Slashdot Mirror
Korean Lab Worker Forced to Donate Her Own Eggs
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang had attained international fame by successfully cloning a human embryo, but he accomplished his feat by pressuring a lab worker into donating her own eggs. Consequently, Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, has severed his ties with Mr. Hwang and cited gross breaches of ethics."
I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Man. What a fucking cheapskate. Eggs are like, what, $1.29 a dozen?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
This one goes in the "mad scientist" file. Talk about complete loss of perspective.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
A quick glance at the article shows it happened at Seoul University which is in South Korea. Last I heard, South Korea hadn't been overrun by the communists from the north.
Got Shadowrun? Awakened Worlds
"Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University."
North Korea doesn't have the money, the technology, or the support necessary for stem cell research.
eclecti.cc
I think you grossly misunderstand Communism. Communism is not the same thing as fascism, authoritarianism, or anything along those lines. In fact, it's not a governmental so much as an economic system. I'm not advocating it, all evidence shows that Communism does not work. Nevertheless, it is not "evil." If you take the word "communist" out of the above post, it'll work fine.
Le français vous intéresse?
Dr. X: I love you. I love your eggs. I promise not to slap you anymore. No fork them over bitch, I GOT SHIT TO CLONE.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
Questionable ethics from somebody working towards human cloning?
Why doesn't this surprise me?
I don't know. Prejudice maybe?
If this was a comic book, he'd probably gain superhuman powers from some weird lab accident and be called The Kloner.
Dr. Who suck wang...
Dr. Woo Suk Hwang
"Dr. Who" suck wang?
or
Dr. whom sucks wang?
Interesting indeed.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I would say something about having egg on his face, but I don't really think it's appropriate.
Now the poor chaps who are trying to achieve something worthwhile with their medical science using stem cells or whatnot have to deal with another round of "oh god, what is the world coming to?" And "quick! Lets ban the whole lot before someone else does something this stupid."
Nothing about pressuring? Where are you getting that from, ScuttleMonkey, and do the /. editors RTFA's themselves?
"According to the WSJ" Schatten quit because he heard that one of the lab workers had donated eggs, but there is nothign about pressure in the WSJ article. Is there in the Nature one?
Typical misrepresentation of the facts by the submitter.
No where in the linked article was there any impliation that Dr. Hwang used any form of pressure, coersion, or other unscrupulous means to obtain the eggs.
The reasons given by Mr. Schatten is pretty clearly stated:
Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.
Hwang lied about where the eggs came from, and used (from the standpoint of the US) and inappropriate donor.
I know this is just user submitted stuff here, but could we at leat pretend like accurately representing the article is important. Or do we just assume no one will bother to read a 1/2 summary without some creative spin in the summary.
If cloning ends up having the potential to prevent birth defects and such, is forcing someone to give up her eggs, worth it in the end?
Don't worry about it. Never going to happen. You can't take a chunk of someone's liver by force to save someone else, and there's no reason to think that would be different with other parts of people.
To everyone else, please don't respond to the troll portion about embryos. Don't let him win.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the term "forced donation" sounds a little self-contradictory to me. Something like "forced concession" fits the situation better. A "forced donation" is more like the offering plate at church.
On a side note, how do you force someone to give up their eggs? What's he gonna do, saw her open and steal them if she doesn't hand them over?
Oh, wait.....
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
North Korea has the ability to do advanced technological stuff, just only a few things due to their perpetually screwed workers paradise. Stem cell stuff would serve no purpose to them unlike weapons technology and satellites where the technology can be resold to Axis of Evil (TM) countries earning them cash $$$ .
What the submitter left out was this nice bit:
Dr. Schatten, who was to have led the organization's board of directors, says he is now severing collaboration with Dr. Hwang, due to questions over the source of human eggs used in a 2004 cloning project, and errors in a 2005 paper coauthored by the scientists. A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions.
Is it just me, or does it look like Schatten didn't have a problem with the forced collection, only starting to sever ties (note the tense there: "is now severing", ie, he hasn't finished?) after problems come up with a paper?
I can't see why else he waited a year after it was public knowledge (and no doubt knowledge to him well before the news report) to sever his ties.
Please help metamoderate.
They have exhausted their other options when it comes to delaying embryonig stem-cell research.
Since several states have started passing budgets with money dedicated to embryonic stem cell research, its oponents have been growing increasingly rabid and vicious in the last few months. The 3B dollars approved under proposition 71 in California have been delayed so far for more than a year. Expect those well-meaning folk trying to save your soul at the expense of your body to jump on this news and integrate it in their propaganda machine ASAP.
If you are subscribed to the google news feed on the topic ("stem cell" or "stem cells" are good candidate strings (does that thing take regexp btw?)) you will see that almost every week a major new scientific announcement is made. There are signs of improvement for a lot of diseases previously thought incurable. Not all of this stuff gets mentioned in the mainstream media in the US.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
Oh wait, that was for an egg donation. 8-)
a columnist during the past election cycle quoted her child as having said to her 'John Kerry wants to make medicine out of babies.'
I remember that. And right after that, my 1-year-old son put down his Tonka truck and asked, "Daddy, why do columnists make up bad propaganda lines and then pretend their kid said it to make up for the fact that if an adult said it, he'd look really, really dumb?" Then he burped up on himself.
Also, neither the North nor the South parts of Korea are communists.
What does this have to do with the progression of the state?
Liquid has the letter U in it.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."Actually, that was (is) *his* name, not hers.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Pulled from Science, Vol 304, Issue 5673, 945 , 14 May 2004:
Last week Nature reported that in an interview a member of the research team admitted being one of the egg donors, raising questions about whether she profited professionally by being a co-author. Nature quoted bioethicists as saying that, to avoid any hint of coercion, there should be an arms-length relationship between the research group and the donors.
Hwang blames the language barrier for "a miscommunication." He says the woman had tried to explain that, in the future, she would be willing to donate eggs for such research by other groups. Moon-il Park, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hanyang University in Seoul and chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the university hospital that approved the research plan--the eggs were harvested at the hospital--wrote in an e-mail that no one from Hwang's team was among the 16 volunteers. "I confirmed this after being contacted by Professor Hwang" regarding the allegations, he wrote.
Subvocalize this phoenetically. Dok-tur Wu Saugk Hwahng. The 'h' sound consonant is actually a part of the surname "Hwang" but the it is not a part of the Wu portion of his first name.
It's not really rational to misread something then exclaim that anyone is kidding you. If anyone, it's your dyslexic inner adolescent that is kidding you.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."I agree with parent. Its kinda sad that Communism itself has become so associated with being 'evil', mostly I suppose because of the anti-Soviet rehetoric of the US Govornment, which i suppose was necessary at the time.
:o(
Oh, BTW absolute Capitalism doesnt work either. See USA for details
People confuse the utterly vile evil of Stalin & Mao with the Communist ideals, which are pretty benign and were designed to create an equal society. Mao (who was an order of magniture more dispicable than stalin) & co. abused these ideals for personal gain as soon as they took power.
In the end, communism doesnt really work in the real world because of human nature. Power corrputs, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Shame
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
No, because it really isn't all that hard to find someone that will. It's different when you are talking about a resource that can only be acquired through unethical means: then you have a value judgment to make. For example, should someone be forced to give up a heart, or a lobe of their brain, in order to advance the state of human knowledge? I would say no. But heck, right now I could line you up half a dozen women that would be proud to donate an egg or two to a significant research project. No coercion required.
Of course, now, if there was money involved that would help.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As an eminent member of the NKKSU (North Korean Kraeizy Scientist Union), I see absolutely no problem with such practices. I myself regularly force my own lab slav^H^H^H^Hworkers to do such things. Those bastards are so lazy anyway that this is the only way to justify their outrageously high wages. No later than yesterday one of them even asked me a raise to $3.75 per hour. What the H-E-L-L was he thinking ? I can tell you that I added him immediately to the list of subjects that are going to be used in this experiment with the RNA-deconstructor human immunodeficiency virus. This time this is an improved version which works (I think). -- Dr. Madh
I'm from overseas. First time I've heared about Dick Chaney I thought they were talking about a porn actor.
So do you really want it damned, whatever it is? What is it, anyway?
Slightly off-topic, but one wonders about people who might have done all sorts of research on themselves/their "by-products".
If the following account is accurate, it's another example of a slightly less inethical incidence:
When he was a grad student at Princeton he was having an argument with a colleague about the mobility of sperm; Feynman went away for a bit and came back with a sample. (from "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman."?)
The tag is misleading at best, if not an outright troll. There is no indication that the donor was pressured or coerced in any way. In fact there is no indication of any wrongdoing except for an allegation by the American scientist, with no offering of proof. Do we know what HIS motives were?
Whoever greenlit this should have caught it-- for God's sake the article itself is a blurb, it would take 30 seconds to read. If you're against human cloning there's plenty of fodder for your argument, you should not be allowed to use Slashdot as your pulpit to demonize the other side.
My mom has told me a story about when I was little. At my first experience at a wake, we went up to view the body; the young man had been killed in a motorcycle accident. I was young at the time, but old enough for the experience. There was a woman in front of us, and she started to cry at the casket. When my mom and I went up next, I started to cry as well. The man's head was covered in a bandage and the lower part of the casket cover was lowered.
We walked back to our seats and after a few minutes I asked "where the man's legs were". This was the reason for my crying. The thought of the man's legs being removed when his body was put in the casket was a bit unsettling for me. She explained the reality of it, and I understood. It was a good thing that I had asked the question, because she initially had the impression that it was just the woman in front of us. Monkey see monkey do, or something.
My point is this. Young kids see the world through *very* different eyes, without the benefit of life's experiences to draw from. I'm not taking either side in this debate, but not everything can be reduced to the innocent view of a child.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Oh, BTW absolute Capitalism doesnt work either. See USA for details
Or Somalia.
Le français vous intéresse?
By the way, I'm not from Korea. The name is a long story.
Le français vous intéresse?
I disagree with the assertion that communism doesn't work. The problem is that communism doesn't scale. It works quite well in communities of up to a few dozen people, however.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It would be a KDE comic book?
I've often thought that the medical ethics community was a bunch of smart, Talmudic guys somehow looking for relevancy and importance through their arguing skills. E.g. if a man dies in a car wreck and there's no next of kin, is it OK to harvest his organs? OK, fine -- you are in the middle of harvesting the guys liver, and the intended donor is there cut open -- just when you are about to transfer the liver, the next of kin appear, declare that if you take the liver out of their family member, he won't have one in the afterlife. But if you don't do the transfer the intended recipient will probably die earlier due to having been cut open -- blah blah blah blah.
Is it OK to harvest fetal material from abortions. When is it OK to pull the plug on a brain-dead person? When is it OK to euthanize somebody?
This is comical: in early medicine, you had doctors robbing bodies out of graves so they could figure out how the bodies worked. Sometimes they'd get lynched for this, so doctors established a network, so that doctors from town-a would tell doctors from town-b, "we got a body in cemetary-a". Town-b doctors would rob it, and when they had a body in cemetary-b, they'd tell the doctors from town-a. That's the origin of modern medicine.
I wonder what the medical ethicists would have said.
I think we'd all be better off if we didn't have medical ethicists, and instead just asked ourselves, "what is legal?"
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Well, a prostitute knows what she's selling, doesn't she? A lab worker, on the other hand, probably expects to use her mind, not her ovaries.
What everyone seems to be missing is that, if there's a power gradient, there's implicit coercion involved.
... it's the stem cells from human fetuses that they have a problem with. It's one of those "slippery slope" cases, whether you believe it or not.
Er...
Normally im not really busy in this "comparing evil" buisness...
But how exactly would you gauge Mao "an order of magnitude more dispicable" than Stalin?
I mean, they were both cruel bastards, and if maos actions had the death of more people as direct result (which is debatable), then it wasnt out of stalins lack of trying... (but more about population numbers)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
This is the ideal, true.
But how many businesses are in business despite ethical lapses.
Take for instance, Sony, the subject of much talk here of late.
They may suffer some small loss of profits, but very likely will
continue in business. If you are not in the "Microsoft can do no
wrong" camp, I, personally, believe them to be an excellent example
of doing some degree of wrong over a while and continuing in business.
I think other examples could be found as well.
The basic problems with the ideal are that it is difficult to educate
yourself as a consumer as to the ethical lapses of those you are considering
doing business with. That is getting easier, but there are some fundamental
issues that may never be overcome.
It is difficult as a business to know the bottom line costs to themselves
of certain actions, and even if it is, it will likely be decided not by
right and wrong, but on bottom line costs ( Look up the issues about
Ford Pinto's catching fire in rear end collisions, and how Ford decided
in that case ).
Quite true, but this is true of just about any government instituted amoung men. Some are better than others.
Democracy is good, provided there is accountablity and visibility ( something America needs more of, in my
considered opinion ). And your point is right on target there, I guess we get as much of that as we insist
on, overall. I wish we insisted on more. Capitalism, in my mind, is a blind animalistic set of passions
travelling on it's stomach. It is as good in this regard as the regulations ( whether instituted in effective
law, or naturally arising from the participants thereof )
emt 377 emt 4
"It's not really rational to misread something then exclaim that anyone is kidding you. If anyone, it's your dyslexic inner adolescent that is kidding you."
Umm, yeah, if you overanalyze it it's not so funny. In reality, however, it was not as big of stretch as you're making it out to be. And, yeah, it's funny.
"Derp de derp."
QUOTE: If you are subscribed to the google news feed on the topic ("stem cell" or "stem cells" are good candidate strings (does that thing take regexp btw?))
I can't say about the news feed subscription, but when it comes to the Google search they've implemented something that they refer to (oddly enough) as "stemming" which if you enter *either* cell or cells the engine actually searches for *both*
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
Where did anyone other than this slashdot submitter accuse Dr.Hwang of forcing anyone?
On the contrary, Dr.Hwang is well known for being exceptionally careful to keep his experiements in ethical domain, even at the expense of progresses in his experiments. Please examine the facts first before making a serious accusation like this
Actually, it was a man's name he was making fun of to begin with -- Woo Suk Huang is the doctor, not his assistant.
Apologies for the anon posting... have already moderated and don't want to waste that moderation.
"Missing" nothing. If the individuals involved don't see the situation that way, there's been no coercion. History is brimming with people who put themselves forward (often into harm's way) because they felt strongly about the value of the research they were doing -- from lab assistants to lab owners.
"Implicit coercion" is just a media twist to substitute external judgement. It's reasonable to judge minors incapable of giving informed consent, but let's not patronise adults.
South Korea. A capitalist regime where not much is sacred except the pursuit of money. Lot of money to be made in the cloning business, I'll wager.
~p
Read the article, it says nothing about pressuring anyone about eggs, whoever wrote the blurb should be punished, they obviously have a political axe to grind against human cloning. The sad part is that most people who see this will believe this guy coerced a employee to donate an egg blindly without reading the story first...READ THE ARTICLE AND TELL ME WHERE IT SAYS HE "PRESSURED" HIS ASSITANT FOR EGGS! It doesnt, it says he misrepresented where the eggs came from, period. So for everyone who is all outraged about this, go to the article and read it before you start venting out of control.
Gross breaches of your morality? Perhaps. I hate it when people replace the word "morals" with "ethics", thinking that they're both synonymous. Learn the difference.
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
Seeing as how his name is Woo Suk Hwang, we can at least be assured that he has an abundant supply of semen to work with.
Below is the full text of the article from the "Wall Street Journal".
U.S. Scientist Quits Stem-Cell Alliance
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
November 12, 2005; Page A5A
A prominent U.S. scientist is withdrawing from an international collaboration to create human embryonic stem cells.
Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said he was severing all collaborations with the laboratory of Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University.
Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian, has drawn international applause for leading the first effort to clone human embryos and extract their stem cells. Last month, he announced the formation of the World Stem Cell Foundation, an international alliance aimed at spreading that technology.
Dr. Schatten, who was to have led the organization's board of directors, says he is now severing collaboration with Dr. Hwang, due to questions over the source of human eggs used in a 2004 cloning project, and errors in a 2005 paper coauthored by the scientists.
A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions. Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.
The above article does not state explicitly the matter of coercion, but the article strongly implies it. The pressure to produce results at Seoul University (and other Korean universities) is very intense, yet unfortunately, Korean society rejects the ethical standards that are routinely practiced and implemented in universities and laboratories in the West. Hence, American rules forbid workers on a research project from donating their own eggs for the research: the aim is to prevent any pressure from being applied to the workers. In Korea, the female lab worker most definitely felt pressure to "put out", and no one gave a damn.
For the old timers in this forum, I encourage you to do a search for the original story of the "cloning breakthrough". SlashDot had started a thread about it in 2004 or early 2005.
I will reiterate what I said in previous Slashdot threads about cloning. I salute the go-slow approach that the West (which includes Japan) has taken. Its people have repeatedly debated the ethics of the subject and enacted laws ensuring an ethical approach to the matter.
Such is not the case in Korea and, especially, China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). No national debate on the subject ever arose in Korea or China. The Koreans and the Chinese view cloning humans as merely another bland step in science. Hence, last year, the Chinese created a human-rabbit embryo but destroyed it after a couple of days.
BTW absolute Capitalism doesnt work either. See USA for details
Nice attempt at sounding intelligent.
-JP
...oh yeah. WHOOSH!
I am Spartacus
Unethical if she didn't do it willingly but was instead coerced into donating eggs.
The communist economic system requires total government control over distribution and value which is evil.
The fundamental purpose of economics is to allocate goods and services efficiently by pricing their value correctly. Communism, of virtually all varieties, swear that they can do this pricing function better than capitalism. They never have. After so many decades, the default communist response to such a request is a quick change of subject or juvenile assertions that economics is not about efficient allocation.
Before the gulags and the death camps come along, there is the fundamental fact that communism can't set a price. All the subsequent violence stems from power mad people who won't make way when, once again, this fact is proven in the real world. There have been communist societies that didn't turn violent, the pre-marxian utopian experiments are a good example. Instead, they all shut themselves down when they figured out after a year or two that it was never going to work.
Only the ignorant and/or evil are communists these days.
As far as capitalism goes, it's funny how the closer to capitalism you get, the better your economic results get (compare economic growth rates and unemployment between France and the US). The closer you get to communism, the worse things become. The US is a capitalist state the same way that the USSR was a communist state. Both states followed their models imperfectly but where the US strays from principles, it performs worse economically, where the USSR strayed from principles (NEP period, for example) it performed much better.
Generally it's done via a comparative body count. You can't beat the Khmer Rouge in the % sweepstakes. They offed about a third of their population. Now that's revolutionary commitment!
Jesus wept.
Just go visit your local sperm bank. They'll pay you some amount of money (I think it's probably in the region of $20-$50).
As opposed to total Corporate control?
At least the voters can have some influence in a democratic system.
Getting any control over a privately held corporation is pretty much impossible
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Would you care to back up your assertion with a reasoned argument? If the goal of this post was just to increase the noise level of this discussion (which is likely, considering the unfounded accusation and judgment in it), I suggest others ignore it. I'm not passing judgment either way on Communism, I'm passing judgment on the parent post, which is void of any real content.
Want to explain? I've got time to listen... (/me is curious)
that's because few economists own farms in Kentucky
People occasionally die from egg donation. It's always a very uncomfortable procedure, no matter what the results. This is why it's important to have true volunteers. All sorts of pressures can be applied to a subordinate in a lab and the overwhelming chances are that the boss will get away with it.
Agree with the Parent:
In many utopian communities founded in the USA: the Amana, Oneida, Shakers, etc... A pure form of communism was successfully practiced for several generations.
What did all of these communities have in common?
1. They were all relatively small and agrarian. 2. They were all united by a strong common religion.
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
prostitute? in korea? U can't imagine. . . me want you long time! nuther words, nuthin but there.
This oft sampled quote (me so horny, me love you long time) is originally from Kubrick's (rip) classic Full Metal Jacket, a film which brilliantly and disturbingly explores a dichotomy (perhaps even the dichotomy) inherent in human nature. It's set during the Vietnam "conflict" (heh) era. The plot events take place in a marine boot camp preparing infantry for deployment to Vietnam and shortly after, in the country itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with Korea or the US-Korean involvement of the 50s.
But please, don't let such trivial details stop your asian generalizations.
At least until the Great Leader gets blown up and all they have left is his nose, and then you can bet some idiot time traveller will chuck it in front of a steam roller while escaping from the cops...and then...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I remember when interferon was going to cure cancer. Huge amounts of money got dumped into interferon research. It largely ended up a dry hole. Embryonic stem cell research could end up being a dry hole too. If the adult stem cell guys end up doing it better, cheaper ESC is doomed even if it does work.
So far, the ASC researchers are many years ahead of their ESC competitors. We have actual ASC therapies with many more in human trials. How many ESC therapies are in human trials? The last I heard, the number was zero. By the current state of the science ESC is a loser. So why is the government pouring billions into backing this loser instead of extending the already successful ASC methods further?
Your argument was very valid until it got to the "which is evil" part. You fail to explain why it's evil.
So, why is it evil?
Le français vous intéresse?
What are you talking about?Seoul is in South Korea.
Funny you should mention that. Down in OZ we had a top flight race car driver called Dick Johnson
Thank you for providing me with a good example of the right-wing propaganda I mentioned in my previous post.
If you quit buying what fauxnews sells you and do your homework, you will see that therapies using ESCs are practiced all over the world with stunning results. The most amazing progress is made in regenerating heart tissue and there's also some stunning progress in spinal cord injuries.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
For all the slashdot crowd here comparing egg donation to sperm donation or, heaven forbid, having to work long hours, a basic interjection of reality (though IANAMD)
1) Egg donation is a surgical procedure. A painful surgical procedure. A single egg is not magically transported from the woman's body - essentially a surgical procedure akin to a biopsy is peformed. Yes, modern surgical methods are better, but the pain is real, the risk of surgery is real, which leads to:
2) Egg donation potentially impacts fertility. This is a delicate procedure, and things can go wrong.
Donating one's eggs to scientific research is a noble action, and I deeply respect the person who does so. But it's a serious matter, and the merest appearnace that outside pressure was applied to influence a worker to donate her eggs calls into question the ethics of the project team itself.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Much better!
You can't add pianos and telephones.
Does anyone? I'm just asking, ok? I mean it's easy enough in this controversial field to start a rumor about coercion, force, pressure, obviously there are people who want to see this research fail or be discredited for their own religious or philosophical reasons. Or maybe there is some truth, but we've seen plenty of people attacking strawmen (and CIA wives) lately in all sorts of fields. Is it too much to ask that if you are going to make claims of pressure, much less force, you have some actual evidence you can point to? If the best you can do for evidence is vaugue allusions about cultural stereotypes and searching slashdot, I call FUD.
The problem is that communism doesn't scale.
...just like any other hierarchy.
Large systems need to rely on much more independence of individual units. For example, cells in an organism are somewhat independent; I don't think a mammal would work if the brain tried to micromanage every task a cell performed.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Actually communism worked pretty well... in small hunter gatherer tribes where every member of the community realised that his/her existence depended on the welfare of the other members. Therefore sharing resources, in that context, is the most obvious way to do things. In larger societies, it's more difficult to relate the welfare of Joe I Don't Dnow and Don't Wanna Know Who, to one's own best interest is much more difficult. And swindling is easy in any big structure, whatever type of government or private interest it resprents. Similarly capitalism works when the population is small enough that the accumulation of resources by a few does not significantly deplete the globally available resources. But since resources are finite, when the increase of welfare of a few signifies a significant drop of survival odds of a significant fraction of the population... things change and usually in bloodshed, since the established elite is not likely to be willing to forfeit its priviledges for the benefit of mere "commoners". Capitalism is the economic system of choice when rsources (and thereofore opportunity) seem plentiful, while communism is the system ofchoice of desperate people who think of survival, when resources appear very limited. The failure of the first is the the system itself whic acts as a positive feedback pump which causes resources to become ever scarcer for the greater number. The failure of the second is that as soon as survival seems assured, people start wishing to improve their personal lot with respect to their fellow humans. Their respective success is their downfall in the end.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
I think that might be a movie qoute but I don't really know for sure I am just surprised that people waste the mod points on an AC that seems a waste to me
typical comment of average american. most of the americans think that everything non american is communist, and everything communist and therefore non-american is bad, even though they don't understand communism or socialism, or whatever else, or even democracy for that fact.
good example is health care in canada. its socialist and it kicks ass. but we hate it because its socialist. here in US we get rapped all the time for health insurance that doesn't cover anything. we pay high fees, we get shitty coverage that has high deductables, and most of us cannot even afford medical help that we need. and we love it because its "democratic!" and why do we hate canadian? because its communist. because rich people such are doctors don't want the government to sponsor our health insurance, because then they wouldn't be able to charge arm and a leg for their service. you don't think this is true? pay attention to your bill next time you go to dentist. you get rapped in the ass. why is that insurance communist and bad? because rich people tell us that. and most people just repeat after them because they are too fucking stupid to have their own opinion.
rich people control the government. they give our senators and congressmen donations, they elect them. (PLSC 101)
that is why government officials do whatever rich people want them to do. rarely do you see government doing something good for an average man (like spliting up Bell). look at microsoft for example. they rape people with their high prices and they force all the manufactures to only support their products (windows etc). ordinary people have to buy windows products if they want everything to work right (e.g. my grandma doesn't run linux, she's too old to learn it). so there was an antitrust suit against it? and what happened, microsoft paid pocket change to some other corporation, and they keep rapping whomever they please.
i love my country, just like everyone else. only difference is that i realize that US is not perfect in any way. matter of fact it sucks donkey balls and average american gets rapped every day, its just that all the rest of the world is fucked even worse.
if you don't see these problems, there are only two reasons for that:
a) you are fucking blind
b) you are ignorant as fuck
another good example of this shit is oil war. all the big car manufactuers invested a lot of money into fuel cells few years ago. just recently they all one after other stopped or slowed down research in that field. why you ask?
well, the oil industry is fucking huge in this country. everything runs on oil. oil industry 0wnz us. if they say prices are going to be $20/gal, then they are going to be that. we can't do shit about it. they pretty much forced automotive industry to stop investing into fuel cells, because if somebody made a car that was economical, clean, and quickly rechargable, they would be millioners and oil industry would suck cocks. they obiviously don't want to suck cocks so they will do anything to stop that shit from happening. remember, this country is run by money, and average american is blind to wtf is going on.
belive it or not, we are getting rapped every fucking day. no wonder there is such a high hemoroid problem here in the states. money runs this country and we are all fucked by it. corruption is everywhere. yes, our government too.
US is run by money. its not a democracy, its a republic. they tell you that you have freedom of whatver, but you actually don't. its just like communism or any other government for that reason. only difference is that people think they are free, yet they get rapped just like everyone else. big fish eats little fish. welcome to the real world.
fuck. fbi is on my door, bbl.
Communism is not the same thing as fascism, "
The only difference between communism and fascism is that the fascists have nicer uniforms.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
His name is "Suk Hwang" -- which makes him phonetically gay, and therefore a communist agent.
You must be gravely misinformed about Taiwan. You make some blanket statement but didn't show the evidence to back yourself up, so I'd like to request you do that. In particular:
The other day someone accused me of reading between the lines of what Aaron said about Frank on OSWD, and that I have bad English. I guess someone has even worse reading comprehension skills than I do.
You need to upgrade your tin foil hat to gold, and make sure your gold foil is not made in Taiwan nor China.
I once had a signature.
In a perfect world, she would have just yelled "Leggo, my Eggo!" and that would have been the end of it.
6 hours past, in the meantime two more BS postings from ScuttleMonkey, but neither an update nor an apology by ScuttleMonkey and the author of the article! Posting false accusations and playing with a researcher's reputation is the only unethical misdeed here.
So you think it makes sense for the government to decide how much shoes cost or how worthy one job is compared to another?
As opposed to total Corporate control?
Total corporate control is anti-free market.
At least the voters can have some influence in a democratic system.
Getting any control over a privately held corporation is pretty much impossible
Vote by not buying their products and services and please don't tell other people how to spend their own money.
Communism says we are all basically good people who care for the welfare of each other and we should share with the less fortunate.
Capitalism says I want my XBox and screw u if you cant afford food.
Guess which is more cloer to human nature ? Communism is an ideal which can never work because humans are basically selfish.
The US is not a true capitalistic state as there is a strong influence of the Chrisitan church which is a communist organization. As the church says we are all good people(children of god) and should share with the less fortunate.
The US works because the capitalism of the economic system is balanced by the communism of the church system.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Before sperm donations could be paid for, the men working at the clinics would often donate their own sperm in order for there to be enough supply of sperm, because demand was so great and there simply wasn't enough unafilliated men donating to meet the demand there was for sperm.
Were they really trying to meet market demand or was that huge supply of free pr0n just too irresistable in the pre-internet age?
How about American settlers? THey offed 90% of the native american population. Also the west was settled using the homestead act- the worst kind of capitalism where the federal governement would give a parcel of land and supplies to any family which would grab some land from the natives and kill all the natives in the area. Also if the rich in the US had not been shit scared of a communist revolution no new deal would have happened, no labor reforms , no social security. You would still be working 12 hour days 6 days a week in life threatening conditions with no job security or hope for retirement. I dont think communism works but we need to have a few communist countries around to keep the fear of god in the rich so they dont become too greedy
**Life is too short to be serious**
> as there is a strong influence of the
> Chrisitan church which is a communist
> organization.
??????????
Tell that to W.
Please .
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
*groan*
I can't read TFA, I only have the choice to download and install the flash plugin. Nothing to see there, go away.
Looks a little "extreme", but I googled this "interesting" link about the differences in government health policies for men & women.
Put down the pipe now...
Le français vous intéresse?
Raped only has one 'p'
Other than that, nice post.
Le français vous intéresse?
Thanks for the new .sig
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
It's funny if you're 12. Here's another nugget of comedy gold for you, 'doodie'.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."it seems that Korea is having a lot of issues with human eggs. they constitute a black market in Asia:
the crackdown might be why the scientist had to seek an egg donation. bioethical questions aside, this all seems very odd.
"Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University.
I'm glad we made that spelling of Seoul clear. Cause if anyone ever saw a Korean try to sing or dance, they'd know that they have no soul.
I agree that a totally captitalist system will in 99.99% of cases create the strongest economy, which would be fine if the economy was the be-all and end-all of creating a society that works.
Equally important to a society's success are law & order, social equality, healthcare and education. In a totally capitalist state, everyone pays their own way whether they can afford to or not. This creates a situation where the rich get richer, healthier and more powerful (see lobbyists for details. The Pharma. industry couldnt get their way in govornment if they hadn't so much money, nor could the food industry). The poor of society loose out, become disaffected, angry and ultimately someone pays the price. The French govornment are finding that out the hard way, and the collectve tragedy of New Orleans stripped bare the inequality of American society. The poor people of N.O had less say in what happens in the court than one lobbying group in Washington
No country is immune. I'm Irish, and proud of it. We have one of the strongest economies in the world, it's easily outperforming the USA at the moment (in terms of percentages, not overall size) but I see ways in which money is starting to sway govornment decisions here, such as the decision to allow a butt-ugly & potentially unsafe Natural Gas pipeline and processing plant to be built in one of the most picturesque parts of our west coast. The company responsible is Shell, and they're f**king the Irish people over for govornment backhanders (probably). The gap between the rich and the poor is growing here, and i'ts a sad thing to see.
The best way to maintain relative equality is to provide a (hopefully positive) feedback loop between the higher echelons of economic success and the poorest in society, through good, affordable healthcare, free(ish) education and laws & tax systems that let people who work hard earn good money (and therefore strengthen the economy). It's a big chunk of capitalism mixed with a small dose of socialism.
All of these things, if implemented by smart, forward thinking politicians who are chosen in free & fair elections, will in themselves bolster the economy and look after the interests of the people of that country, which is basically what Govornments are there for. No country is perfect.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Well, okay sorry I exaggerated slightly, but he did manage to kill about 70 million people (as a conservative estimate) mostly through starvation, torture and ambition-motivated war (i.e the Korean war- which would never have happened without him and his lust for American blood).
His policy of supporting other budding so-called 'Communist' states and of paying the Soviets to supply him with arms factories (which were useless) caused the worst famine in history. He exported hundreds of millions of tonnes of grain, every ounce of which which was forcibly taken from rural families who were already leading a harsh existance.
As for Stalin, I think on one level he believed in Communism, and wanted to make it work whatever the cost, even if that meant being an evil, manipulative bastard. Mao never believed in communism, he just used the party to rise to power. He was even ejected from the top echelons of the party twice, and from the party once if i remember correctly, but he had enough dirt on everyone to claw his way back all the way to the top.
Oh no. I'm about to run into Goodwin's law (wiki it) here, but this is justified. Can I just say that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot et. al had nothing on Mao?
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Yup, thats the thing about the scale of things. I think Socialism is to a degree an inherent facet of human nature- we've evolved this way because at the tribe (or sub-100 person-ish) level where everyone knows everyone, a little Communism means that when somone gets sick, or when their home floods or slides down the side of the mountain, everyone pulls together, lends them the medicines or some shelter and the society is the better for it.
The failure of the second is that as soon as survival seems assured, people start wishing to improve their personal lot with respect to their fellow humans.
Exactly. Someone has to run the show in a larger economy, otherwise things become more and more confused and inefficient. However, this power corrupts, and abuse of this power results in the kind of system created by the Soviets and the CCCP. Human nature works for us in our traditional everyone-knows-everyone system which has existed for the critical bits of our evolutionary progression (while we learned to sow crops, domesticate animals and the social human made more babies). However it works against us when, as you put it very well 'people start wishing to improve their personal lot'
Evoltion's a bitch, don't you think?
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Just a word: Mengele.
Get lost.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well said!
The WSJ article dosn't say anything about a lab worker being "forced". The WSJ said says that a news report in Nature claims that at least one lab worker "donated".
This item is a bad submission made worse by bad editing.
"I'll be better when I'm older"
He qualified his remark. He spoke of Academic economists, i.e. those who nobody but a bureacracy will pay to 'be an economist.'
resigned
Well, it does pay extremely good money to them.
The whole idea is that there's nobody threatening to cause phsyical harm to them or others if they don't do it. That there's no more motivation to do this job than it pays $$$$, versus a McJob paying $, or even strip club paying $$, or going out and getting an education to earn $$$-$$$$$.
Would you say that porn stars would get another job if they could?
I don't read AC A human right
"You can't take a chunk of someone's liver by force to save someone else"
:)
Oh, yeah? I like a challenge
I quit!
Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical.
Under US law, collecting eggs from anyone to work on a cloning project is "unethical." At the risk of spreading FUD, I believe we have a no-tolerance policy towards human cloning.
(If I'm wrong, the propaganda has worked).
So perhaps the egg had to come from an interested party. While I completely understand the potential for abuse if that party is an employee, it is entirely conceivable nothing improper occurred. It's her cell to sell.
If the head scientist used her own egg, would that be more ethical? Family members' eggs? Bought them on the black market? I can't believe we're talking about job security as the salient ethical detail in this context. There is a goddamn baleen whale in the foyer.
Do I believe anyone would relinquish precious bodily fluids to keep a job? No. Assuming it is ethical to buy and sell these for the express purpose of cloning research--as Dr. Schatten has--I don't see why we need to abridge the right to contract. Barring the event that your employer is Dracula, it might be considered a privilege to contribute to a historic experiment.
For once, the debate has everything to do with the price of eggs in China.
[1] "Which Came First, the Breach of Ethics, or the Egg?", Nature, August 2005
[2] "Why'd the Korean lab worker cross the road?", New York Times, 4/1/2003
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200508/kt200508042 0430510440.htm
Prof. Hwang Woo-suk at Seoul National University, South Korea's stem cell pioneer, is under fire for giving too much credit for his strides in cloning research to a foreign scientist. -- 8/4/05
Good old-fashioned nationalist dick-waving.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Works great if its a monopoly which takes out any competitor instantly doesn't it?
Total corporate control is anti-freemarket.
Or as the factory owners used to do to some extent, if you are forced to buy everything from your employer or risk being fired?
That is illegal.
So you want to get rid of freedom fo speech then?
Were you born totally fucking retarded or did
People are obsessed with the economy because where the rubber hits the road, it determines whether your baby is going to die or there's going to be enough medicine available to treat the fever/runs/infection that would otherwise kill your child. Proper resource allocation is ultimately about life and death issues.
Government mandated health inspections are not a feature of an ideal capitalist society. They are a government intrusion on the economy (the free market solution is independent, competitive private inspectors). This isn't a commentary on whether government inspection of meat is good or bad, merely that complaining about how government inspection is done badly in the US is not an indictment of the US' capitalist aspects, but rather its socialist ones. Like every modern economy, the US has both systems working in parrallel. It's named a capitalist society in that the capitalist aspects predominate.
Capitalism features a government that acts as an honest referee. Government is pure coercive force and should not be for sale under either system. It's a system failure under both capitalist and communist governance when this happens. The real world use cases tend to be a bit more benign on the capitalism side. That doesn't make it right or a planned feature of the system.
Now men are not angels and systems will fail in the real world sometimes. The key is in honestly comparing how often they fail and what are the consequences as well as how bad are the recovery modes from those failures. In all those, I think that capitalism is much better than its competitors both in theory and real world practice.
A huge chunk of the decrease in native american population was accidental disease spread in an era when disease transmission was largely terra incognito. This is not quite the same as piling up skulls in a campaign of genocide against your own people.
The homestead act gave you the land if you could bring in three crops in five years. Whoever taught you that killing natives was part of the bargain really miseducated you. If you paid for that, demand a refund.
People went with 12 hour days 6 days a week because the pay and conditions were improvements over the alternatives. Agriculture was harder work for less money, try 12+ hours seven days a week. As those farmers dried up, conditions would have improved regardless of communism's existence.
I'd like to see them try to sue /. for slander for this. In fact, I'd die of laughter.
Now, being sued for libel is something I'd be worried about.
The other day I went to the local Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant and got a bird's nest. I guess where I grew up they did things different because when I got home and looked at the goods I was like "hmm...they put little potatoes in them here." Then my better instincts kicked in and I poked the so-called potato AND THEY WERE QUAIL EGGS!!! Now, every time I drive by the place all I can think about is those poor quails.
My on-topic comment is if they eat the fruit of the quail on a regular basis, how can our eurocentrism judge their ovariocentricity?
Why can't we just all get along?
i got ball this is my adress 108 20 37 av corona come n do it iam give u the sidekick so I can hit you wit it
The US works
Only if you're rich (in a global sense) and healthy.
sudo ergo sum
Oooh, I called that.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Hmmm okay yea sorry I was going a bit off the scent with that :o/ You're right, in the definitions of capitalist and communist, neither system has at its center a govornment that is for sale. And yea don't get me wrong, capitalism works much better in the real world, it helps to keep everyone honest.
Its just that the system needs to have a leftish feesback loop that means everyone has 'enough', whatever that amount may be.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Please provide a link or a cite to an approved human therapy for ESCs involving heart regeneration. Here's one for ASCs
B.E. Strauer et al., "Myocardial regeneration after intracoronary transplantation of human autologous stem cells following acute myocardial infarction," Dtsch Med Wochenschr 126, 932-938; Aug. 24, 2001.
Human autologous stem cells are adult stem cells, ASCs.
If you can't find actual human trials (successful ones that is) or therapies that aren't adult related, maybe you're the one who's promoting propaganda, but it isn't the religious, right-wing kind. If that's the case, maybe you might ask what interests would want to take credit for ASC progress and shine up the reputation of ESC methods?
Awaiting those cites/links...
I think that it would be more productive to say that the system needs a negative feedback loop to rein it in when it goes too far. Whether that feedback loop can be found on the political left or elsewhere is an open question in my mind.
Capitalism has, as an advantage, the feature that it is an incomplete system. It's somewhat like a Unix utility. It does one thing (wealth creation and efficient allocation) really well and formally doesn't have anything to say about politics, social structures and habits, etc. You can have a capitalist system and vary in your political habits, much as the US and UK differ in their political arrangements but both are capitalist nations and get along with each other pretty well.
I perfectly understand the temptations of the buy, buy, buy consumer culture and how empty it leaves you spiritually. I have developed the ability to just stand up and chuck my TV in the basement when I think that my family has started wasting too much time at the tube (we did it for a few weeks last month because my 6 year old was getting too immersed in certain cartoons). This is very unusual behavior for a US middle class mid-west family. I actually lost the chance to be a Nielsen family because we didn't own a TV at the time.
My personal answer is being serious about my Eastern Catholic faith. YMMV.
In some countries (notably my own) it is not considered rape should a 16 year old have sex with a willing 15 year + 11 month old.
You not only allow 16 year olds to have sex with 15 year olds, but simultaneously also have sex with 11 month olds? That's just sick, man...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
TummyX--I'm not sure if calling somebody "totally fucking retarded" is exactly conducive to anything productive. I'd suggest perhaps taking the dick out of your ass and growing up, you fucking loser.
TummyX--I'm not sure if calling somebody "totally fucking retarded" is exactly conducive to anything productive. I'd suggest perhaps taking the dick out of your ass and growing up, you fucking loser
Were you born totally fucking retarded or did
hahahaha.... think hard now...when was the last time you got laid? thiiiiink.
hahahaha.... think hard now...when was the last time you got laid? thiiiiink.
/. do that to you?
Were you born totally fucking retarded or did
... ./ did it to me.
Simple, if you ask a kentucky Farmer about the Clinton economic policies, you will discover just how well he did for that state
You will probably discover exactly what a bullet wound feels like too
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It should read: "This sounds like something I could easily expect from a captalist regime where not much is sacred except the progression of wealth FOR THE VERY FEW."
Isn't that much better?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.