.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Constitution also takes a hit, IIRC. It's tough when all you have is intelligence and wisdom, unless, of course, you're outside; then Mr. Hawking can cast spells.
Killing an actual person and killing what could one day become one is two totally different things and you know that dipshit.
What you're arguing is like saying dont kill moulde because one millenia it may develop sentience.
You said: "due to the direct intervention of Bush that public funding for stem cell research was banned in the USA."
Now here is exactly what Bush said:
"As a result of private research, more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist. They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research. I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20 010809-2.html
Thats as dumb as say, public outcry against someone killing human hair samples from a barber shop, and the church protesting cause the hair is human. Is human hair human? What gives you the right to decide?
It is a very very long way from mice to men. It may not even be feasbile.
Just as there are lots and lots of controls on organ harvesting and donations, there needs to be a way to prevent pregnancies simply for the sake of harvesting embryos to gain such tissue
Why? They're just some cells. Sure, if they were to stay in a womb for another 7-8 months they'd grow into a human. If you can't tell the difference between a gastrula and a human being, you've got some issues. I slough off more cells from my skin on a daily basis. Why does nobody weep for my skin cells?
I've got news for you, until a baby is over about 2, it's not any more sentient than a chimp, which is Ok to kill.
Yes, that's great, except that they do not regenerate "indefinitely," they are not an inifinitely renewable resource. Further, they become less and less diverse with every cycle they rengenerate from them.
So as is par for his presidency-- Bush made a policy that's fair how he explains it, but he explains it with misinformation.
And it's actually "Thou shalt not murder", which emphasizes your point.
You're right. I didn't list every tiny exception. For that, I'm sorry. For reasons why I didn't bother listing that great victory for embryonic stem cell research, see one of the 50-ish angry responses to similar posts attached to this article.
It's damn near impossible to use logic effectively against these type of ignorant righties. Good job though, but I don't think they listen to logic very well. They are too busy trying to control the morality of everyone else.
I've got news for you, until a baby is over about 2, it's not any more sentient than a chimp, which is Ok to kill.
This isn't even remotely true. Humans have cognitive abilities that other animals (even chimps) don't. The difference is significant even when those abilities are not fully developed as is the case with newborns, the mentally retarded and ACs.
I've got advanced multiple sclerosis, and the ONLY hope I have for sutvival, let alone being able to walk again, lies with stem cells (plus some way to remove the scars already on my nercous system). Most people assume this means embrionic cells, but there are other ways. For example,in nasal cavity tissue, there are stem cells that can, and do, differentiate into neurons. This would help not only myself, but many others, with MS, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's, ALS, and possibly even Alzheimer's and BSE.
I realize that these won't cure verything, but why is this research being ignored in favor of embrionic stem cells? There are no moral issues here, no politically-demanded guidelines to be followed, only a chance to help lots of people before they wither away and die. Yet, from what I've been able to see, this avenue is being soundly ignored by researchers.
'I am truly baffled.
Lemon curry?
Well, according to Meriam-Webster, the definition of human is as follows:
Main Entry: 2human
Function: noun
: a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) : MAN; broadly : any living or extinct member of the family (Hominidae) to which the primate belongs
Since a collection of several tens of cells with potential is no more a primate than a fucking newt is by the definition, I'd say no, it's clearly not human. Let's say we define human to be the stage when a fetus (very different thing, for all you fundamentalists who believe we're murdering babies, as you've been told to believe) has at least a reasonable chance to survive ex-utero, without extreme medical intervention.
Also, let's throw out the entire concept of PLAYING GOD as an ethical issue. If that was the ruler by which we lived scientifically, and it was adhered to strictly rather than constantly being eroded and pushed back year after year, we'd be in the dark ages. Wanna bet that King Richard III would be more than a little horrified (and maybe bring divinity into it) at the idea of machine-breathing? Okay with that? Than how about taking a dead man/woman's flesh and putting it into your own body? That's called an organ transplant, to you folks living in the dark ages. Learn to deal with the fact that a substantial percentage of people living today (including a close friend of mine's son with adrenoleukodystrophy) are only alive because of our willingness at some level to PLAY GOD.
You are saying that very few cells may replicate endlessly? Correct! But we don't need endless replication. De facto I, being about 95 kgs now, was produced from 2 little cells, one invisible to human eye and the 2nd one barely visible. And from those 2 little cells i got as big as i am now, and many cells died in the meantime, trust me.
We want to reproduce this effect, but in the lab only, to be able to help people, who are already living.
I don't care about those 30 cells/embryo i will have to kill to accomplish this (ok, maybe lil more). The same way i should be sorry every time I am using any method of contraception... and I'm not.
IMHO if you are against killing those poor little embryos, just don't agree to have your spinal column fixed in case of accident... but let the others (and I mean humans, as in "born humans") live.
Your example is fatally flawed. Human hair is composed of dead cells, which is why it doesn't hurt when your hair is cut.
Human embryos are, regardless of whatever else they are, alive.
I'm all for the progress of science and all, but as far as I'm concerned, this new technology, for the forseeable future, will mainly be useful to rich people who can afford to buy such treatments. It bothers me that so much of the public debate is tied up in this issue because frankly, in the grand scheme of things, it's not really so big. We have very significant health issues in this country. Our inner cities have public health indicators that more resemble a developing nation's than a superpower's. For every $1m that is spent on stem cell technology to cure a single Parkinsons patient, that same $1m could help hundreds of young people living with chronic malnutrition.
Again, my point is not that this money should instead be going to fund these things instead, but rather that I think the public doesn't really have any perspective on where the problems in our society really are, and wastes a lot of time getting caught up in a debate that is less important than other ones.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I always hate when people hide behind the partisan banner of "Pro-life" whenever they make their decisions. At some point "pro-life" also has to take into account those that are currently living and need these treatments, and stop being so much about those ten cells frozen in a lab somewhere that are most likely going to be destroyed because the "mother" (used loosely)who had them frozen during in-vitro, would rather see them incinerated rather than go to some good use (such as research).
If we are going to be completely pro-life about these collections of cells, then we need to go all the way and stop in-vitro as well because there are many, many hundreds of times more embryos(read "potential human beings") destroyed this way, than there ever will be with stem cell research. But that will never happen because the right doesn't see it that way, because its not conveninet for them to see it...
At some point, pro-life needs to be about helping those that need it today to survive and live a normal healthy full life, rather than focusing on what is going on with a random zygote frozen in a lab somewhere.
Funny. I would think that somebody suffering from a disease would do a little research on the subject of possible cures. A quick skim of wikipedia's stem cell article returns:
"Although many different kinds of multipotent stem cells have been identified, adult stem cells that could give rise to all cell and tissue types have not yet been found. Adult stem cells are often present in only minute quantities and can therefore be difficult to isolate and purify. There is also limited evidence that they may not have the same capacity to multiply as embryonic stem cells do. Finally, adult stem cells may contain more DNA abnormalities--caused by sunlight, toxins, and errors in making more DNA copies during the course of a lifetime."
Moreover, adult stem cells are being actively researched (not ignored as you seem to think). It's just that embryonic stem cells are far more promising at the moment.
You would not be so baffled if you had not been brainwashed by quack science websites like http://www.stemcellresearch.org/.
Can you say V2? Wasserfall? Jet fighter? Ohhh, and not to forget the Panzer IV/T-34?
eom
Just to make sure we are all on the same page, human hair is made of protein (keratin) which contains no nerve supply (though the underlying follicle does). That is why it doesn't hurt to get a hair cut.
(note: I am not trying to be a jerk, just pointing something out)Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
While I am pro-choice, I do have sympathy and understanding for many people in the pro-life camp (with the exception of those who think it's OK to harrass, shoot, and blow up those on the other side). But when it comes to opposition to stem-cell research, I think it's pretty clear that this is a case of a moral abstract taken to an unhealthy extreme, ignoring the reality of real, living people who are suffering.
Jon Stewart once said that a moderate conservative is "a conservative who has gotten sick, or knows someone who is", and that really seems to be the case. Nova ScienceNOW recently had a story of a mother whose 13-year old daughter suffers from Type I diabetes; she needs constant vigilance and state-of-the-art medical technology just to stay alive from day to day. Doctors believe that stem cell research could ultimately lead to a cure for this condition. This mother is a devout Catholic, but she believes in stem cell research. It's easy for those who have no need for this kind of research to lecture about how we're "creating life to destroy it", but in fact, the researchers involved in embryo cloning and stem-cell research are creating life in order to save life. Embryos are alive, and have the potential to become human beings, but there are millions of actual human beings alive right now who desperately need the help that can be given to them from this kind of research.
I think it was best explained by one of the scientists interviewed on the show I watched. "Say I'm sitting with my son in an IBF clinic and the fire alarm goes off. I have time to either save my son, or save a freezer full of cloned embryos. Which would I save?" Or, to make the example even better, say it's not your son but some child you don't even know. Would you let him (a real, living human being) die in order to save hundreds of thousands of potential human beings? Of course not. Even the most devout, pro-life, anti-stem-cell Catholic would not make that choice. That says a lot.
Is it? If that is the case, how do you even know about it?
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
There was alot of research done in the Nazi concentration camps that was used after the war and you are benifiting from now. This includes research in the area of shoes and cloth and distribution of weight across the human body, to resusitation of human after being frozen and electrical damage; also research in high altitude. TB, the effects of people who are exposed to large amounts of sea water.
Also during the 1980s some of the nazi research of poisoning of people caused a big debate on if it should be used or not. The decision to say that the ethics said it should not be used caused great political problem for the former Bush administration.
I'm under the understanding that the glial stem cells found in umbilical cords are much easier to manipulate and have shown more applications in therapy while embryonic stem cells are still very difficult to impossible (by today's methods) to control. If I am wrong I would love to be corrected just don't flame me as right-wing religious fundamentalist. I have no qualms with gathering stem cells from frozen embryos scheduled for desctruction. It would be wasteful to simply throw away stem cells. The bottom line for me is that umbilical stem cells have seen more real world applications, while emryonic stem cells tend to be theoretical and experimental. So while both lines of research need to be pursued, the line with more results not promises should recieve more (but not all) of the funding. I honestly do not think most people would support farming embryos in labs and harvesting them for their stem cells. We should do what we can to eradicate debilitating diseases, but we cannot forge ahead damning morality when morality is what motivated us to cure diseases in the first place. Lastly, we must remember that there is no cure for death and old age. Modern medicine has greatly increased our living standard while lengthening our lives, but each person has to prepare for one's self for death in a way that eliminates fear and hysteria. Death is part of life and should be seen for the beauty that it truly is. It is not the end of a slow decline but the final conclusion to life (hopefully) well-lived.
Fascinating. So saying "it's banned" is shorthand for "it's not banned" in USA. You know, this might actually prove to be the key for understanding US society...
Perhaps you people should let spinal cords be for now and concentrate on the technology to fix damage to your brains ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It is certain that the election of George W. Bush has hindered the goal of finding a cure to spinal cord injury. He has shut down a major source of funding in an area of research that, as we can see from this article, is directly relevant to finding a cure.
In now way is it certain since President Bush was the first president to push for and get funds for stem cell research. If something did not exist before he came into office he should could not of shut it down.
Also the stem cells used in this research are available from adults they were pulled from embryonic rats because it is easy to get them that way. This was not research on a human it was a rat(never mind the liberal mantra of boy=rat=insect).
Lets hope we continue to get Presidents who take a moral and ethic stance on some stuff, we do not need someone who is so willing to stand up to science that are not willing to allow medical experiments of prisoners as Kerry was.
And there's a lot of heated debate in here. I'd like to throw in 20 cents*.
Pertaining to the article, I don't like that rats were hurt, but I do like that they could heal them again. I have this strong aversion to directly harming or killing independantly living organisms, and yes that includes bugs too.
To the people throwing back and forth the whole "harvesting from fetus's" debate, I'd like to ramble. :)
Firstly, I find biology an interesting subject, particularly cellular level growth, and I'd like to offer a little challenge.
Get a friend to obtain some pictures of,
Now, pick out which is which.
"Don't tell me you're comparing a child to cancer you sick bastard!"
No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that three of those things are developing into independantly living organisms, and one is dependant upon a host which it may or may not harm.
Here's the rub. Two of those examples begin their lives as parasitic organisms, and either may harm or kill their host.
Think about that for a second. A mother has as much chance of dying from complications as the unborn child has, like a person with a cancer growing on the wall of their stomach may or may not be seriously affected by that cancer depending on whether it's benign or malignant.
This doesn't make a baby equate to cancer, and neither does it mean a cancer is the same as an early stage human embryo, but they are both comprised of human cellular tissue and technically alive as they grow inside their host.
"So what, you're saying a guy can't have a cancer removed because it's like a baby?"
No, what I'm saying is that you cannot use the argument that a 200-300 cell embryo can't be aborted and it's stem cells harvested just for the fact that it would be killing a collection of living human cellular tissue. Cancer is technically a living being in the same regard, using oxygen and nutrients from your body to feed itself the same way an unborn fetus does, and I don't see people up in arms over killing cancer.
Maybe we should. It might be fun even if only to see the looks on peoples faces as we loudly shout "stop the murder of human cellular growth!", and then explain we're not anti-abortion, we're anti-cancer removal and disposal.
Personally, I think human life begins on a cellular level at conception, or when that first cancer cell goes "boing" and it's growth inhibitor switch snaps.
However, I think individuality starts when the organism leaves it's host and it's own body looks after respiration, digestion, and motor functions.
"Perhaps a baby is a person when it's still in the womb and kicking."
Nah, I think that's evidence of neural pathway growth and adjustment in the brain happening during a kind of purely personal, mentally internal driven "proto-dream" state, like dreaming of nothing. Sure, some things may seem to make the baby "happy", or more active in the womb, but that could just be purely reactionary inside the developing brain. I wouldn't advocate unnecessary abortion at that stage anyway, even without the opinion that the baby is it's own person, but I don't think we're going to know much more until we understand the brain better and how it ties in to the rest of our bodies.
I don't really have much more of an opinion I can state on the whole issue other than, politics and science shouldn't mix, and like that dude on television said "life is full of uncertainty, women need to have options, and abortion has to be one of those options". I'm a guy, I'll never be in a decision where abortion will directly affect me, but I may one day be in the position where I need some stem cells to fix an otherwise permanent injury, and I'd like to be able to get that help.
* Like 2 cents but with more rambling.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
My question has always been "Why stop science because a bunch of people don't like it?". Science is science is science and will always be science. The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.
Some of those scientific discoveries were made by use of human subjects. So is it OK for science to start experimenting on "the aged, insane, incurably ill, or deformed children" just because it is science? I mean, our knowledge of disease would be greatly advanced if we just bypassed the animal expermiments and went straight to humans. How about making people suffer through Syphilis while telling them they are treating them all the while just letting them die and observing the progression of the disease.
Science should exist for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of science. Science should not be worshipped like a religion where the ultimate goal of man is its advancement. That is why it is political issue.
Correct, and since it contains no nerves, no support systems (blood vessels, etc.), it isn't alive. I know I glossed over the details, but then I don't really expect my point to get through, anyhow.
-
SK
Seriously, someone's human when they assert the right to act and think independently.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
If an embryo is human how about the egs...or for that matter seemen? I do not know about you but I'm a healthy man so I must confess that I occasionaly commit genocide....mostly at night just before falling a sleep. I could stop doing that but then again my body also does it when I'm not awake ....it's called a wet dream. So basically you'd have to define at what stage this becomes human. I'd say at the stage where it becomes sentient. I do not think you can show embryo's to be sentient. I'm sure if we allow scientists to experiment with embryo's available because of abortions they will find a way to culture stemcells so we can begin to build a stock.
explain it to me
"One nation, under God" Say it! Say it!
God spoke to George W. Bush directly (from the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle). Those of us not so fortunate must read a bible. Most any bible will do, but you might as well go with the bestseller (I can get you a discount on a really nice leatherbound edition with lots of shiny gold leaf). The answers are all in there, somewhere. You just need to have faith that it contains the words of the Creator and use a healthy dose of "creative interpretation."
Hang in there, salvation is just around the corner... or is it damnation? I always get those two confused.
Then use a different example. Cancer.
Hmmm, yes a "clump of cells" as long as it wasn't the "clump of cells" that turned out to be you. Strange how the "human" dividing line moves so. But the clump of cells wasn't me, therefore it's irrelevant.
Holy F****** S**t. (shakes head). That's the whole point of the "when does an embryo transition to a human". It's so sad and tragic to see so many people in this forum take this attitude of "well, it's not me who's aborted so why should I care." My God. I'm outta here...
phase 1) Harvest stem cells
phase 2) ???
phase 3) Profit!!!
you are saying. I've read the koran, I have it at home standing next to the bible and some books by krishnamurti. The koran is in general a more tolerant book then the bible. I'm not claiming to much knowledge because as the bible it is a hard book to read. But the general feeling I got was one of genuine worship and tolerance for all other believes. I guess it's as with any faith..... it's the people that corrupt it. The crusades where never a christian idea... they were an idea from powerfull people wanting to be more powerfull. I gues all faiths have men like these. I'm sorry for all muslims that are persecuted because of the deeds of a few extremists. We have our own problems here in the Netherlands and I basicaly think we should keep faith out of it. There is a more fundamental issue. If you are a mulsim, jew, christian or budhist and you want to live here all you have to do is accept that my country has democratic values under wich you can be what ever your faith requires you to be. As long as you do not opose the rights of others to do the same thing. We are a tolerant country and if you do not like that fact that gays can get married here, that it is ok not to believe in any god, that it is ok to believe whatever you want as long as it's not hatefull to others .....you do not belong here and should leave or stay away.
The reason that humans are considered different from other animals is that we are sentient.
And we know animals are not because... ?
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Beyond just "because that's what I choose", what objections would someone have to having "an unknown number of (biological) sons and daughters running around out there" if they 1. were unaware of them and 2. were absolved of any and all legal responsibilites of these people?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
You have the potential to become an axe murderer. I'm calling the police!
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
> That isn't so clear, but in any case don't mix those togheter when
> discussing stem cell research.
Right. Don't mix them together or it might not support your position.
Ignore the evidence to the contrary, that's the way to do it. Pfft science.
"Now, someone might argue that a process is started at conception which would end up with a functioning human. The potential is critical. There are a few problems with that position:"
And therein lies the lie that humanities been saddled with. There's two things we need to keep in mind. Homo sapians and humanity, related but seperate. Homo sapians is the distinctiveness between each life form. A dog isn't the same thing as a giraffe even though both have much in common at a genetic level. The potential for being Homo Sapians is realized at conception when sperm and egg come together and make a unique whole zygote. Humanity is the "potential" that pro-abortion advocates are talking about, and comes with the further development of said zygote. Denucleating a zygote destroys not only an already realized "potential", but also destroys any future "potential".[1]
But the adbonishment is "Thou shall not kill". Not "Thou shall not kill, except zygotes" Rather absolute in it's clearness. And rather chafing against a humanity that dislikes rules of any kind.* e.g. "You can't tell me what to do! I'm my own boss, and I'll do whatever I want." A common refrain heard by parents from time to time.
*And before someone asks. There's a difference between taking a life, and a spontaneous abortion. Much as there's a difference between a natural disaster blowing away a school, killing everyone verses columbine.
[1] Who knows? That pre-denucleated zygote could have been the next Einstein, or Linuz Torvalds, but we'll never know, because it's outside the scope of science.
They have shit after they are fully developed. As for a soul the body and soul are the same - dehumanization is the first step toward predetating - genocide - and taxation without representation. The work can be done without sacrificing our humanity.
Heck, forget the monkeys--what about their bland willingness (or even outright blood lust) for killing non-christians? "Thou shalt not kill" isn't all that hard of a concept.
Actually, that one depends on your translation. It could be "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not murder". There are ALOT of misconceptions about what is in the bible by both believers AND non-believers. To be honest, I wish BOTH of them would study it a little more before passing judgement.
Also, thank you for specifying that it's fundamentalists, and not all Christians...some of us Christians appriciate the differentiation. Alot of us don't like fundamentalists either.
Posting anonymous due to the religeous topic on Slashot.
Or to put it another way, yet make the same point, Democrats will only attack those incapable of defending themselves.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I wonder if he posted here on slashdot if he would get the Frist Psot!
An egg is not a chicken.
Well I have to go to work but before I go I have two things to say.
1-I recommend people read the latest Harper magazine.
2-You know how people react in this forum when the issue of double-standards is brought up? Well the same arguments hold.
In short, those who have taken the Lord's name in vain will pay a heavy price. But don't confuse hypocrites with true believers, and know the difference by the fruits they bear.
fucking troll.
Excuse me while i scrub my eyes clean with a wire brush and super-concentrate quat sanitizer.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Let's say you suffer some spina cord injury and would be helped by this kind of thing. They take you into a room full of pregnant women and you get to choose who's baby will become your cure. That is pretty much the scenario we are looking at today. There is extreme promise, but also extreme social and moral consequences.
Maybe, in a decade or two of pursuing such treatments we can improve upon it, but it is going to take that long. Are you willing to sponsor with your tax dollars research and active treatments that will benefit people that can buy embryos on demand? And, I have to add, only people that can and are willing to buy embryos.
So, you're saying human embryos are a threat to the survival of the host and have no redeeming qualities whatsoever? And often require radiation treatments to be rid of?
From the end of the article itself:
Two-thirds of the rats in the study regained some hind limb movement, the researchers said.
They did not say it was controlled movement. I can imagine two-thirds of the rats twitching their hind limbs in a spasmodic way.
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
"Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."
There's the issue of identical twins vs souls too. If you take the fundamentalist "given" that the soul begins with conception.. what happens when the cell cluster breaks into two pieces after conception? ie: a natural clone. Does the original soul split in two?
I understand that in the past masturbation and birth control were both considered sins (in Christianity at least) because (to paraphrase) "every sperm is sacred". The potential of the sperm and egg were considered such that it was murder to ehh...release them without a chance of conception. Then why do most U.S. Christians now accept birth control? What changed in the last 100 years to move the line of where life begins to conception? There is a related point for the more cynical - many of those who oppose stem cell research would probably in their heart of hearts like to outlaw birth control if given half a chance. (Yes, I know what the Pope says, but I also know that something like 80% of american catholics practice artificial birth control, Pope or no Pope.)
Of course, "conception" is not so black and white as many claim. A single fertilized egg can split into a pair of identical twins. Or it may never implant, or it may not be viable. So strictly speaking, a fertilized egg has the potential to be zero, one, or two human beings. What if you modified the genome of the fertilized egg to inhibit, say, implantation? Then there would never be "potential" for human life. Would that be acceptable?
Potential is a tricky thing - and not a great way to set policy. What if the potential life was Adolf Hitlers? For every potential saint you have a potential serial killer (or corporate lawyer - you decide which is worse). Potential is by definition a gray area...
On the other hand you might say that the moment when a sperm meets an egg is of special metaphysical importance ("ensoulment"?), and that is the reason that a fertilized egg is sacred. I could then argue that cloning is therefore acceptable - when you create a clone you are never mixing sperm and egg, never creating a new genetic sequence. So no new soul - hence nothing special, no new rights.
It seems to come down to this; you cannot arrive at any particular moment in the continuum of life as being the "beginning" just by logic alone. At some point people choose to plant a flag and prove by assertion that that particular moment is when life begins. But that's what it is - proof by assertion (or proof by intimidation).
I think we'd be better off to move the flag a bit and say that life (and individual rights) begin slowly and grow as the individual develops; coupled with the idea that all sentient beings should be treated "as an end" rather than a "means to an end". Before neurons there can be no pain or suffering, so perhaps that is a good place to start. But I make no claim that this position is the only logically acceptable one. Merely that it seems to allow for the greatest good for the greatest number of sentient humans, while limiting the potential for abuse.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
No, he'd just fly to Europe where it was legal like rich folks used to fly to the Caribbean to have abortions before the Supreme Court found that it was protected under the constitution. When you're rich and powerful you are above the law, or so they think. Just watch them try to justify what for anyone else would be high treason.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
I agree, and anyone opposed to the treatment of the Jews, Eastern Europeans, christians opposed to Hitler's policies in WWII era, should be refused any treatment we gleaned from their torture of the above in the name of science too. Right?
It is not the means, but the end goal that is important to you. So you agree with the Nazi's methods.:) Hope you enjoy their company, because we won't live forever in this flesh and what we do in this world does matter with our eternity.
Many people have a different set of morals than you. What is so difficult to understand about that? For me, the exploration of science should not always come first.
Solution to controversy: find another source.
The researchers should explore using cord blood's stem cells. I stored the cord blood of my daughter in case of cancer later. Why can researchers not pay women for the cord blood? They may make millions off the discoveries; they could at least try paying some money for it. Also, no one will be complaining about harvesting stem cells from the cord blood.
That doesn't even make any sense.
Honestly though, why is every human life precious? Have you ever eaten eggs before? That's one life that will never have a chance to experience this wonderful beautiful world, all because of your senseless "hunger".
You're kidding...I thought those were chicken eggs. I'm going to be sick.
Yes, some bioethicists have a problem with stem cell research, especially if they are releigious etc, but they probablly will have a real bird when we figure out how the mechanisms that enable the egg and sperm to re-program the egg and create stem cells, in other words, nature has developed methods that enable the cell to "start over" and if you can figure out how this works, Ie: how spem cells are made and how to convert your own "old cells" back to being youthfull again (through biotech and advanced nanotech), then you could get younger and could remain at an age of 20 to 25 and get treatments every 5 to 10 years. You can real more about that sort of stuff at www.betterhumans.com and the m-prize web site at www.mprize.org/ ray kurzwiewl's site is also cool www.kurzweilai.net/ . We wasted billions in the war in iraq, if we had put that into bio/nano and stem cell research, we could be really so much farther ahead right now.
When I was a freshmen in high school I had a spinal cord infarct witch caused me to lose all feeling and movement blow my waste. Now I'm a senior in high school and I am well on my way to walking again I am currently able to walk short distances in my walker and longer distances in the pool. After all the work I have done to get to where I am I know its capable for someone to recover from such a devastation injury. I'm sure I probably would have been up and walking with in days of my injury if I had stem cells inserted in to my back to regenerate the injured part of my spine but recovering on your own is passable and I am an example of that.
>Other posters have brought up a good point. These children being born, being brought forth from the miracle frozen embryos, are given life by the in-vitro fertilization process. A >process that wastes dozens of "lives" in order to create one of those IVF children.
>So why all the outcry about embryonic stem cell research? Why not go after the people who are wasting and killing all these embryos in the first place? The infertile people >"playing god" and destroying embryos in the first place? They are endorsing killing embryos, as it is inherently part of the process of IVF. But yet the outcry is against the >research on the remains of the IVF process... where is the logic in this?"
While I admit that I am really torn on this issue, I have to say that this is one of the best and most thoughtful arguments that I have seen posted today. It actually addresses the issue, and dosen't fall into the typical insults and namecalling that I have seen in the vast majority of these posts. I just wanted to thank you, even though you posted AC. Thank you for giving me a good point to ponder as I try and make up my mind on this issue. It is possible to disagree, or not have fully decided on an issue. That does not mean that you are a moron or jerk, just that you have not come to a conclusion. Some of the people here need to learn that.
To most of the rest of the AC posters on this topic: If your post is so stupid or weak that you have to post AC, maybe you should rethink your argument before you post.
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
"Povery breeds poverty."
The problem you are describing could be easily be fixed for future generations by instituting population control methods.
I don't mean by killing people, but the government could impose permanent sterilization methods, such as tubal ligation in women and mandatory vasectomies in men who fall within a certain economic criteria.
For example, in the United States there are hundreds of women on welfare today who have four or five babies before they turn 25. Each of these babies consumes a huge amount of money, time, and energy for the (usually) single-parents -- and the babies will be a part of the system for the next EIGHTEEN YEARS, which is no small expense. In addition, these kids are more likely to have the same lifestyle as their parents, which means that within 14 years, they are likely to start having their own set of four or five kids. If you thought Fibonacci numbers grow quickly, attach a dollar amount to those numbers, and realize that you (United States citizen) are funding them through your tax dollars, and indirectly through your health insurance premiums. Overpopulation in the school systems means a higher student teacher ratio, which has a negative impact on all the students, making some public schools a charade.
Certainly, if women are receiving government welfare assistance, there is no reason for them to have as many babies as they want. Perhaps they could be allowed to have one or two children, but after the second child, the hospital will snip-snip (just like they do circumcisions) and that mother won't be producing more children.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If a man with a certain income is identified as having fathered two children (even if they are not necessarily from the same mother), snip-snip, the man gets a vasectomy.
This is a case where the scientific technology is available but some amount of effort must be made to make it a popular option. (Just like the gas-guzzling SUVs versus more efficient cars.)
Critics would charge that the policy I have stated is "elitist", by imposing a restriction on the poor but not on the wealthy. However, in most countries that have a high per capita income, average middle-class families have no more than two children by their own choice anwyay. As people save more disposable income, they like to spend it on themselves, and find two children to be more than a handful. Many opt not to have children at all.
A selling point for mandatory sterlization would be that women wouldn't have to worry about having to take The Pill on schedule or allergic reactions to other contraceptive methods, and men wouldn't have to worry about "accidentally" becoming a father. (Remember the song "Papa Don't Preach", by Madonna?)
Personal abstinence, of course, is the best choice, which will work for a certain percentage of people. It is the safest in terms of avoiding Sexually Tranmitted Diseases and the HIV virus that causes AIDS. However, the fact remains for whatever reason that too many children are born to parents who can't afford them, and this causes a negative impact on themselves and society.
Something must be done, and we already have the techonology to do it.
( I really would be curious to hear all arguments from people, even from people who don't agree with me. )
Oh, come on! He's allowed to pick his translation like everyone else. Actualy, the King James version is perfectly servicable for these occasions. And if you look up Deuteronomy 5:17 you'll note it says "kill".
Another twist on the same issue are chimera's. There are people living in the world today that are the result of two embryo's that merged into a single entity. Reference What happened to the "second soul"? Is the resulting embryo guilty of murder?
> What you're arguing is like saying dont kill moulde because one
> millenia it may develop sentience.
Only if you look around you and see mould developing sentience along with the thousands of children being born from frozen embryos.
Since the latter happens and the former does not, then you are the dipshit, making up false arguments to try supporting a position you know in your heart is untenable
And the reason science answers how rather than why is that why, requires intent. Intent requires god.
If you are asking Why do we exist or why does this happen, you are already assuming that god, or some omniscient, omnipotent creator exists and asking what their intent was.
Deleted
Well anyone critical of stem cell research should be refused any treatment that exists as a result of research.
8 609
8 498
Agreed. If I detest the use of aborted infant tissue in the vaccines shoved into my arm, then I should have the right to refuse them, for myself or my child (if I had children)
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=3
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=3
Bill Frist is aware that even if the Senate manages to pass increased federal funding for this research, fellow Republican George Bush (Jr.) will follow through on his threat to veto the bill. This is more likely an event of standard political maneuvering than a ray of hope for stem cell advocates. Remember that Frist is considered a major Republican contender for president in 2008.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
A five day old impregnated zygote is smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence.
A zygote is a child, no matter how small you think he (or she) is.
It has no unique features and there is not even a trace of nervous system.
DNA
You're wasting your time. People simple-minded enough to believe the bible is the word of God instead of realizing that it was written by mere humans (with no direct contact with God) for the purpose of controlling the behavior of the masses will never understand the point you're trying to make. An embryo is NOT a human life, and using stem cells from one "ends a life" exactly as much as you idiots do when you "rub one out" and flush the toilet/use a sock/whatever. KILLERS!!!!
The same "morality" that keeps stem cells from being used is the same "morality" that said jerking off was a sin (some "spilling your seed" nonsense) and that women should be burned at the steak for being witches. It's the same idiocy that we will look back upon in a hundred years or so while hanging our heads in shame.
What is so precious about human life? The "presciousness" of a human life is only an attribute that we as humans ascribe to ourselves, and is therefore hardly an objective assesment. We feel no remorse for testing chemicals, poisons, and experimental drugs on other living beings only because they do not have our organizational patterns or that wee-bit of extra intellect that allows us to band together to solve problems. Notice our seemingly unfounded compassion for more advanced species like marine mammals and other primates. We fight very hard for those species that we see as "closely resembling" ourselves while we, with the most carefree disregard, take apart, disect and brutalize lesser species.
Myself, I do not see us as "higher beings". Sure, our resoning sets us apart from other species, but it is not enough to justify the discrimination that we impart upon the collective population of this world. With this reasoning, logic suggests that if it is acceptable to what we do to other species, it is just as acceptable to do it to ourselves (and we do so everyday through open warfare, class warfare, and the brutal subjugation of "lesser" peoples). The Stem cell issue is such a minor blip on the "morally unconscionable" radar that I find it amusing that we fight over this, a practice with the sole purpose of helping to save and improve life, while we should be fighting over the other practices mentioned above whose only purpose is to harrass or extinguish it for the purposes of profit, nationalism, and personal glory. For such an intelligent species (supposedly) we have a rather bizzare collective reasoning, don't you agree?
From one study, on mouse EAE, in the last 5 years. I keep a close eye on what studies are in the pipeline, and have seen nothing else, even tho there is much going on with embrionic stem cells.
Lemon curry?
Nasal stem cells are easier to harvest and cultivate than most other adult stem cells. True, they may have more genetic abnormalities than embrionic stem cells, but they also have my DNA, and not that of another being unrelated to me. I'd think this would be a big plus - no need for anti-rejection drugs.
And no, I haven't been to the site you cited, so I haven't been (directly) brainwashed by them.
Lemon curry?
I can think of one very good reason. If I my wife and I had a bunch of frozen embryos that we weren't going to use after we had gotten one to turn into our ugly^H^H^H^Hprecious little larva^H^H^H^H^Hbaby, we would want those extra embryos destroyed, not raised by some strangers, because we don't want our son/daughter possibly relating to a brother/sister that they would have no way of knowing about.
Having offspring with first-degree relatives is bad (from a genetic standpoint. I tell no one else what they may and may not do morally.) And that's a good enough reason.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
T-34 was not a German tank, it was a Soviet one. About the jet fighters -- the idea of jet drive was not new (rockets were known earlier) and somebody would do it in a matter of time. V2 rockets were militarily nonimportant.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I am of the opinion, cold-hearted as this may sound, that until a fetus is capable of surviving without the 'life support' provided by the womb of the mother, it is not a human being, and is in the same category as a cancerous growth or tumor.
Let's face a fact, one that most men probably don't know, and probably alot of women, too: Having a baby is bad for your body.
It causes a depletion of calcium from the bones. Every child a woman has increases he risk of osteoporosis. A fetus sucks up other nutrients like crazy, too, which means that the 'host,' or 'mother,' if you prefer, has to eat a great deal more. Children are often compared to parasites, but that is exactly what a fetus is, in a most literal sense. It does nothing beneficial for its host (from a sexual selection standpoint -- children only count when they are able to reproduce), and causes a great deal of damage and stress to the host.
Also, looking at it from another way, in why I feel that there is nothing 'wrong' with destroying an embryo or fetus, I submit that killing something that is alive is 'wrong,' but that killing something that 'may become alive at some point' is not. It is only recently, in the past hundred years or so (in the 'developed' world) that infant mortality rates have become so low. Children often did, and in many places around the world, still do, die before they are born, via miscarriage and complications in birthing, among other things more exotic.
So, no, I really don't see anything 'wrong' with abortion or with destroying little buds of cells that haven't even had a good go at division. I don't feel a twinge of regret when I use listerine every morning, and I kill many orders of magnitude more living things when I do that than when an embryo is destroyed.
And no, I do not view this as being cold-hearted. I think other people view it as such, because the vast majority of people (like the 'Majority' of people who voted for King Bush II) are incapable of reason.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
> Like you said, the frozen embryos and the stem
> cells taken from them aren't ours to screw
> around with like this. They do (and should)
> belong to the organism they were taken from.
you're absolutely right.
if i, for instance, needed a new kidney because the two i was born with were completely fucked due to polycystic kidney disease then i and my doctors should be able to decide to take some of my own cells, clone them to produce stem cells and grow me a new 100% compatible kidney with no chance of rejection.
the technology isn't quite there yet for that, but it's not far off (maybe 5 or 10 years) - and banning stem-cell research is just increasing the length of time i have to spend plugged into a dialysis machine just to stay alive.
they're my cells - why shouldn't i be able to have them cloned to help save my own life?
this isn't about "murdering babies" - it's about cloning a patient's own cells in order to produce compatible organs to save their lives.
and it's closer than you think - research with rats has shown that if you clone rat stem cells, wait until they've differentiated, then take the proto-kidney cells and inject them into the rat's abdomen that they will form into several tiny kidneys that attach to the blood vessels and bladder and begin functioning perfectly.
several tiny kidneys may not be as ideal as two full-sized ones but it's a hell of a lot better than either dialysis or a transplant with anti-rejection medication (which suppresses your immune system and increases the risk of infections, diseases, and cancer)
if that were available for human trials, i'd sign up for it in an instant. if nothing else, it would keep me alive and healthy until they were able to grow me a full-sized kidney for implantation - without having huge needles in my arm to plug me into a machine for about 20 hours/week.
Magus Hawking can cast one doozy of a Portable Hole, though he wavers on whether or not it's possible to retrieve things from it.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Okay, so some ACs have already pointed out the alternate translation of "Thou shalt not murder." "Thou shalt not kill" - interpreting "kill" in the absolute sense - makes no sense at all. The same God commanded his people to kill in certain situations.
Nice try, though.
What it does say about "they started it" is "turn the other cheek."
Some things that make great personal policy make horrible public policy. Think hard, and you'll see that this may be one of them - that sometimes, it's permissible to defend.
I mean, who claims that "consider the lillies of the field, etc., etc." - basically, don't work for your food, because God will look after you - makes good economic policy? Ludicrous.
This is quite a topic amongst Christians. Which commandments (and advice) given in the scriptures are good public policy, and which are only good personal policy? Which set you push for public policy determines whether you're a "conservative" or "liberal" Christian, for the most part.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
...because we have snivling bio-ethics people who cry about 'playing god'
My typical respinse to these people...
When a human man can will a universe into existance usin nothing more than his own internal desire for somethign to exist, THEN he is playing God. Not before.
In fact, it is an insult to power of ones "God" to imply that such crude means of manipulating the environment are tanatamount to playing with the powers reserved for the divine... My God is not so weak and powerless.
Better yet, lets use those embryos for stem cell research!
Time makes more converts than reason
I agree. Even worse though is basing your moral views on religion. It will make you even crazier.
Time makes more converts than reason
i don't get it! people are complaining about the use of stem cells, but when they need a cure, they don't care. you have to define life first? when is it possible to say, that a person is "alive"? i don't consider this as taking lives.. if so.. how many lives do a teenage boy take during a certain kind of films (porn)?! millions of "potential lives" or just "lives"? and when a new human is to be concieved during a process featuring a male and a female, the best cell survives.. the rest of them? they die.. if people think, that god exists, why don't animals believe in god, too? or.. why live, when you can kill yourself instantly and take a shortcut to heaven?
A newborn cannot exhibit sentience any more than a dog can. In fact, dogs can do "tricks" that newborns can't which would easily make you think they are sentient. It's a bullshit test.
How we know is more important than what we know.
not the embryos that are there already rather goverment funding for new embryo research, which possibly might include places where people are paid to congregate and create embryos together and then are harvested once the deed is done...it's much cheaper to get embryos that way.... now I no most of the slashdot crowd would fin this an exciting possibility but the vast majority of americans would find these places to be unsettling on their conscience that a good chunk of their paycheck is spent paying people to have sex.... and then there would be a subset of that group that would find it equally appalling that their money then paid for the abortions.... who wants to be the president that has that on their resume?
What is relevant is when a human individual comes into existence and (as another poster stated) is legally recognized.
My preference is that this time should be at birth, but I think good arguments can be made for as early as 4 or 5 months after conception.
Attempting to apply the concept of rights to a being with a neural system inferior to a fish would be silly if it were not vicious.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
No no no. The potential for an embryo to become a living, breathing member of society is taken away from it as soon as you denucleate the egg and start the process in a petri dish.
Saying it has the potential to be a living member of society is like saying i've got the potential to get laid if you lock me in a room by myself and castrate me.
First, your writing gives me hope. Iran will probably come through its difficulties. Also, the argument re poor from the countryside taught me something about the importance for making education and possibilites equal in a society.
Made my day, in short.
As an aside, there is local news today in Sweden that a concert in support of political prisoners in Iran will probably have to stop, because of threats against the musicians. Probably originating from the Iranian embassy.
Second, I'm not American. And even if I were, it's hard to discuss USA since, like India or China, it is more of a continent than a country. Hard to generalize. (The US election problems were hardly critical and will probably be solved in the next one.)
The size of USA makes the West Europeans solutions unworkable (I'm not even sure it works here). I don't know if they can really do much to change their society, really.
But you can't say USA is an opressed country. I tend to agree with the statement that you should grade a country after how well different people are tolerated. No place is perfect, but the west is getting there.
Third, I'm a computer guy. I try to be clear and honest in my opinions. My goal is to understand the world and I despise dishonesty -- religious people are arguably intellectually dishonest. I'm not writing with hidden meanings (looked up Leo Strauss; my modern philosophy is weak).
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
A newborn cannot exhibit sentience any more than a dog can. In fact, dogs can do "tricks" that newborns can't which would easily make you think they are sentient. It's a bullshit test.
How many dogs have fooled you into thinking they were sentient? If the answer is zero then you should stop wasting everyone's time with stupid shit like this. If the answer is greater than zero then you should seek professional help outside this forum.
God you're a moron. Sunflowers exhibit more impressive behaviour than newborns.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What, so automatically any religion or theology I can pull out of my ass becomes more valid than science because it attempts to explain 'why'?
Sorry, but if you believe that you have problems that extend beyond the argument of embryonic stem cell research.
Actually, as I recall, the original text stated, thou shalt not commit murder.
Considering that war was basically a way of life in the time period of the Bible's Old Testament, and not being willing to be doing the killing would be tanamount to allowing yourself to be murdered (hence making yourself an accessory to murder), one might say that it isn't the killing that is the act described; it is murder.
Clearly you know nothing about children. Discussing things with you is a waste of my time. Come back when you've grown up a little.
That is the obvious answer to why religious people think that a life need no functioning brain!
Obviously, it is just introspection!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Regarding herniated disks - I heard a while back on NPR a doctor has created a procedure to replace herniated and compressed disks. This doctor created an implant to replace the disk. Normal procedure for this kind of injury is spinal fusion, which causes more problems than it solves over time - because of strain, sometimes surrounding discs rupture or fail, and more spinal fusion needs to be done. Each fusion stiffens you up more, until you lurch around instead of walking normally. The surgery works pretty well, with many people leaving surgery with no further back pain, or very little compared to before. Most can resume normal activity fairly quickly. There is a catch, though: due to the fact that the spinal cord is in the way on the backside of the human body, they have to perform the surgery from the front thru the abdomen, which means they have to move aside your intestines, etc to get to the spine. Also, due to this, it is obviously limited to lower back injuries - however, since these are the most common of back injuries, it isn't that big of an issue...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Doesn't matter. If you're a Christian, you live by the teachings of the eponymous Christ, right? Christ was very clear on this point and no amount of "he gets away with it on a technicality" revisionist history is valid.
n t/default.asp
Murder
You have heard that the ancients were told, "You shall not commit murder" and "Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court."
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, "You good-for-nothing," shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, "You fool," shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
http://www.lifeofchrist.com/teachings/sermons/mou
Karma to burn? For a blatent pandering to Slashdot's Liberism? Oh, Puhleeze...
Second, in what way do those quotes imply that the pre-birth embryo is a person? (-: Wombs are post-lizard versions of eggs; of course the first growth phase is there. :-)
(I'm not claiming that an embryo isn't life, I just wonder what makes it more life than my skin sloughing off right now.)
I just wish your literacy had won.Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Clearly you know nothing about sentience. That is not a single thing that a newborn can do that a dog cannot. You're also an uncivil person who can't have a conversation without insulting someone. However, I'll let that go cause I'm guilty of it myself sometimes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Since this entire experiement was the scientific equivalent of a political troll (and these threads confirm it worked), it is important to point out that saying the rats rear legs "had movement" is very different from saying they would ever have useful neurological function.
Take your IDE disk cable and cut it in half and then randomly solder all of the wires together and see how how well you can get data to and from the disk drive.
It's interesting to see what is possible, but way premature to declare that this is ultimately going to work in the end.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
"Whittemore's team took specific cells from rat embryos called glial restricted precursor cells -- a kind of stem cell or master cell that gives rise to nerve cells."
Differentiated stem cells. This is adult stem cell research, not embreyonic; they used differentiated multipotent stem cells rather than the original totipotent ones available soon after conception. I guess this is a bit late; and it looks like this slid straight past everyone. I'll just request an article update because this is causing too much flaming and I dislike misleading information.
To put simply: this is adult stem cell research, with non-embreyonic stem cells harvested from embreyos. This is (like the last hundred stem cell research slashdot stories) NOT embreyonic stem cell research.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Clearly it is thus, research = thinking = the work of the Devil. God loves the ignorant above all others.
Now cover up those dirty pillows and get in your cupboard and pray!
I don't remember anything in there about having seperate rules for your personal and public life--in fact, I seem to recall the pervasive idea that they were one and the same.
Further, I don't recall it saying anywhere that God only expected you to follow the rules when they were "a good policy"--and would let you off the hook if you decided to wing it based on your perception of what was more expedient. In fact, I seem to recall him going to some lengths to demonstrate the point that you shouldn't even flinch when your own death was on the line.
Could you perhaps point out the biblical source of your claims about special rules (e.g. whatever-works) for public policy?
--MarkusQ
It ammounts to the same thing.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Dr. Lima in Portugal has my MRI and I am on a waiting list. He uses stem cells harvested from the person's nose.. htm . htm
They are called remyelinating olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs).
http://www.healingtherapies.info/OlfactoryTissue1
http://www.healingtherapies.info/OlfactoryTissue2
Not quite what they are doing to rats, but hey!, what's with all these studies?, ...I have yet to see a rat in a wheelchair and I want out!
Here's an excerpt from http://www.stemcellresearch.org/testimony/fajt.htm
...go figure!Take some time and check out the many entries you can find by doing a Google.
Cheers!
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
Learn to deal with the fact that a substantial percentage of people living today (including a close friend of mine's son with adrenoleukodystrophy) are only alive because of our willingness at some level to PLAY GOD.
Gosh, it's lucky that your friends son wasn't selected to be harvested for stem cells when he was an embryo, isn't it?
Of course we have technology these days that allows us to screen embryos for conditions such as adrenoleukodystrophy and cleanly 'dispose' of any with such defects. After all, this isn't the dark ages any more, is it?
Sure we're using cells from already dead embryos now because there's several lying around but what happens when demand increases? Where will we get stem cells from then?
Machine breathing, organ transplants et al are not PLAYING GOD. Killing a living entity with 100% human DNA to extract the cells for another's benefit certainly is.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I am of the opinion, cold-hearted as this may sound, that until a fetus is capable of surviving without the 'life support' provided by the womb of the mother, it is not a human being
...and is in the same category as a cancerous growth or tumor.
Fascinating. Do you consider someone in traction to be not human? They wouldn't survive without a hospital after all.
Tumor. You've never actually seen a foetus have you?
Let's face a fact, one that most men probably don't know, and probably alot of women, too: Having a baby is bad for your body.
So, anything that isn't immediately physiologically good for us gives us the right to stop it at any cost? Right.
It does nothing beneficial for its host (from a sexual selection standpoint -- children only count when they are able to reproduce), and causes a great deal of damage and stress to the host.
By that same logic, if my nine-year-old gives me no health benefits and causes great stress I'm allowed to kill her if I so choose. Hmmmmm.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Someone in traction is a human being -- I draw the designation between alive/dead and human/non-human at the point where the fetus is born or is capable of surviving outside of the womb, as I said in my original post. Please stop doing yourself and the rest of us the disservice of selecting only the things that support your (flawed) argument. Also, a person in traction can survive without traction, and people have done before the advent of medicine.
A better arguement would have been someone who is on life-support due to an injury that renders them incapable of breathing or otherwise functioning on their own. However, since they are human, it is not my choice to end their life -- they are quite capable of making that decision on their own, and I will fully support that decision, either way. My life, your life, and everyone's life is their own, for ever and always, and no one has the right to tell anyone not to end their life, or force them to continue living when they no longer want to.
I have seen many, and they don't particularly disturb me. I've also seen lots of other animals, both ones that were formerly alive and ones that were only fetuses, suspended in liquid in jars. It doesn't discomfort me. I've also seen many fetuses of various sorts dissected (though never a human one), though I have not had the opportunity to do so myself, because I never got to take classes where such a thing was offered, since I have not yet started 'higher learning' and the High School I attended did not offer such things, and I have not had the money to procur the needed materials and tools to do it myself.
If we so choose, yes. The world would be a much better place, in my opinion, if the couples that were expecting a baby that were unable to support said baby did not have said baby/gave it up for adoption to a family that was able to support it. It would reduce the dependancy upon Welfare in this country. Let's face it: If you cannot take care of a child (monetarily, emotionally, or physically,) do not have that child.
The decision to abort the child, however, is not mine to make, nor is it the husband's. It is solely the choice of the woman who is pregnant, since she is the one who has to bear the child and (unless her husband/mate helps to rear the child) rear it.
The choice should not be made for her by anyone else, including the government or a religious institution.
I never said that. Your nine-year-old is a human being. Not a lump of flesh that has the potential to become a human being. And if I was in your presence and you attempted to end the life of your nine-year-old, or anyone else, for that matter, without a good enough reason (shooting someone who was about to shoot someone else would
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I simply can't fathom why this scientific area can't be advanced without controversy in the US.
These types of people don't care as much about someone who's already been born than they do about a fetus. If they did then they'd at least allow Dilation & Extraction Procedures (D&E) or late term abortions when the life and health of the mother are at risk, but all too many are against abortions for any reason betraying their hypocracy.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea I was totally shocked when I heard Bill Frist supported more stem cell research, thinking he couldn't be all bad.
FalconShould there be a Law?
From your first post I guess I did not fully grasp that you saw unborn foetuses as mere lumps of flesh, on which your entire argument depends.
From that premise, I can only conclude that you also see post-birth people as lumps of flesh, but with experience.
If you truly see humanity on that level then I doubt anything I say will have any effect on you, and am sorry to have wasted your time.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
While I do not disagree with your wording of my evaluation of a fetus, I do disagree with your working of my evaluation of the former.
However, I do agree that it is impossible for us to reach any agreement on the subject at hand, other than the one we have come to.
However, my view on Humanity is something entirely other. One should not confuse one thing with another.
However, if I may offer you one piece of advice: Time spent in debate is never wasted. Even if you fail to convince your intended target to change their views, you still have gained experience in expressing your opinion, and there are generally other people listening who can choose to harken to your view.
I do not consider this as time wasted. No time spent meaningfully, no matter what the outcome, is ever wasted.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I sure hope this is the same Fred Thompson the former senator (and current actor). You provide a reasonable post, but to lend any credence to Senator Frist, who should have his medical license revoked for have the arrogance to make the horrific misdiagnosis of T. Schiavo, is misguided. The fact that stem cells are merely pluripotent and not "immortal" has been well-known. The five current viable stem-cell strains have been made "quasi-immortal" due, in part, to murine cells that were added - thereby tainting the lines. I agree that some sort of "ONUS" like network to retard tissue trafficking, just like organ control, is warranted. Then again, you're speaking like a smart person. I am getting the distinct impression that the moment one enters Congress, one contracts a local virus (Rhabdomyeles insanitarium, perhaps?) which makes Congressional members impervious to common sense, the Scientific method or anything else that would reasonably resemble intelligence. I am a third-year PhD student in solid-state chemistry/physics and am personally planning on making as much money as possible and getting the hell out of the US, as this country tragically seems to be regressing back to Puritan times. I love this country, but I have no intention of hanging around while nutjobs like Santorum, Joe Barton and Frist couch their sincerely inhuman beliefs in comfy, feel-good rhetoric.
Gosh, it's lucky that your friends son wasn't selected to be harvested for stem cells when he was an embryo, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents didn't decide to use contraception when you were conceived, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents had sex when they did, rather than not bothering that night, isn't it?
Gosh, it's lucky that your parents met at all, isn't it?
If his friend's son had never been born, then he wouldn't have ever existed for him, or anyone else, to consider the situation. Or would you suggest we ban abortions, contraception, masturbation, and put women in baby-making-factories where they have children as often as possible, because it would be immoral if a person who lived hadn't been born?
Ok Jackass, I would love to see you bottle feed a zygote. DNA is not a unique feature until it is activated you know like the extra chromosome you seem to be carrying around
"A better approach is to ground the high moral consideration we give humans on their developed traits, such as self-consiousness, a capacity to suffer and enjoy, and a desire to live"
The particular traits listed here are all hard to define and not necessarily relevant. They are traits that are used to describe why people are more worthy of life than other life-forms.
Self-consciousness supposedly refers to an intelligence that is aware of itself and the effects of it's actions. It is a trait that could easily be ascribed to, say, a software control system that can predict the results of changes made by said system. Many people do not see this kind of behavior as "self-conscious" simply because it seems rudimentary. In my opinion, people will not accept this interpretation of self-consciousness simply because it does not allow people to be "better" than everything else.
Suffer and enjoy could simply mean responding to positive and negative feedback, there's nothing magical there, any thing generally considered to be living does that.
A desire to live, again could be ascribed to almost any living organism (also, some humans do not have this trait).
I think that the only rational way to prescribe morality is in the context of society. After-all, the purpose of morality is to promote society. Biology really doesn't have much to do with it.
So to say that "less than 1% of its DNA is different from all other organisms save other humans" is not relevant. What is relevant is that many human embryos have the potential to become members of society.
This also removes ambiguities like whether or not other life-forms have rights. As long as it is good for society, the destruction of plant or animal life is good, whether or not we ascribe some transcendental property such as self-consciousness to such life.