Stem Cells to Treat Brain Injury in Children

BigDukeSix writes "The first stem cell trial with widespread public health implications is set to begin in Houston. From the article: "Trauma is far and away the main cause of death and disability among children, and the main reason children die from trauma is brain injury...The clinical trial is the first to apply stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury. It does not involve embryonic stem cells.""

Comments

Good Idea, why let ignorant fools run a country..

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the advances in nanotech and biotech, here we are (you would think, in the 21st century where we are, not the 11th century (a space explorer, landing here, would thing that science is being attacked by both the American Taliban (christianity), and the Islamic Taliban)).

By letting an ignorant fool of a president (and supporters) and superstitons determine our medical future is crazy. Do we really need these equivalent witch-doctor religions telling us what to do in the sciences, and look how skillfully Bush & Co. moved their cherished beliefs that a single crummy cell has any rights (done over the last 6 years).

By now,we should be well on the way to developing the technology right now, to take any cell and custom re-program it to any configuration we want and we should also have the abilty to have all the genetic information (database) of cell structure and functions (like cancer, aging etc), and have the ability to make (from scratch), a fully functioning stem cell (any type of cell) able to do our medical bidding, but where are we, but 10 years behind because of a bunch of luddites who belive in intellegent design (shows how smart they are!), and what, in earlier times are magical fairies, male-oriented (old-guy) gods, etc.

Religions, to survive, need an eviroment and masses of people who are un-educated and lack any real insight to sciences benefits, these people have no concept of the power of evolution as a science and how it can be applied, using computer technology to explore solutions, but instead, choose to rely on superstitons (who were invented and evolved many centuries ago), by uneducated people who were trying to explain the world and simultaniously establish social constructs.

Thats why, when you are a child, its so easy to be brainwashed into believing these religious systems, but they break down in the face of education and ration enquiry (science), and now that we are stuck in some sort of twisted 1950's time warp situation of a republican religious war on science and crummy stem cell polotics.

The US is really screwing with medical scientific progress world wide and has to be ignored and stopped.

Again, parent is NOT flamebait.

[Caspian]

I'm asking a serious question here, and that question is: Why are people so against using fetal stem cells? So long as nobody is financially compensated for these cells, I see no ethical dilemma; it's not like people are selling their fetuses for the stem cells. It's quite simple: The fetus was going to die either way. Would you let its death be completely in vain, or would you at least derive some good from it by using its stem cells to save lives (of actual born humans, not dead or aborted fetuses)?

You would have to truly be a sick monster to say "No, you mustn't use those cells to save children from horrible diseases." No matter WHAT the reason.

I simply fail to see the great ethical issue with using ANY sort of cells (stem cells, blood cells, sperm cells, cells from cadavers, cells from plants, who gives a care?!) to save lives and cure diseases . Why do others?

Re:Again, parent is NOT flamebait.

[Caspian]

Therefore, killing a fetus for its cells is indistinguishible from killing a three-year-old child for its cells.

This conveniently ignores the fact that nobody is having an abortion just to harvest stem cells. (Of course, it's also conveniently ignoring the difference between a fetus and a three-year-old child, but that's a wholly different moral issue.)

The issue isn't "I want to have an abortion so I can harvest stem cells from my fetus". The issue is "I want to have an abortion, and the doctors say they can take some stem cells from the fetus. Should I let them?" The issue isn't "I want to do X for purposes of Y", it's "I want to do X; should I do Y as well?"