Slashdot Mirror
Stem Cells - The Hope and the Hype
zer0skill writes to mention a CNN summary of a Time cover story. The Truth about Stem Cells deals with an increasingly politicized area of scientific inquiry, and likens the fight to those over global warming and evolution. From the article: "Five years after Bush announced that federal money could go to researchers only working on embryonic stem cell lines that scientists had already developed, Democrats hope to leverage the issue as evidence that they represent the reality-based community, running against the theocrats. States from Connecticut to California have tried to step in with enough funding to keep the labs going and slow the exodus of U.S. talent to countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan."
I don't see how or why it's a federal issue to fund science. It's just another way for the feds to bully everybody. Let the states choose to fund or not fund it.
i really dont see the problem with this. i mean no other pres spent money on embrionic stem cell research, clinton, bush 1, etc. this is NOT a ban on private funding of embrionic research, and from what i understand, we have made more progress with adult stem cells than we ever did with embrionic research. some might say itsd due to lack of funding, however i dont want my government spending money on damn near anything, we dont have the cash to spend anymore, bush spends more than the democrats do, sorry for the rant i just feel i have to be the odd /.er this time
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Sheesh. This is old stuff, not news- and its got flambait-y aroma to boot.
Get ready for the Bushitler and Moonbat namecalling contests.
Reposting CNN and Time magazine articles - hardly "news" nor "tech" saavy.
Whatever happened to Slashdot? Sigh.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
That either 1) Embryonic stem cells are a source of oil
or
2) We are just going to use the "gay" embryos
I'll bet we could get Bush to sign on.
I'm embarking on a bit of farming; what I want to know is is this so called stem cell research advanced genetic engineering, which is actually advanced farming using artifical selection? The things I've found out about farming so far is that smaller animals reproduce faster, and cause exponential population growth faster. Animals are cannibalistic if you forget to feed them. The females eat mostly plants, the males eat meat. In a litter of 9, there's 8 regular looking animals that appear to be a mix of the parents, and a ninth animal that appears completely different. I did some research online about this, and it may or may not be called 'chimera', perhaps in reference to that this other animal may mutate into an animal with two heads, although I haven't gotten one of those yet.
The ethical debate on stem cells, in particular human stem cells, may be about doing this fast reproduction experiements on humans. This is probably unethical, if in fact people want to start genetically engineering humans, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. On the other hand, we could get faster reproducing, smarter, stronger humans from doing such experiments. If there's some other reason to experiment on very young (1-8 weeks after conception) humans, I'd love to hear about it in a practical way. I read something about growing organ replacements this way...and I guess it's okay, we routinely kill babies prior to birth...
This is a mixed bag of controversies that are only being linked together because they are key issues for the Republican base. Evolution is a fact, like it or not; it is not the only subject on which the Bible is inconsistent, but it is one of the few "controversial" scientific theories for which we can say we have actually seen it in action. Global Warming, on the other hand - more precisely, anthropogenic global warming, for there is no question that the Earth has been getting warmer lately, the only question is why - is a highly politicized question on which I have heard some reputable scientists express doubts. I suspect that anthropogenic global warming is real, and potentially far more serious than the current consensus would suggest, but I can respect some of the scientists who question it. Embryonic stem cell research is not controversial because of the scientific claims made on its behalf - those are pretty clear - but because many people have very serious ethical concerns with using tissue derived from undeveloped human embryoes. Demonizing the opposition to embryonic stem cell research as "theocratic" is neither accurate nor constructive - there are even atheists who have ethical issues with the use of embryonic stem cells in research programs. Lumping them in together may help you with a small niche of voters who are sick of Republican self-righteousness but not sophisticated enough to recognize the differences between these issues, but I'm not sure who else it will help you with.
When President Bush veto'd the bill that was supported by both the House and the Senate that would have allowed for federal funding of embryonic stem cells (something that even the conservative Senate Majority Leader and would-be-Presidential hopeful Bill Frist-- who is a doctor supported), I put up a video on YouTube of Michael J. Fox (who has early onset Parkinson's disease, one of the several disorders doctors and medical scientists are now fairly sure that they can treat with embryonic stem cells, based on results from overseas) who was discussing the situation on ABC's Good Morning America the day before.
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com. You can check out the video on YouTube here.
For the record, my grandfather died after a long struggle with Parkinson's earlier this year and I'm in favor of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research-- like more than 70 percent of Americans. The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
The President says he thinks that ECS research constitutes the taking of a human life ("murder"). If that's true then why doesn't he work to outlaw all ECS research ("murder"), instead of letting it happen with private funding? He's caught between his own rhetoric and a hard place.
1) Sounds like you aren't farming, but engaging in Animal Husbandry, which is well known to be a sin in the eyes of God if you are not also practicing Animal Wifery.
2) The main religious objection to Embryonic Stem Cell Research is that the leaders of the Religious Right consider embryos to be human beings. Thus, harvesting embryos for stem cells would constitute murder of an unborn human being. (Murder of post-birth human beings might be OK, depending on the context.)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Bush's arguement for funding stem cell research that entirely uses stem cells from aborted fetuses was that it "leads to a slippery slope to purposely engaging in murder for scientific research." By that logic, we should also ban Harvard Medical School from researching with cadavers, for fear that allowing that will lead to people being stabbed in the face and dragged back to an imagined meat locker for scientific research.
I was watching C-SPAN 2, an American basic cable station that shows U.S. Senate debates live whenever the Senate is in session, and sure enough, Senator Tom Harkin likened Bush's actions to when the Pope banned scientific research on cadavers in the 1200s, calling it "unnatural," perhaps delaying human anatomical standing for hundreds of years until someone saw fit to violate the Pope's ruling, dig up a human body, slice it open, look through the muscle tissue, and write about it in a book...
My ecomment modded "flamebait" for calling the main article old news & possibly troll? My post wasnt flamebait - see wikipedia:
/. space that the original article was. And I have a real interest in the avoidance of posting such trolls by Zonk and the other editors here. Slashdot is a fairly functional site, but if it continues to pollute itself with editorial trolling it becomes less and less useful. And don't say "filter" - I happen to like a lot of the political articles here - except when they are mislabeled as being political, or are simply a waste of time and the result of piss-poor editorial judgement (as this one was).
/. article is about a CNN article thats about a Time Magazine article thats about the fact that there is controversy over federal funding of embryonic stemcell research.
/sarcasm
/. for stuff that matters - nto a rehas of old arguments, but real news!
"Flamebait is a message posted to a public Internet discussion group, such as a forum, newsgroup or mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the troll often has no real interest in. "
I was not provoking angry responses - I was calling attention to the lack of worth and waste of
As for my commentary being flambeait: Lets see - the
Whoa, real news there!
So
a) its not "news" - its OLD. This has been ongoing for quite a while.
b) its not even original content - its a pointer to a pointer.
c) there is no new technical content at all - and what contect it did contain was at the "Tie Magazine" level of comprehesionion - far below that of what I would presume a Slashdotter to hold.
d) it notes that some oppose fed funfing on relibious grounds, that others opposed it on libertarian grounds, and that other desire the governemnt to fund it. Well, duh!
e) it brings nothing new except for the chance to bring out all the "I hate Bush" and "I hate lefties" peopel so they can call each other names.
So, my post was accurate:
This "/. article" was neither news nor new, it was a troll by the editors - one which will bring out all the flame-bait posters and trolls form the left and right.
Come on Zonk - save the "Politics" part of
And mods, learn the definitions before you moderate. At worst, if you wanted to modwaste the mod points and mod it down, mod it "Off topic".
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
You're wrong in places.
Evolution is a theory. I think it's a theory that accuratly describes what occured, but it still remains just a theory. It will never be a fact. As a theory, it will be refined over time, and will more closely approach the truth. This is all that science does. Ever. There are no facts.
Climate Change is another theory. There is much evidence that it is occuring, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the majority cause is anthropogenic. My fiance just attended a geological/geophysical conference (where many of the talks were from the petroleum industry), and that was the consensus there too. The loud voices you hear criticising the scientific consensus are generally (I think) paid mouthpieces, or people who have a personal interest in discrediting climate change theory.
Stem cells are different. There are few current applications, but it is thought that research into using stem cells could yield excellent new treatments for many diseases. There isn't really a 'theory of stem cells'. Personally, I favour stem cell research, provided safe-guards are in place. Historically, governments/societies that repress science are well on the way to repressing their citizenry.
The thing that I think ties these issues together, is that the powers that be are using them (along with gay rights, etc) as a wedge issue, to confuse and distract the populace, while they slowly increase their power and that of their cronies at the expense of the vast majority of us. Also, there is an attempt to politicise science and restrict education - always a dangerous thing for any society to do. Our government in Australia is doing the same thing. I think if we continue down this road, we'll see a schism in Western civilisation between Europe on one hand, and Aust/US on the other. The latter will go do sh!t quickly... I reckon a generation or two will do it.
He doesn't have the authority to declare ECS research to be murder. Murder's not a federal crime anyway, in almost all circumstances.
What he can do is direct federal funding. IMHO, there shouldn't be any federal funding for science, in which case he would be powerless in this situation.
Embryonic stem cell research is not controversial because of the scientific claims made on its behalf - those are pretty clear
The fact is that there is very little evidence to show the therapeutic possibilities of stem cells. Granted, it is true that we would know of many more uses of stem cells if there was more research into them. They may, however, have relatively few and specific therapeutic uses. Plenty of stem cell scientists will claim that with additional stem cell funding it may be possible to cure every disease on the planet. These are the same scientists, however, that will be receiving the funding that they are arguing for. There is also the very real possibility that stem cell therapies will result in cancer. For those unfamiliar with the recent research, there is growing support within the scientific community that stem cells are the source of cancer in organisms.
It is similar to the "promise" of gene therapy in the early 90's. All of the gene therapy scientists at the time claimed that every disease would be cured if we funded their research. We funded it, but only one therapy came from it, and it was a very specific therapy which worked in part because it was an immune disorder. Then about 1/4 of the patients got leukemia. Not many people these days talk about the promise of gene therapy as anything that will be useful any time soon, but before all of the funding, many scientists went on record saying just that. It is very similar to stem cell therapy. Just wait a few years after they get their funding, and you will realize it was all just a bunch of hype.
BTW, I am a molecular biologist (who has had an article on my research duped on slashdot) who has worked with both stem cells and gene therapy.
"It's hard to tell who's being straight about politically charged topic."
No fuckin shit, eh?
evolution is both a fact and a theory (just like gravity).
the observed phenomenon is a fact.
the Darwinian hypothesis of survival of the fittest is the basis of a successful theory which explains those facts.
the molecular evidence for evolution has confirmed the theory to amazing levels of accuracy.
there is no reason at all why anyone with an open mind prepared to examine the evidence would disagree with evolution. the only people who ever do so only do because it contradicts an ancient religious text (which isn't even self-consistent in the first place).
even "Intelligent Design" is not only unscientific, but its basis ("irreducible complexity") has been shown to be wrong.
within the scientific community there is no debate at all that evolution is a fact.
if you want to be educated then have a listen to the Evolution 101 podcast.
I just struck across an interesting thought, that politicians such as congressmen act the way they do, because they are like companies. Not in a bad sense, but they are. You see folks, each of these congressmen probably wants to help the nation but, they cannot do that if they do not get reelected! It's just like a company to target a specific demographic because that demographic will produces a profit that is important to the company (quantity). The same goes for congressmen in that they must appeal to their constituents or else those constituents may not vote for that person. I just wish everything in our government wasn't 'bundled up'. What I mean is for example when a bill goes to the president to be signed, he can choose to sign and support the bill or vetoes it and not supports it. But there is that issue (I forget what it is called BTW) about the president vetoing certain parts of the bill, and signing others (or so I have interpreted I have not read deep enough to know if this is true or not). The same goes for congressmen in that they may do something you like, but then do something that you don't like. If they continue to do something you like but also something you do not like (in essence: 50/50), how will you decide to vote on this person?
Back on topic, in my opinion the government should not stop the advancement of science, merely to maintain a morally correct agenda. The reasons these people act the way they do (ban this embryonic stem cell research) is because of those reasons I listed above. What is so wrong if they experiment on stem cells? Oh that's right, it could be an alternative to abortion. People would have sex (and not particularly safe sex) because they wanted to, and could get away with it by going to an embryonic cell donation clinic or something. I do not know which way to turn when it comes to issues concerning sacrificing a minority to save a majority. I do have something to add though we have a military to protect us, they willingly go into perilous situations and in some cases give themselves up for the good of our nation. Isn't this in the aspect of the debate over sacrifice a minority to save a majority? In economics, in order to gain some money, you must pay some money. Could this work out with this debate?
Also, what is the difference between one celled bacteria that we kill every day regularly, and an 8 cell embryo? A simple number is what; do we not transplant skin tissue from other areas of our bodies to fix disfiguring areas? What is the difference then? The difference is that this cell may become a human, was there not a Slashdot article on here a week or so back that brain cells had been discovered in a fetus, earlier than previously thought possible? The difference between a one celled organism and a multicelled organism is an integer, the differentiating number. This is a case of sacrificing a minority to save a majority, if we consider a simple one celled bacteria unimportant, then what is 7 cells? The difference is that these cells are human and will become a human being. It is a tough choice. I hope someone can use an analogy here because I cannot think of a good one other than something having to do with the manufacture of a product (the process between simple materials and a full product).
It just so happens people in other countries are taxed to even more ridiculous extremes.
for all I care you can do like the last Christian with great political power did - ban secular medicine altogether, go back to prayer and leeches and have another 1000 years of Dark Ages. just don't drag down the rest of the world with you.
Clinton caused the dark ages?
Or maybe you're talking about the last Pope.
Maybe George H. W. Bush (aka Bush Sr.?)
Regan?
Carter?
Kennedy? (not just a Christian, but a CATHOLIC -- first US Pres to be so)
Ike? FDR? (The Cold War was the dark ages?)
I hate to burst your bubble, but virtually every major political leader since, oh, Charlemange has been an avowed and rather devout Christian. Inclusive of our founding fathers.
Okay, you've kicked off the 'hate Bush.... whatever' thread.
This is clearly another battle between religion and science. For anyone who doesn't have all the facts on Bush's recent veto, they are quite simple:
intelligent, reasonable, people outlined a bill that would see leftover embryos from fertility clinics, that were going to be destroyed anyways because of a limited shelf-life, given to researchers. Furthermore, the bill outlined measures to ensure that the number of embryos being created would not be increased for scientific purposes.
Bush decided that it was a bad idea for "moral reasons," whatever the fuck that means. The embryos that this douche "saved" are all going to be destroyed anyways, we just won't see any scientific research come out of it, and so he has set back the clock on medical advancements that will one day save countless numbers of lives (though in the mean time, countless will die because of bush).
Bush either did what he did because he really felt the bill was wrong for his own personal religious reasons (which would have been hard had he actually read the bill, seeing as though the embryos are destroyed either way,) or he was pandering to his base. In either case, the prime motivator for his decision was religion -religion beat science this time, unfortunately.
I would also like to use this post to point out a number of ways in which the conservative media attempts to unethically further their agenda -including using biased language, misleading stories, and outright lies.
If this sort of crap is what passes for intelligent discourse, on a channel where people get their "news" and "information", is it any wonder that stupid decisions are being made, and shithead leaders get elected into power?
What I'm showing you above are not rare snippets from unpopular shows -admittedly, they are some of the more severe abuses of media power, but they are selected from among a great many such occurences, from some of the most popular American "news" people. The American population is constantly pelted with a barrage of bullshit and rhetoric. It's kind of hard to have faith in democracy under such conditions. Sure, the votes may be cast freely -but what about the months and years beforehand, when the voters should have been getting informed about current events? If that process is sufficiently disrupted, its no longer a democracy. How can you expect people to understand the issue properly, when they are constantly being fed the kind of bullshit demonstrated in the links above?
the founding fathers were deists not Christians you ignorant fool.
I am parent. I should also say that I do support stem cell research, but I just wanted to emphasize that after talking to colleagues in the field, it is not a certain panacea. The reason that I am being vocal about this is that I think it's unfair for Parkinson's patients and Alzheimer's patients and spinal injury sufferers to believe that if only federal funding were available, then they would be cured. All of these same claims were made with gene therapy and it is just politics, not science.
"Evolution is a theory."
By saying that, you confuse "sound scientific theory" with "just a theory" or "cockamamie theory", which is what the public thinks when you say "It's just a theory". It's strong enough of a theory that it might as well be fact for all intents and purposes. Quit giving ammo to the luddites.
Evolution is fact. If you want to find another word to describe something that is true, go ahead. By your definition, orbital mechanics is also just theory. You're using semantics to obscure the truth.
PCB
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
Taking bets on this turning into a Bush-Bashing Thread! I've got 70:30 odds on it, Good Money!
" i r 1337. j00 a l0z3r "
That talk kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?
That's right..cry those nerdly tears
Selling of cadavers is illegal.
You have reversed the cause for this discussion, which is that people who oppose the research started demonising it. Atheists certainly have more degrees of freedom in their ethics, but it seems to be rare to oppose this research for other than religious reasons (note: I am an atheist/agnostic)
I hate Bush. It is a rational response to someone who himself trades exclusively in hate and fearmingering.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Who was this last Christian with great political power you speak of?
If you use a term like "Dark Ages", you should go back to school. For decades already, historians have been trying to show that the notion of a "dark age" was something of a myth. The term itself was invented by Renaissance writers eager to toot their own horns, but was based on a naive vision of the past. The fracturing of Europe into various feudal states was not caused by any sort of religious fanatacism, but rather because Rome was on the receiving end of a number of migrations, those of the Franks, Vandals, Longobards, and Goths. In the East, the Byzantine Empire survived this period just fine and was in no way doomed by its overt Christianity, until the rise of Islam combined with the arrival of a massive population of Turks in Anatolia did it in.
When President Bush veto'd the bill that was supported by both the House and the Senate that would have allowed for federal funding of embryonic stem cells (something that even the conservative Senate Majority Leader and would-be-Presidential hopeful Bill Frist-- who is a doctor supported), I put up a video on YouTube of Michael J. Fox (who has early onset Parkinson's disease, one of the several disorders doctors and medical scientists are now fairly sure that they can treat with embryonic stem cells, based on results from overseas) who was discussing the situation on ABC's Good Morning America the day before.
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com. You can check out the video on YouTube here.
For the record, my grandfather died after a long struggle with Parkinson's earlier this year and I'm in favor of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research-- like more than 70 percent of Americans. The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
The President says he thinks that ECS research constitutes the taking of a human life ("murder"). If that's true then why doesn't he work to outlaw all ECS research ("murder"), instead of letting it happen with private funding? He's caught between his own rhetoric and a hard place.
Cadaver use, and anything else related to human or other mammalian research *is* tightly regulated. And yet nobody thinks IRB's are part of The War On Science (TM). I don't agree with the federal funding ban, but a bioethics debate and a factual issue like evolution versus creationism are completely different things and the fact that people treat them interchangeably makes it clear how little they're motivated by science.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Think of the reaction to the Copernican system, which after all was really just about a simplified model for calculating the position of planets. What difference does it really make to you whether the planets revolve around the Earth, or whether the planets and the Earth revolve around the Sun? None, unless your job is compiling almanacs.
But it's disconcerting to have your place in the universe moved.
A similar thing happened when the techniques of historical research began to be applied to the Bible. The only thing that changed was the idea of the historical process that created the Bible. It is no longer possible to view the Bible as a single unchanging thing that had a few corrupt offshoots. There is no way to trace the Bible back in its current form without concluding that it was pieced together and actively modified over the centuries after it's "authorship". Is there any reason to think this makes the Bible less true if you thought it true before?
But you have to give up part of your intellectual furniture to make room for this new idea.
Now we've reached points on several fronts of scientifc and technological advance that have larger practical day to day impacts on how we view ourselves than the Copernican revolution, and probably more so than Biblical "Higher Criticism".
For example: Are we just the product of a cascade of chemical reactions that can be reproduced in vitro? Do we have to look at the world as finite source of resources and sink for waste?
There are even ones that aren't on the public radar screen, like: Can machines be people? Certainly if somebody made a C-3PO or R2-D2, or even a program that passed the generalize Turing test, you'd have to consider this.
It's not surprising that liberals are more comfortable with this sort of thing than conservatives. It's not that liberals are more scientific, it's that conservatism believes that what is proven is best. But if you find out the world is not what you thought it was, or worse yet you aren't what you thought you were, then it throws old proofs into doubt.
If history is a guide, then the battle lines will be drawn again in the future, in a different place according to rules neither side envisions today. The thing is liberalism and conservatism are less ideologies than they are character traits.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Our dog hates birds and squirrels.
False
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Murder is illegal. Abortion is not.
I've noticed that one of the major arguments against the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research revolves around the fact that there is still the opportunity for private funding. Such opponents of stem cell research claim that, if there is so much promise in this area of science as many researchers have claimed, why hasn't there been significant breakthroughs or significant amounts of private funding? These individuals then go on to make a direct correlation between the potential of stem cell research and the lack of substantial private funding.
THE MAIN REASON we are not seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stell cell researchers is simple: we are still working on the BASIC SCIENCE. Science doesn't progress from initial discovery to therapeutics overnight. It takes decades of basic research to build a foundation upon which medical applications can be developed. You must understand how things "tick" before you can improve upon them. This is the reason why WE NEED FEDERAL FUNDING; Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road. These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D. And do you blame them? Why spend more when you can spend less and have the same results? And, yes, I do realize that Big Pharma isn't the only source of private money.
Just my take on the situation. I am probably a bit biased, but I hate narrow-minded individuals that fail to see things from both sides of the fence.
I finally found the explanation for the rise of Republicanism...
A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.
And the explanation is entirely consistent with the environmental damage being done by their deregulation of industry, damage the Republicans try as hard as they can to pretend is not happening.
"Evolution is a theory just like gravity. If you don't like it, go jump off a bridge."
This statement is forty-five characters long.
Why stem cells obtained from embryos are so much better than stem cells obtained from other sources that don't cause people to start arguing?
What I've seen so far, every cool new stem cell discovery has been done with adult stem cells.
They were still people of faith, were they not?
The US has developed many major medical treatments and medicines, fostered many scientific diciplines, and willing given much of it to the rest of the world at relatively low costs if not for free. They have done this while always having an overriding belief in a greater power of some sort. I don't see how you believe they will all of a sudden start dragging the rest of the world down.
If you don't take a day of God as a literal day, it could be billions of years. After all, what is a day when the sun hasn't even been brought into existance? And there are other quotes in the bible that a day of God is longer than a day of man, quotes I'm too lazy to look up right now. Yes, God made plants before he made the sun, but he made light before the sun and plants. Evolution is quite compatible with the Bible if you view a day of God's time as millions or billions of years and God sculpting the animals and plants as he saw fit along the way. Now man was made after everything else was made on Earth, so God had a good picture of the world that he was going to place man in, and what man should be like. It's quoted that God made man out of soil so that nixes the idea that man came from monkeys. I could go on in deep detail about how Evolution could be a tool that God used across a long period of time, but this is just a Slashdot post, and besides it's off topic from the article.
God spoke to me.
Stem Cell science is being developed.
Whoever wins the race for patents and intellectual property, gets all the gold.
The only thing USA politicians can do is hurt American business. By banning science research, the jobs, the money, the workers, and all those profits go overseas.
The science will be developed, but what country will be on top?
Second place in Bioscience, Robotics, and Renewable Energy is not an option,
and yet every day the USA delays it's advancements, is another day closer to becoming a Left Behind third world country...
When we get enough breakthroughs in biotech in the next 5 to 10 years where we can demonstrate that we can regenerate organs (using stem cell research) and can further control the aging process by demonstrating that we will be able to halt and reverse that aging process in mice, then the politicians will have no choice but to bend to the demands of the electorate and fund a big increase in R&D funding into biotech and nanotech to bring these advances to people.
After all, the medical technology we use today was developed in the last century and will be viewed by future generations as quite expensive, not very effective, barbaric and primitive.
We can't regenerate organs yet, we can't rid the body of old cells (organ cells, immune cells etc) that have worn out and are just hanging around poisoning the body and consuming resources.
We are just starting to understand how to reprogram cancer cells to either self-destruct or convert back to normal cells, we don't yet have the technology to remove all the indigestible junk that accumulates inside and around cells. (for more about these things, go see the mprize.com and the longevitymeme.com.com web site).
The thing is, is that we wast 10's to 1000's of billions in wars (Iraq, the current endless Lebanon wars, the future cold wars with India and China), it's about time we told Bush and Co. to stop feeding the same old war machine and to put these billions of wasted dollars into biomedical research.
What have you got to lose but a future where 90% of you out there will get old and die poor eating cat food, after only being around for a few decades of good health, remember, you don't want to be the last generation to die of old age, when future generations of people growing up will have heard vague stories of when people got old and gross and never had cheap life-extension nano pills and treatments. You could say the same thing about who now-a-days who would want to go back to the 10th century, probably nobody except for a few weird fundementalists...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
As the BBC reported this week, once Britain started allowing embryos that were going to be discarded to be used for embryonic stem cell research, fertility clinics started to allow people to pay for their fertility treatments with the "donation" of extra embryos. How long do you think before that practice would occur here?
Besides, as the full article in Time points out, most of the frozen embryos were not selected because they were deemed to be not the healthiest. Plus, they've been frozen for a very long time in many cases, so nobody is quite sure how useful they would be.
The good news for parkinson's is that, according to the longer Time article (linked to from the slashdot link) the adult stem cells from the umbilical cord blood can be used to for brain cells.
We as researchers talk all we want about noble causes for our research to bring cures to people. And on a personal basis, that may be true. However, noble causes is not why any of us are employed by our institutions, whether public or private. The real reason anybody pays any of us or our staff to conduct our research is for the potential profit it will bring if a cure or treatment is discovered. (This isn't how things always have been with research, but have only really become that way since the 1980s).
I wonder how many institutions would be willing to take federal funding to conduct their stem cell research, embryonic or not, if the government restriction was that any cures or treatment had to be released royalty free since it was provided through taxpayer funding (or at least royalty free to the amount of government funding provided).
Would I still do my research? Sure. Would my institution have me do it? Maybe, maybe not. Would they want government funding for the research? Probably not. Research labs are being run more and more like their private industry counter-parts and looking at ROI. If you remove the potential profit motive, you remove the reason most institution keep us employed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan." Yhere has been a lot of publicity recently about researchers moving to Canada from the US. I don't think of Canada as "like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan." Can someone explain the similarities, beyond the directly related facts of supporting research and mot the US?
historical evolution *might* be a fact - we'll never know. I agree that microbiologists, etc have witnessed evolution. Personally, I think the theory of evolution accuratly describes what has occured. Is it perfect? No. Is it getting better? Yes! there's still plenty we don't know about it, but we're learning. Hence the theroy evolves ;-).
;-)
"there is no reason at all why anyone with an open mind prepared to examine the evidence would disagree with evolution." Yeah.. I agree. the open mind bit is the killer, ain't it?
The best arguements against 'intelligent design' are scientific: It has no falsifiable hypothesis, therefore, it isn't science.
"within the scientific community there is no debate at all that evolution is a fact." Actually, I think that any scientist should say that it appears likely to be true, or at least accurate. Look at gravity:
Galileo -> Newton -> Einstein -> then what? Of course things will be refined further!!!
As time passes, our understanding of evolution will mature, and will more closely resemble the 'truth' (in the sence of Plato's shadows on the cave wall). Please don't assume that because I'm pointing out the scientific reality and limits of empirical knowledge that I'm argueing for Intelligent design!
You want to spend federal money? Fine, as long as the government gets any patents (which you WILL file) and you don't keep trade secrets. BTW, it's not legit to suddenly discontinue federal funding and then file for patents.
Don't like that? Fuck off. I don't want to pay for research that I can't use.
(as for licensing: either the top 5 bidders or free to all US citizens)
Is that at this time, no one has the slightst idea if they will or will not work, but we are betting tht thay will, because a very large fraction of our scarce research dollars are going
/. community can recall huge efforts by foreign govts to leapfrog in some way in technology, and that many times these huge efforts fail, so the investment by singapore or taiwan or whatever should not scare anyone.
into stem cells instead of exploring other avenues.
Govt + non profit (howard hughes, amer canc soc, etc) biomedical research is ~ 40 billion a year, give or take. Considering that the war on iraq is >100, this does not seem like alot of moeny for heart disease, and alsheimers and canceer and diabetes (not to mention poor spelling).
"Scarce" of this ~~ 40 B, way under a billion is given to stem cells and alternative treatments; considering the importance, I would say that funds are very scarc. (however, more money is not the answer; i bet Californias initiative will backfire) the problem is that researchers - people like Thomas Edison or Watson of Watson/crick dna are very scarce people, and you can t make them appear out of thin air.
"slightest idea that stem cells will work" I am not an expert in stem cells, but I don't think any one can really say they are ready for prime time; remember, there is a tremendous amout of hope and wishful thinking, peoples careers are on the line, etc. If you follow biomedical research for any period of time, you will know that there is always someone announcing some incredible break thru, and 999 times out of 1,000 these breakthrus dont pan out.
A classic example is the publication by a mexican md of astonishing results, in i think , the 80s on the effect of transplanting cells into the brains of parkinsons patients; the paper describe people who were virtually paralyzed running around shortly after surgery.
zillions of dollars and euros and yen later, after dozens of people wasted time on follow up, we find that cell transplants for parkinsons aint so good.
I would imagine that many people in the
This is the state of the are
Nat Med. 2004 Jul;10 Suppl:S42-50
Stem cell therapy for human neurodegenerative disorders-how to make it work.
* Lindvall O,
* Kokaia Z,
* Martinez-Serrano A.
Laboratory of Neurogenesis and Cell Therapy, Section of Restorative Neurology, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Wallenberg Neuroscience Center, University Hospital, SE-221 84 Lund, Sweden. olle.lindvall@neurol.lu.se
Recent progress shows that neurons suitable for transplantation can be generated from stem cells in culture, and that the adult brain produces new neurons from its own stem cells in response to injury. These findings raise hope for the development of stem cell therapies in human neurodegenerative disorders. Before clinical trials are initiated, we need to know much more about how to control stem cell proliferation and differentiation into specific phenotypes, induce their integration into existing neural and synaptic circuits, and optimize functional recovery in animal models closely resembling the human disease.
Note the "before clinical trials.." in other words, this stuff, if it works at all, is years away. Not to mention, if stem cells are good because they are versatile and can grow, what keeps them from forming tumors ? Kind of a problem there..
As to the idea that the US is not, by every conceivable measure, the world leader in biomedical research is about as credible as wmds threatening our natnional security.
so what if singapore spends a few hundred million and gets a few people; the US is the place to do biomedical research.
I could go on, but there is one word that really describes stem cells: band wagon
It would not be so bad, except that we are diverting resources from investigating other avenues, and this is very, very bad.
Demonizing the opposition to embryonic stem cell research as "theocratic" is neither accurate nor constructive
why? the conservative media seems to have no trouble demonizing advocates of stem cell research, and it's been very constructive for them, and for their political ambitions.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Untrue. None of them have been devout Christians. Read your "Thou shalt nots", match them to your political leaders and cry. You also forgot the rest of the world.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The founders explicitly stated that any such interpretation was nonsense - which it is. Your interpretation of that clause essentially allows this line to supercede the entire rest of the document, which explicitly spells out the specific, enumerated powers that the government would have to achieve the "general welfare", "common defense", etc.
How can you seriously suggest an interpretation that is both renders the document contradictory and is refuted by the very people who wrote it?
...But the entire submission reads to me like; 1, 2, 3, 4, lets have a flame war! Ah, But, bloggers do love there soap boxes.
Also, what is the difference between one celled bacteria that we kill every day regularly, and an 8 cell embryo?
Many would argue that the 8 cell embryo is still fully a human being. The difference between that embryo and a human adult is just a developmental one, just as a newborn infant is developmently immature compared to a toddler compared to a preschooler compared to a prepubescent teenager etc., etc. A human embryo is just an earlier stage yet, but still a human being.
As such, the use of human embryos or human beings or worse yet the creation of them for research would be morally wrong or so the argument goes.
Now many would argue that this is a religious distinction and it shouldn't hinder the advance of science. However that is only half true. They are correct, it is a religous or at least a meta-physical distinction, which by definition is outside the realm of science. And being that science cannot and never will be able to answer the question of when does life begin or whether an embryo is a human being or not, the discussion cannot be left upto the scientists, because they are ill equiped to answer it. It can only be answered by the philosphers, be they religious or otherwise.
Your question of why a one cell bacteria is unimportant but an 8 cell embryo is not, is just such a question. It is a philosophical one. Science can only deal with what can be measured and/or observed. It answers the questions of "Can we?" Science doesn't answer the question of "Should we?"
The politicians, for better or worse, are involved specifically to answer the questions that science cannot. The fact that they corrupt the debate to turn it towards their own political gain is a whole different issue.
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Do your homework and quit assuming. This is a battle between people who belief personhood begins at conception vs people who believe it begins at first brain wave, birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, etc. None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
The determination of public funds with respect to embryonic stem cells draws an ethical line. It is not a hard line, for the reason that (to my knowledge) anyone may legally destroy and manipulate these cells. It is, however, a signpost saying that US lawmakers know that there are moral implications.
... well, he's an idiot (nevermind his academic records), and the Pope is wrong because he's an opium pusher to the masses -- sort of like actors.
Many people are satisfied with reasoning that if George Bush and the Pope are against it, then they themselves are for it. Obviously, George Bush is wrong because
However, those who bother to think further might be troubled by wondering if it is okay to destroy human embryonic stem cells (ESC) and to study them, then:
- How about using them to grow life-saving treatments?
- How about if these life-saving treatments meant growing the ESCs into a living protoplasm? a non-aware humanoid? an aware humanoid with only animal intelligence? an aware humanoid with only animal intelligence in constant excruciating pain?
- Would it be okay to use ESCs to grow a mindless human body for parts? How about just a little mind, for self-maintenance? for sexual response? How about growing a Universal Soldier? a house servant?
For most people, at least one of the previous scenarios would jog their morality meter. For George Bush and the Pope, it happens that their sense of wrongness occurs sooner. We may not agree with where they draw the line, but it seems to me that it is better to approach the precipice with caution than to rush toward it headlong.
I hate Bush. It is a rational response to someone who himself trades exclusively in hate and fearmingering.
Oh, young grasshopper. If the rational responce to someone who hates is to hate them where does that leave you?
While it is true that the Pope banned doing research on cadavers. It was also outlawed in just about every civilized country prior to the ban. Why might that be? Well, the spread of plague and disease was a big one. Even today it's against the law to do any type of research on a cadaver unless the person or their family specifically allow for it. As for Harvard, I'm pretty sure they have all the legal documentation to support the use of the cadavers they have.
Senator Harkin might want to do some basic research before using the something like that again. If I'm not mistaken, in his home state grave robbing is still a crime, so maybe it's not the a dead politician from 800 years ago (the catholic church was a political leader back then), but the living ones today.
the human body isn't a big truck, it's a series of tubes!
de Gaulles was Catholic, Disraeli was Anglican. Thatcher was Methodist, then moved to Anglicanism. Churchill was at least nominally Anglican.
There are examples on non-religous heads of states/world leaders but you picked a rough lot.
the rest of the world happily gets on with life
I'm not sure what 'rest' means, since Italy and France are Catholic countires, England still has an official state church, China has a state religion, Israel exists, so does the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt is up there as well...
I'll stop there.
>Galileo -> Newton -> Einstein -> then what? Of course things will be refined further!!!
yes but none of them at any point denied that gravity actually exists, which is the case with evolution.
science does have limits, but knowing that evolution is a fact is not one of them.
your key word is refinement - new scientific theories must reduce to old ones in the limit of a well-investigated regime, for example Einstein's relativity gives Galilean laws of motion in the limit of low speeds.
thus evolution is now, and always will be, a fact. in the future we'll just have more and more understanding of the precise mechanisms involved.
They went to church almost every Sunday. They taught their children Christianity. And those that were "deists" were both a minority, and still Christians by modern standards.
Then again, I shouldn't expect nuiance to apply to someone who's handle is "Yahweh doesn't exist." Of course it doesn't; YHVH exists, though, even if only as a cultural contruction.
As I understand it, even if Bush uses his veto the voting process can begin again. If the bill passes the house and congress for the second time Bush cannot veto again. Is there any reason to believe this won't happen? It could be that Bush used the Veto just to save face with a minority he represents, and in a few months the law will be enacted anyway.
CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
...
INSTRUCTION ON RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE IN ITS ORIGIN AND ON THE DIGNITY OF PROCREATION
REPLIES TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
INTRODUCTION
1. BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH AND THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH
The gift of life which God the Creator and Father has entrusted to man calls him to appreciate the inestimable value of what he has been given and to take responsibility for it: this fundamental principle must be placed at the centre of one's reflection in order to clarify and solve the moral problems raised by artificial interventions on life as it originates and on the processes of procreation. Thanks to the progress of the biological and medical sciences, man has at his disposal ever more effective therapeutic resources; but he can also acquire new powers, with unforeseeable consequences, over human life at its very beginning and in its first stages. Various procedures now make it possible to intervene not only in order to assist but also to dominate the processes of procreation. These techniques can enable man to "take in hand his own destiny", but they also expose him "to the temptation to go beyond the limits of a reasonable dominion over nature".(1) They might constitute progress in the service of man, but they also involve serious risks. Many people are therefore expressing an urgent appeal that in interventions on procreation the values and rights of the human person be safeguarded. Requests for clarification and guidance are coming not only from the faithful but also from those who recognize the Church as "an expert in humanity " (2) with a mission to serve the "civilization of love" (3) and of life.
The Church's Magisterium does not intervene on the basis of a particular competence in the area of the experimental sciences; but having taken account of the data of research and technology, it intends to put forward, by virtue of its evangelical mission and apostolic duty, the moral teaching corresponding to the dignity of the person and to his or her integral vocation. It intends to do so by expounding the criteria of moral judgment as regards the applications of scientific research and technology, especially in relation to human life and its beginnings. These criteria are the respect, defence and promotion of man, his "primary and fundamental right" to life,(4) his dignity as a person who is endowed with a spiritual soul and with moral responsibility (5) and who is called to beatific communion with God. The Church's intervention in this field is inspired also by the Love which she owes to man, helping him to recognize and respect his rights and duties. This love draws from the fount of Christ's love: as she contemplates the mystery of the Incarnate Word, the Church also comes to understand the "mystery of man"; (6) by proclaiming the Gospel of salvation, she reveals to man his dignity and invites him to discover fully the truth of his own being. Thus the Church once more puts forward the divine law in order to accomplish the work of truth and liberation. For it is out of goodness - in order to indicate the path of life - that God gives human beings his commandments and the grace to observe them: and it is likewise out of goodness - in order to help them persevere along the same path - that God always offers to everyone his forgiveness. Christ has compassion on our weaknesses: he is our Creator and Redeemer. May his spirit open men's hearts to the gift of God's peace and to an understanding of his precepts
Read more of this teaching document of the Catholic Church
IC XC NIKA
*sigh*
You got me on Gorbachev. (Mao too). The rest of them -- well, let's suffice it to say that, like Kennedy, the best Christian politicians have seperated their private, religious lives from their public, essentually secular lives.
As for the US and our choice of president -- it's more a factor of the scareness of the position and the overwhelming majority of white Christians in this country than any real concious effort on our part. You might be able to find a few European heads of government who avow a non-Christian religion, such as Atheism or agnosticism, but if you managed to get them all to answer the question, you'd probably find that most of them are Christian.
(As for the Founding Fathers -- the closest any of them came to being "not devout Christians" was their high membership in the freemason societies, which were and are really just nondenominational Christian societies.)
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it).
I disagree. It is overwhelmingly christians who support the "life begins at conception" idea, specifically because they believe that at conception a soul, a special divine spark of life, enters at precisely this moment. This claim is totally and utterly baseless, and should be thrown out immediately without consideration. While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so. Some have argued that human life should be thought to start at conception through non-religious means, I think quite unsuccessfully, but you are free to peruse those arguments at your leisure. In any case, this is not even relevant, since the embryos in question were going to be destroyed regardless of bush's decision to veto the bill -they were slated for the trashbin.
I think you would do well to research other cultures opinions on when life begins. Depending on the religious scripts available, life begins either: just prior to conception, immediately after conception, a couple months after conception, or a couple months after the baby is born. The key factor involved is religion. It is not a coincidence that it is predominately christians holding this view.
None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
I am among those people who believe that morality can be defined using the tools of rationality and science (yes, science.) I believe it fairly obvious that morality is intimately linked with the notions of consciousness and sentience. To the extent that this is true, it is obvious that science is critical in evaluating moral statements, since consciousness and sentience are within the domain of science. Questions such as "when does a life begin?", are subject to answers from science, since science is capable of telling us when something gains the status of a living being, according to the moral definition of "life", as provided by rational discourse.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
It has everything to do with science and religion. First of all, and downright trivially, science has been struck a blow, because scientists will be lacking valuable research materials. Secondly, scientists are arguing in favour of the stem cell research. Thirdly, it is religious types arguing against it. It can't get any more plain than that.
Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The bible isn't the arbiter of what christians believe -the church is. There is also VERY LITTLE in the bible about homosexuality, and yet you would think its the worst of all sins, judging by the churches reaction to it. If the church says something is the case, then that is what the christian faith teaches, by definition. You can bet your ass that if the christian church had been saying "the divine spark enters the body at 8 months after conception", then we would not be having this debate.
>There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other
>point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Just because the bible says nothing in particular on the matter (whether it says something in general via implication is up for debate), the Catechism of the Catholic Church *does* make statements on the matter, so it clearly is a "religious issue" for some people. Bush has made statements to indicate that it is part of his religious beliefs as well, not just his abstract morality independent of his religion. Religion != The Bible and Religion != Christianity.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The Bible isn't the only source of religious belief, even among Christians. Most of their beliefs come from other people (e.g. the Pope, or Pat Robertson, or their parents), not from the Bible.
This is a battle between people who belief personhood begins at conception vs people who believe it begins at first brain wave, birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, etc.
The question of "personhood" could be a legal question, but in this context it's mainly a moral one, as you say. But since most religious people are supposed to derive their moral values from their religion, and since Bush certainly does that, it's quite correct to say that his decision is a religious decision.
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
With all due respect, what are you smoking? The pro-life/pro-choice issue has everything to do with the nature of "life" and sentience, and revolves around conservative christians and their desire to push a government agenda that centers around their religious beliefs. There are literally thousands of different religious interpretations over when life begins. The stem cell issue has been a side battle in the war to abolish legalized abortion. Everyone, apparently except you, is aware of that.
The Preamble "indicates the general purpose for which the people ordained and established the Constitution" [Jacobson v. Mass. 197 US 11 (1904)]. Conversly, if the Preamble is not law, then the Constitution has no standing at all: "We the people of the United States...do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Further, general welfare is again mentioned as a specific duty in section 8 (right after common defence), to make it really clear. Note that each of the clauses in section 8 are followed by semi-colons, indicating that they are a list, among which is: "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States".
And in the 1770s, 'welfare' had a fairly specific meaning. "Happiness, Prosperity", thus anything generally beneficial, which is a good thing for a Govt. to be enabled to do. Unless of course it was reserved for the states or disallowed by the amendments. Thus while shutting down the New York Times might make 51% happy, it can't be done because it's prevented by an amendment.
Now if it can be shown that a program is not contributing to our general prosperity, then it follows that it should be shut down. Back when science was a priority of the US Govt., the US led the world in science, hands down, no question. Around the time when science began to be seen as a private benefit rather than a public good, and we began to reduce the per capita level of support at the federal level, the US lead in science began to slip.
It's pretty clear that the future will be dominated by nations who are leaders in science.
One might trot out the unmatched scientific leadership of all the little folks who have pulled themselves up on to the world wide web by their sweaty bootstraps, if one didn't know what the the N in NCSA stood for, that is.
Stem cells is one of the best places for the Federal govt. to fund the basic research, for private research to flourish in this area one would need to generate patents on human cells, human DNA, etc. That is a bad idea (you want to pay a license fee for using your DNA?). Especially in research involving human DNA, it is best to fund the research as a public good, for the general welfare, and place the results in the public domain.
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
I'm so utterly baffled at how so many people are complaining about paying taxes, how the government shouldn't fund the NIH, etc. What the NIH gets is somewhere in the low $20 billion per year range (I can't remember the latest numbers...), but the defense department gets around $420 billion, IIRC. The NIH is an investment in the US maintaining its position of economic dominance in the future, and it's a smart investment to make. And to say that private industry could play a similar role is simply not correct. Why isn't anyone complaining that we need to stop wasting money on the military instead?
Before I say something that makes you howl with frustration, and wish you could pummel me into a pulp... ;-)
;-)
(I agree - denying evolution is stupid. Evolution is real, and ID is a load of crap, propogated by people with a social and political agenda)
Now... (I'm splitting hairs here, but) science fundamentally *cannot* prove that evolution is a fact. There's no way we can show that there is no god out there pulling strings to manipulate molecules in just the way that we would expect. In fact, there are very few 'facts' that can be 'proven' scientifically. The only thing that science can do is to show what *isn't* true.
Read some of Karl Popper's papers. Reading them, and also 'The burden of proof' by Kevin Lafferty really helped to clarify my understanding of the scientific method.
My opinion is that ID *could* be right. It's possible. However, there's absolutely no proof that ID is true (as opposed to evolution, which has lots of supporting evidence), and ID sure as hell isn't science!
Having said all this, I wouldn't bother making these arguements when argueing with an ID proponent. they wouldn't be a scientist, and wouldn't understand. I'd just stick to the 'ID isn't science, cause it can't be negated' arguement. but this is slashdot, and we're here because we love argueing over technicalities
Yes, 9x320.
Lets do unregulated experiments on ANY cadaver without anyone's consent either. Any med student given his deceased mother or child to work on without his foreknowledge might be in for a surprise!
But of course they would be sentimental fools and not scientists!!!!
I believe CHINA will be the next Medical Powerhouse because as you know, there they can experiment on live prisoners!!!!!! Of course they are death row prisoners and going to die anyway, so lets not waste this wonderful promising new resource ourselves!!!!! BTW, they sentence 65,000 to death each year, so we will NEVER run out of a resource there!!!
This should start in the US soon! We don't want to get left behind!!
Opponents of embryonic stem cell research -- starting with President Bush -- argue that you can't destroy life in order to save it
This is such a fundamentally flawed position that it's almost funny. So, um, it's not possible to "save" life by destroying other life. Well, hmm, I guess as humans that means we can't eat any plants or animals anymore!
However it's not so funny when you take into consideration the huge number of sheep in this country that "believe" stupid crap like this. And if you question them, they'll probably say their pastor told them so they know it's true. Yeah, I'm sure Jesus would be proud of you just going along with the crowd instead of questioning whether the entrenched power is right. Oh wait.
Seriously? 400,000 embryos are unceremoniously being "discarded"? If my understanding of the processes available to modern invetro science is correct, that number sounds a little "fudged". The way that I understand it is as follows:
1) sperm and egg samples are collected
2) sperm and egg samples are combined to form the batch of embryos
3) the batch is tested for viability
4.a) a group of embryos is implanted in a hormone-enhanced woman's uterus hoping for successful pregnancy by the numbers game (i.e. one o' dese tings, I say ONE o' dese tings has GOT to work!)
4.b) a single embryo is implanted in a hormone-enhanced woman's uterus placing only one egg in one's proverbial basket.
5) remaining embryos are frozen/discarded/juggled to entertain the hopeful parents while strange people in lab coats poke sharp stainless steel around their nether regions.
6)???
7) Profit.
Seriously, 400,000 are just discarded? Considering the cost and the chance that the parents might want to use the eggs in the future, it seems wasteful. It costs huge amounts of money to begin the long process anyway. 400,000 really just seems like a made-up number to me. Then again, maybe there really ARE 50,000 couples out there every year undergoing this process and producing 10 embryos each time.
How many of those couples could have just simply adopted instead of spent all that money to correct nature's sense of humor. On a thread where evolution is bandied as fact, you'd think we'd have a little more respect for natural selection.
Hey I have an idea, why don't we do medical experiments on death-row inmates? They're just being discarded anyway. Oh wait, before you try to tut-tut me for suggesting such inhumanity what if I told you that medical scientists thought that by doing so there'd be a good chance that attractive and funny people like Michael J. Fox could be successfully treated. Technically, those death-row inmates ARE just being discarded, maybe not to the excessive tune or 400,000/year, but your argument only attempts to sidestep the fact that it is an ethical question. Should embryos be discarded anyway?
I have a friend who is full-blooded Italian and was considering donating some of her eggs for a couple at a fertility clinic. I say "donate" because to my mind, the $5000 that she would be paid does not make up for the months of hormone treatments and awkward doctor visits she'd have to sustain just to "donate". She was still considering it because she thought of how wonderful it would be to give the gift of birth to parents who couldn't otherwise conceive without herself actually having to give birth herself (the needles are far less painful I suppose than a 9-lb baby). When she found out that she was going to be donating "extra" eggs that would likely have been discarded or could have been similarly "donated" to private labs for medical research, she lost all interest in the process. Now I can't pretend to understand how it must feel for a woman to want a child but be told that for one reason or another she cannot conceive one in her current relationship. If the desire to raise another human life is so important as to have warranted the years science has spent and the dollars the government [used to spend], then why not adopt? I don't even get why this "source" for "medically viable research material" exists in the first place. If I were an orphan or if my parents gave me up for adoption, I imagine that I'd feel a little bit bitter.
Clearly, your outpouring of sarcasm there is intended to imply that, in reality, blastocysts are people, and to destroy them is murder.
Let's find out what you really believe.
You find yourself in a room containing a 3-month-old infant, and a cryogenically stabilized container holding 20,000 blastocysts. The room is on fire. You have time to save either the infant or the 20,000 blastocysts. Which do you save?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Apparently it had eaten all the examples after the line:
"slow the exodus of U.S. talent to countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan."
that I am sure were posted on CNN in this article. May be somebody can help me by posting REAL article on the subj?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Life begins at birth; and it has for thousands of years of recorded history across all spectrums of religious and secular belief. The current political movement to redefine the beginning of life to some cells frozen in a lab refrigerator begins and ends with right-wing "Christian" evangelicals/extremists since the 1970's who want to see abortion outlawed in order to subjugate women. You are appealing to the fantasy of women being slaves to men as you pretend their bodies are non-thinking/non-choosing vessels for whoever inseminates them first.
Oh dear, you seem to have fallen into your own fallacy. I'll give you something better than a "morally meaningful" reason to believe that life begins at conception, in fact, I'll give you a scientific demonstration that is so solidly based on first principle observable evidence that it would make Decartes blush.
Here we go, do this experiment (if legal in your country)
The only meaningful scientific answer has to be the one that is stripped of all emotion and subjectivism and reduced only to highly repeatable observations, a clearly stated prediction ("that zygotes and 75 year old men are both human and alive") and an evidence based answer ("yes"). It is even disprovable, so Popper would be happy.
Oh, BTW, you might also want to look to see what Descartes was doing when he invented the modern idea of scientific enquiry - he was doing theology, my friend. Not all religous thought is bad for your mind, you know.
M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
"States from Connecticut to California have tried to step in with enough funding to keep the labs going and slow the exodus of U.S. talent to countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan."
Are there so many American researchers? Usually US research means 80% foreigners. Nobody knows whether stem cell research will lead to results. Nations like Singapore and Taiwan are industry whores. They do it because business wants it and does not care about ethics.
It is important to have a critical view of new technology. Be it RFID, DRM or stem cells. Nations from asia are often technoradical. Mao cooked steel in villages... Some of them had success. Many asian politicians are engineers.
I am technoliberal. We have to care about civil liberties and push technology forward. Technology a means to a more prosperous life in an open society. It could well be the other way around. Western values have to be defended against these nations. Trade sanctions are an option.
Also, what is the difference between one celled bacteria that we kill every day regularly, and an 8 cell embryo?
The embryo has a soul, according to some.
May the Maths Be with you!
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Many of the reply posts to this jumped all over the statment as wrong but I think they miss the point. I think the poster would have been better to avoid the statement about religion. I characterise this debate by saying that it cannot be resolved by a discussion about "rights". The rights of the mother, the rights of the father, the rights of the foetus and the rightness of society and/or the state to say that a conceived foetus deserves its protection.
There is no way to reconcile these competing rights At best one can just place them in a hierarchy and allow the competition to be decided by the one with the highest rank. Great. That works, but it leaves as many issues as it solves and the answer may not always be the same which creates even more conflict and resentment. But the fundamental nature of the problem remains; this debate cannot be couched in terms of rights because rights are a "qualified absoute" (lest they not be rights) and when competing absolutes conflict there can be no "logical" right answer.
Where does that leave us? Weell I think it leaves the whole issue in the too hard basket. Personally, I am for stem cell research, embryonic, cloned, extracting whatever. If people are so horrible opposed they can vote by not using any of the products of this research (and good luck to them I say :-). But I don't think that those of us that are more open to these ideas should be quite so dismissive of people who believe otherwise. If they believe that society is made worse by every one of these embryoes that does not become a life and that promoting the use of leftovers for research even creates the temptation to fertilize a few more than would otherwise be necessary then they are right to use their "power" to restrict the funding of the work. That is the way popular democracy (technical term, not that the current government is popular) works. Those of us that belive otherwise just need to make the idea more popular first.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
And everything I said about stem cells could be applied to abortion. You are making the same false assumptions as the other folks here - that everyone who opposes stem-cells is religious, and that because many of those opponents are relgious, their argument must be religious.
Please explain, explicitly, how the belief that personhood begins at conception is more "religious" per se than the belief that it begins during the third trimester, when their is substantial brain activity (which is more or less the current law). Don't say "lots of religious people believe the former" - that is irrelevant. Lots of religious people believe the sky is blue - that doesn't change the fact that it is.
http://harridanic.com
when the debate is a moral question means your thinking is clouded. This is elementary philosophy - "is" and "ought" don't mix! Evidence is always of the "is" type. Yet we cannot logically go from "is" to "ought" via any form of evidence or science. There isn't really any significant debate about what a fetus is - only what we ought to do about it.
To clarify your arguments, you should not use the term "life", which is political rhetoric and lacks clarity. Indeed, in doing so, you are playing into your opponent's hands - "life" obviously, and according to accepted scientific defintions, begins at conception. "Personhood" is a more subtle substitution. You cannot argue that a three-week-old fetus is anything other than a living human being - but you could argue that it should not be considered a legal human. Note the "should" in my previous sentence. It is not a statement than can be proven with "evidence".
I think you do not even understand the heart of the debate. No rational person would argue that a blastocyst has the level of sentience that is at the heart of the concept of "personhood". Rather, they would be arguing that the high potential of this organism to attain that ability is sufficient for certain basic protections. Note that again, science cannot help us with this debate.
You are right about the Bible - there is little concerning homosexuality. Unfortunately, that little bit is extremely clear on the matter. The same is not true concerning abortion. The only line that I can think of (and the one most often cited) is the "I knew thee in the womb" line, which doesn't imply that "I knew thee from conception", and therefore does not settle the matter.
I'm a Christian, but for stem cell research, but to say the Bible does say something on the matter.
"Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." - Psalm 51:5
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." - Jeremiah 1:5
"for he [John the Baptist] will be great in the sight of the Lord. He [John the Baptist] is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb" - Luke 1:15
I don't think these verses say conclusively that that means we are have souls as embroyos, or I would be against stem cell research, but I do think they help to show why for some Christians (and for the first two Old Testament verses) Jews or Muslims may not find this a clear-cut issue.
Well, it all boils down to what do you define as "personhood".
Amongst those that define "personhood" as the ability to think, you'll be hard pressed to find people that believe that "personhood" begins at the moment of conception (or in fact at any moment before a basic nervous system has developed).
On the other hand, many of those that define "personhood" as having a soul believe that personhood begins at the moment of conception.
Your argument about "personhood" is very much a smoke screen - in the end the discussion pretty much boils down to believing that people have a soul or not - very much a religious discussion.
I do agree, however, that the debate about allowing or not stem cell research has nothing to do with science.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
>BTW, I am a molecular biologist (who has had an article on my research duped on slashdot) who has worked with both stem cells and gene therapy.
How about this? I'm Albert Einstein, and I call bullshit.
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com
Sorry to hear it, but people die of all kinds of things. My father died of a number of things three years ago. One of them was Parkinson's disease. We are going to die of something, stem cells or not. And why exactly are we supposed to rush into crossing moral boundaries and ponying up billions of dollars in research money to save Michael J. Fox or Superman? It is a really bad use of celebrity to plump for the solution of YOUR special disease at all cost. And a bit hysterical, even cowardly. We are supposed to thrash around, do anything, to save these hollywood narcissists, including lose our humanity. I'm personally sick of their public whining when their mortality bites them in the ass.
The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
It amazes me how people turn the deep discussion of morality into a simple discussion of waste. They trivialize the subject. They dismiss the un-responded-to point that it is immoral to tear unique human genetic combinations apart for research because of the selfish human need to live forever. To be perfectly clear, it is not a question of wasting a resource by discarding fertilized eggs; it is a question of using those eggs for research contrary to the correct moral strictures against experimenting on humans without their permission. Stop turning it into a mere question of "wasting research food".
Oh, and by the way, I'm not a religious nutcase. I don't believe in gods and demons. Religion is an attempt to explain moral impulses, not the source of moral impulses.
E Proelio Veritas.
I'd rather vote by electing someone who wont use my money to fund it. If you see no problem with it, donate your own money to embryonic stem cell research. (And good luck to you, I say... That's how liberty is supposed to work).
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
To be clear, "evolution" has been used to refer to both the theory of evolution, and the fact of evolution.
Evolution has been observed in the lab. Speciation has occurred amongst short-lived laboratory animals. This is the fact that evolution does occur.
The "theory of evolution" is a scientific theory that posits a reason for the diversity of species we see today. The theory of evolution can never be proven as true, though it could theoretically be proven false. Nothing can be done to prove false the fact of evolution, and that it has been observed in labs.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
The poster is absolutely correct. The foundation of Christianity is the Bible anything else is here-say. Why do you think the Protestants split from the Catholic church? It was over the intepretation of the Bible. The notion that the Catholic Church says stem cell research is wrong, is irrelevant. There are many practiicng Catholics who disagree with Church law but still consider themselves Catholic. To boil it down to a simple point, there's God's law and then there's the Church's Law. Church law is man made and obviously fallable. God's law says nothing about stem cell research.
In so much that we can tie the destruction of a stem cell violates the 6th commandment - thou shall not kill, stem research is fair game.
When you get right down to it, this whole debate ends at the same question that plagues the abortion debate. When does life begin? All of the funding at the Fedral level for embryonic stem cell research hinges on that one question. Theologians have said life begins at conception. Some scientists say it begins once the entity becomes a viable entity and not simply a mass of dividing tissue.
This begs the question, are embryos grown in a test tube that would otherwise be disposed of human life that must be protected? Is it wrong to dispose of excess embryos when implanting eggs fertilized in a lab into a mother? Should other mothers be called in to implant them with remaining embryos to prevent this waste of life? Or should scientists be funded to use what would otherwise be disposed of to possibly save human life? Should theology prevent technology from advancing our species and improving the quality of human life? Should I stop asking rhetorical questions?
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
The difference is that this cell may become a human, was there not a Slashdot article on here a week or so back that brain cells had been discovered in a fetus, earlier than previously thought possible?
I'd counter, that most humans do not gain true consciousness or true sentience (at least more than a chimpanzee) until 3-5 years old. I for one can not remember anything before my first year of kindergarten and I suppose had I died then, my mind would not have been able to comprehend what death entails nor would I have been really concerned about the ordeal. Not that I'm advocating the use of small children in lab experiments just because they don't really have souls or anything, but if we are arguing when life begins then we have to argue what is more important... The biological definition of life or conscious sentient life.
If you get down to it, conscious sentient life is more important than life that is not. If I am in a vegetable coma state for 20 years, I'm all for them puling the plug and using my body for science while others in such a state would prefer them to hold out as long as possible until a cure is found in the future (even cryogenics).
However, the dilemma is of course if you are no longer sentient or were never sentient to begin with is then you can't really voice your desire one way or another. Or even be able to have desire for anything for that matter.
I don't think any of us have a good answer for that.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
But the debate is not about aborting babies to get at their stem cells.. it is about catching a few IVF blastocysts that are being dumped into incinerators and using them to research that can help all of humanity.
You spend several paragraphs explaining how you think the pharma funding network works and then single out stem cell research as something that should be handled differently. If you want to tackle the issue of government funding of what ultimatly becomes private proffit then talk about that. Otherwise, I don't see why the government should spend billions on _less
_ promising research than stem cells.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
kinda like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_snatchers
I have to hand it to you; that's one insightful post. It helps me frame the issue better.
No data, no cry
Humans are so damned weak anymore.
The *fact* is that evolution is "fact" because it is historically accurate (observations of the record are consistant with evolution), it is observably accurate (you can see biological mechanisms implementing the "theory"), and it is predictive (there are numerous experiments you can perform even on your own that demonstrates evolutionary theory's utility).
Sure, you could postulate that a Deity is pulling all the strings and making it all happen just like it does - but doing so absolutely nothing to the theory but non-predictive complexity. Belief in "ID" requires that you believe that the world is a deception.
Note: I am not really trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that there are some basic assumptions in this argument that are probably still up for debate.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
So do identical twins share one soul? It would then seem to be ethical to kill my identical twin and harvest his organs, yes? If not, when do identical twins get their extra soul stirred into the mix? But wait; cloning is prohibited by the Bible, so why are identical twins not taken out and stoned in the first place? Bah.
The only Christians whose approach to the modern world seems to me to be consistent are the Amish. If you want to live a medieval life without benefit of science, fine; just don't force me to come along.
Someday, therapies based on embryonic stem cells will be available in civilized countries for diseases like Parkinson's. Will today's evangelical Republicans stay at home and quiver, or will they swallow their dogma and travel for therapy, I wonder.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Please educate me as to where this idea originated? I thought it was a Catholic idea, but perhaps I am wrong.
I am aware that there are pro-life atheists, because I knew one. Though they are a tiny minority within a minority. But that isn't necessarily evidence that it isn't a religious idea. There are, in fact, many religions that are or can be atheistic in nature. Buddhism being the best example.
My idea of something being religious, in this sense at least, is that it dogmatic and/or based upon faith and feelings and that it also involves something more important than mere superstitions. I see no good reason to think a single cell is of comparable importance to a person. To me this strikes as a blatantly religious idea weather or not atheists partake in it. Perhaps this is just a semantic argument.
A fully grown human being that is infertile isn't "life" according to the accepted definition of biological life. The biological definition of life is a strict scientific definition. You shouldn't argue from it even you were right, as you seem to suggest.
I think you have gone beyond reason here. To say that it is not only about science or religion is one thing. But to say it has nothing to do with science or religion is just ignorant or dumb.
The real problem is that stem cell therapy is going to be genotype-specific. That means you need stem cells that match your DNA pretty closely in order for it to work for you. So, where do we get genotype-specific stem cells when someone needs them?
There are currently two ways: cloning (human) and made-to-order babies. Right now, we do not know how to to clone people, even just a little bit. If we could grow a new heart when you needed one, that would probably wipe out the need for a lot of stem cell research. So, it is pretty unlikily that this is going to happen any time soon. Besides, the opposition would be even greater to whole-human cloning than to just chopping up a few babies.
Made-to-order babies are almost certainly the answer. You get a close egg and a close sperm cell and combine them with standard in-vitro techniques. Maybe do 10 just to make sure. Of course, nobody is really talking about allowing them to grow much beyond the embryo stage.
So where do you get the "close (in DNA terms) egg" when you need one? Well, it might be like current organ transplants where you try for a relative first. However, unlike organs, women can sell eggs by the bucket without doing themselves any real harm. Men are already paid for sperm, so this shouldn't be a problem either. Now we have a thriving market for human materials.
Is this where you really want to go? Believe me, the so-called religious opposition to some things isn't all that far off if you understand there is more to this than "We could have saved Christopher Reeve!"
You are using the philosopher's definition of a fact. I think that you are going to find that most people don't care for philosophy, though it is important.
Gravity is as much of a fact as the fact of who my mother and father are. I don't pull out a cake recipie and say that this recipie is only a theory of how to make a cake and could, in fact, make ice cream.
Switching back and forth between the philosophical and layman definitions is one of the ways that creationists lie and manipulate debate. I think if you are going to start splitting hairs you should make explicit your definitions and labels, otherwise you lay fertil grounds for the creationists to flourish.
While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so.
Haha. Too funny. You make this statement that the assertion that life begins at conception is without evidence, and should be dismissed without evidence. Ignoring that this fact is wrong (ref. testing cells in zygotes v. self-sufficient humans), yet you assert many things without evidence.
Your post has been summarily dismissed without evidence.
Most people can identify with a celebrity more than a total stranger. To see a stranger twitching during an interview due to Parkinsons is tragic, but to see the same thing happen to someone with a recognizable face makes the issue slightly more personal. Obviously that it is happening to a celebrity does not make the issue more important, but it does cause us to examine our interests in the subject on a more personal level.
Obviously, and not to the point. The point is that it is an emotional manipulation, adds nothing to the moral debate, and such appeals can lead us to do things that are wrong.
It amazes me how people turn the simple discussion of waste into a deep discussion of morality. They overstate the importance of the subject. They dismiss the great potential benefits because of a selfish desire to impose their belief structure on a world that does not agree with them.
Simply an inhuman comment. Your ability to see people as research material is disturbing at the least. Why not sterilize and eat people instead of burying them? Use the wasted resources, according to your philosophy. "Soylent Green," here we come. As for the "potential benefits," you don't demand much in order to discard morality, do you? All you need is the pretty zirconia of potential immortality dangled before you by the scientific-industrial-complex. You don't seem to really have any moral boundaries. That is a problem of many people in this subject area, a kind of socially acceptable psychopathy. Considering the percentage of people willing to tear others apart for their own need, I have to wonder, is psychopathy the new normalcy?
E Proelio Veritas.
To be perfectly clear, it is not a question of wasting a resource by discarding fertilized eggs; it is a question of using those eggs for research contrary to the correct moral strictures against experimenting on humans without their permission.
Only if you accept the premise that a blastocyst (50-150 non-differentiated cells) == a human being.
Stop turning it into a mere question of "wasting research food".
If you want to argue the moral stricture of a blastocyst, then you are going to have an awful time with IVF. As a society we see IVF as good, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of embryos are created and destroyed (that is, murdered if blastocyst==human). Good luck trying to eliminate IVF on the grounds of embryo murder. Once you (or our society) buys into IVF, the anti-stemcell position does become little more than 'wasting research food'.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Yes, attempting to save Alex Keaton at all costs simply because the actor playing him made us smile in Family Ties is a bit much, but that is not the only option. For many (hopefully most) people the differences between Michael J. Fox at that time and as he is now would be instructive in what Parkinson's actually does to people. When it serves to highlight the affects of Parkinson's is celebrity campaigning really such a bad thing? The debate from there obviously devolves into wether or not it incites personal analysis or emotional manipulation in the common case of people, and I would hazard a guess that we stand inarguably on opposite sides there.
Let me highlight a comment that was obviously missed, which may explain the response you received.
That said, you managed to glean an astonishing amount of information about my (lack of) thought processes and (lack of) moral fibre from that comment. Too bad most of it was utterly wrong. Lets try this again though, just for fun.
Your ability to see a collection of cells as equivalent to a human being is disturbing at the least. Please explain to me why the conception stage is the appropriate point to characterize a group of cells as a person instead of, for instance, the point where a child is no longer directly dependant on its mother for continued functioning.
Even ignoring my above argument about the point at which cells equate to human life, how does this logically follow from what I said? I was discussing the use of fertilized cells (or extremely young people, by some moral classifications) for medical research, not food. Additionally your statement of "instead of burying them" implies that the individuals in question are already dead, which is not the case in fertilized embryos. Does that mean, however, that you do not support medical experimentation on corpses?
I never once stated that I believed stem cells will lead us to immortality, and frankly have no idea where you got that idea. That said, it is your morality that is being discarded for this, not mine. Experimentation with fertilized eggs is entirely consistent with a moral viewpoint that human life starts at biological independance from any one individual. (commonly: at birth, medically: somewhat sooner)
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
The whole controversy is actually quite over-emotionalized. Simply put, most people opposing stem cell research don't even realize what they are talking about. When the opposition hears the word "embryo" it is only natural to instantly picture a curled up little pre-human organism. But in reality, the stem cell scientists don't want this. They only want a cell mass called a blastocyst that is merely a few days old. Tell me earnestly, which would you cry over the most: the loss of your newborn child, or some microscopic cells? They are not the same and shouldn't be treated the same. Here's a great visual demo about what embryonic stem cells actually are: http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/anisamples/st emcells.html
Affordable Health Coverage
thanks for putting the previous poster in his place. Might I also suggest taking a sample from a cancerous tissue. Based on his definition of life, killing cancer could be morally wrong. Clearly the functional organization of the tissue in question (is it alive, dead, capable of thought etc), is something we should be asking in addition to, or perhaps even instead of, the DNA of the entity.
As you fail to realize that there are a substantial body of people who are both NOT religious and DO believe X. You are still falling for the "If they believe X, they must be religious. Therefore, the argument must be religious." fallacy I mentioned before. You are making a second mistake as well - assuming that a religious argument is inferior to a secular one in a moral debate. When religion takes on science in matters of fact, religion gets its ass handed to it repeatedly. When religion is used to address moral or philosophical questions, it is just as legitimate as a point of view as any other philosophical system. If one person uses the philosophy of Kant, while the second uses the philosophy of Jesus to decide this moral debate, why is one person's opinion more valid than the next? Why would either's be considered worse than that of the common man, who just pulls the answer out of his butt without much thought at all?
You have a line beyond which you consider killing a fetus/baby murder. I don't know where it is, but you must have one. Why did you put it there? What reasoning did you use? Odds are that most Jesus freaks have thought about it as much or more than you, so you can't claim that as your high ground.
or even feel.
It is a question of whether their high potential to do so if not deliberately prevented is sufficient cause for granting them protected status.
Here we go, do this experiment (if legal in your country) * Take cell samples from a 1 day zygote and another from a living 75 year old human. * Conduct a full range of biometric & DNA testing on each sample. * Send results for peer review, asking the question "Are these cells both from living human beings?" The only meaningful scientific answer has to be the one that is stripped of all emotion and subjectivism and reduced only to highly repeatable observations, a clearly stated prediction ("that zygotes and 75 year old men are both human and alive") and an evidence based answer ("yes"). It is even disprovable, so Popper would be happy.
Based on your definition of 'life', a recently dead person and cancerous cell tissue would be considered life. Tell me, is this the meaningful definition of life form a moral perspective that you had in mind? I didn't think so.
Oh, BTW, you might also want to look to see what Descartes was doing when he invented the modern idea of scientific enquiry - he was doing theology, my friend. Not all religous thought is bad for your mind, you know.
stop fawning over descartes -as far as questions concerning consciousness and morality he did alot more harm than good. For many years people engaged in the torture of animals based on descartes "reasoning" -according to him (because of his religious convictions) animals had no souls and thus were incapable of feeling pain (since pain is felt by the soul.) btw, the source of communication between the soul and the physical world, according to him, is the pineal gland. In spite of the obvious foolishness of his view, people crucified dogs and sliced them open while alive -their howls were taken to be a stimulus-response behavior with no pain involved. A piano was made for a king that worked by thrusting pins into the tails of cats. etc. So yes, descartes religious thought was CERTAINLY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, bad for science, bad for morality, and bad for the mind.
Now, before you start rambling over your greatest hero descartes, and his superb accomplishments, do some research on how modern day philosophers view his work (as a source of problems, not as a solution,) and the incredibly detrimental effects his theological views had on the wellbeing of animals.
The word "freethinker" is a word of profound arrogance. Its use implies those that agree with you are "freethinkers", and those that disagree are just slaves to their own stupidity and the control of evil puppet-masters. As an atheist, who hangs out with atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers daily (physics department), and who visits in atheist and agnostic newsgroups on a regular basis, I have to say that you are very wrong. There are not a substantial number of such people. I personally only know of one such person in real life.
Hmmm...I spent years in a science department and rarely remember having such discussions (we had a lot more during undergrad). To the extent that I do know people's opinions, there is not much of a correlation between education level, income, or IQ and political persuasion (either in my person experience or according to poll data). I know several pro-life PhDs.
Perhaps "not religious" to you means "doesn't go to church often". It means more than that to me, though not necessarily that one is strong atheist
It is their beliefs that would matter, not the number of times they go to church. Many people go out of a sense of participation and civics more than the religion itself. Also, large numbers of people (almost a third) vaguely define themselves as Christian yet rarely enter a church. These people are not irrelevant to the debate, as they are both numerous and the swing block.
Secondly a religious argument is not much better than an argument with no justification at all. Faith is a belief in something without justification.
I am not sure how one justifies such beliefs. How do you justify the Golden Rule or the Categorical Imperative? You do understand that EVERYTHING you believe to be true is ultimately based on things you cannot prove.
So if I murder a homosexual, and then I make a religious argument at my trial that the Bible commanded me to stone the homosexual, then that is what you call a legitimate point of view as far as morals are concerned?
They can be just as illegimate as well. What I am saying is that it is irrelevant that it is religious. It doesn't matter if the justification came from Jesus, Kant, the guy's grandmother, or right out of his own musings.
If you cannot somehow judge the philosophy of Jesus to be good, then you shouldn't be following it. "Because it's a religion" doesn't cut the mustard.
I am not a Christian, though I do feel that the New Testament is one of the more profound religious fairy tales out there.
I don't have a set line.
Then let's make you set one. I am going to set one for you if you do not. How about your age, plus one. Good? Then you have no rights, and I am coming over with a shot-gun tonight. Hmmmm....wanna move the line back a bit?
Facetiousness aside, you DO have a line. There is some point (perhaps even after birth, and not necessarily defined by age) where you feel killing a human being is unacceptable, and I am sure you have some justification as to why.
But if somebody thought hard about it and concluded that it's murder to kill a single cell, then they aren't very good at thinking.
And if you think that a embryo is just "a single cell", then I could say the same about you.
If I have a freezer full of embryos, if I can't claim them as dependents, then they aren't people. When Social Security issues them Social Security numbers, then it will be murder and then embryonic stem cells should be illegal. Until embryos can be legally treated as humans in all regards, the law is inconsistent and should treat them as not yet human.
Note the word "high". A sperm or eggs chances are infinitesimal. An embryos chances are one in a few. You can quibble about where the line should be, but fortunately, you have several orders of magnitude to work with. Even if the obvious quantitative change is not enough for you, there is a qualitative one as well. Clearly, neither sperm nor egg is a living human being. A blastocyst/embryo/fetus most definitely is.
At this level, the number of cells in immaterial, one cell, 150 cells, it's all the same. It is the unique human genetic combination that is the moral problem. What gives YOU--a unique human genetic combination--the right to tear apart another unique human genetic combination for your own survival? As for throwing embryos away, I've a problem with that. But the moral problem of tearing apart unique human genetic combinations for research purposes is orders of magnitude worse than simply throwing away embryos. And let's get something clear. You are not without moral boundaries in the subject. Your moral boundaries are just set further on. But you can be sure that there are people who do not accept even your moral boundaries in this subject. I suggest it is far better to draw the line hard and early here at the beginning of life than later, when we cannot differentiate between human beings and inanimate objects.
E Proelio Veritas.
When it serves to highlight the affects of Parkinson's is celebrity campaigning really such a bad thing? The debate from there obviously devolves into wether or not it incites personal analysis or emotional manipulation in the common case of people, and I would hazard a guess that we stand inarguably on opposite sides there.
Yes, it is a bad thing because it emotionally skews investment in research. A mere 1% of people over 50 years of age get Parkinson's disease. Approximately 25% of people will get cancer over their lifetimes. Considering that research dollars are not infinite, where exactly do you think those dollars are going to come from? Congress is always happy to have tv face-time with the american people while listening to the latest celebrity-disease spokesperson. But where do the shifted dollars for that disease come from? They come out of cancer research or heart disease research. You can be sure it will not come out of pork projects or the Defense Department budget. And yes, we stand on opposite sides of the question. You are coming from emotion; I am coming from reason.
Please explain to me why the conception stage is the appropriate point to characterize a group of cells as a person instead of, for instance, the point where a child is no longer directly dependant on its mother for continued functioning.
I've explained it. At conception a unique human genetic combination (UHGC) comes into existence, with all its human potential of unique personality, talents, and physical expression. What makes yours superior to its? What gives your unique human genetic makeup the right to tear its apart for your purposes? Why are you superior? What gave one man the moral right to enslave another man in the past? And it WAS considered moral. It is the same argument.
Does that mean, however, that you do not support medical experimentation on corpses?
Come on, even corpses have more rights than you propose a UHGC has. One must get permission from the individual before death to use his corpse as a research resource. One must not desecrate a dead body. It has rights. Nobody asks the LIVING UHGC for permission before they tear it apart, nor do they feel it necessary. Incredible.
I never once stated that I believed stem cells will lead us to immortality, and frankly have no idea where you got that idea.
Really? I think you have to think more deeply, then, about what exactly they are promising you for your moral surrender, and what you are tacitly accepting.
Experimentation with fertilized eggs is entirely consistent with a moral viewpoint that human life starts at biological independance from any one individual.
And, obviously, I reject that "moral viewpoint" as immoral.
You don't seem to have the ability, desire, or both to understand someone else's moral systems.
This isn't about accepting culteral differences, or racial differences. This isn't about recognizing the moral equivalence of all "systems." This is about defining murder. And you define murder far too conveniently, too sloppily, for my liking.E Proelio Veritas.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
I do not have the time or the inclination to explain my belief systems to you. This is probably a good thing because you apparently are not interested in understanding them, only asserting that your ideas are right.
You don't seem to understand that you are as vehemently upholding the validity of your position as I am mine. I understand your position. I just reject it.
What gives YOU--a unique human genetic combination--the right to tear apart another unique human genetic combination for your own survival?
A unique human genetic combination != a person. That is simply my belief. Fertilized eggs are rejected by our bodies (well, women's bodies) all the time, that is natural and amoral. For what it is worth, I view a fetus as non-human until it is able to live outside of its mother's body.
As for throwing embryos away, I've a problem with that. But the moral problem of tearing apart unique human genetic combinations for research purposes is orders of magnitude worse than simply throwing away embryos.
I do not understand this logic. You seem to imply that it is not the destruction of a 'uhgc' that is really the problem. The use of that 'uhgc' is somehow much, much worse that simply destroying it. I could understand if the entity in question were able to feel and sense pain, but that is simply not the case, being as there is nothing even approaching a nervous system. Do you disagree with that? And if so, on what basis?
You are not without moral boundaries in the subject.
Of course. I've not suggested otherwise. However, as with everything, society as a whole is who gets to decide where those boundaries are with regard to policy. I would submit that as of now, society agrees more with me than you. IVF is considered a very good thing, despite the fact that is does require destruction of tremendous #s of 'uhgc's. ESC research is a logical descendent of IVF acceptance, and it will come to pass (politically speaking, both houses of congress support it, and none of the major candidates in either party oppose it).
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Fertilized eggs are rejected by our bodies (well, women's bodies) all the time, that is natural and amoral.
Right! You put your finger on the problem finally. The NATURAL destruction is not immoral. The UNNATURAL destruction IS. If a person is killed by a bacterium, that is sad, but natural and not a crime. But if I put a bullet in your head, that is an unnatural death--caused by a human--and a crime. If a UHGC is flushed from a woman's body naturally, that is sad, but natural. But if a human creates them deliberately and tears them apart, that is unnatural and a crime.
I do not understand this logic. You seem to imply that it is not the destruction of a 'uhgc' that is really the problem. The use of that 'uhgc' is somehow much, much worse that simply destroying it. I could understand if the entity in question were able to feel and sense pain, but that is simply not the case, being as there is nothing even approaching a nervous system. Do you disagree with that? And if so, on what basis?
The law recognizes degrees of murder. I recognize degrees of immorality. It is more immoral to use a UHGC for research than to just throw it away because it takes long deliberate willful action over a long period of time. It is the egregious use of a UHGC as a mere object, a thing--which it is not. It is the repository of a unique human being.
However, as with everything, society as a whole is who gets to decide where those boundaries are with regard to policy. I would submit that as of now, society agrees more with me than you.
I don't think you want to argue that it is right merely because many people agree with you. Many people agreed that witches should be burned alive, Catholics killed, Protestants killed, and Jews exterminated. These things were even lawful and required of citizens at one time in history or another. Because it is the opinion of society and law at the moment, doesn't make it right.
How about a woman that has a high chance of miscarriage (say 1 in 10), should she not be allowed to become pregnant in the first place since she is likelly to kill at least 4 living human beings before giving birth to a baby?
... unless of course you believe that the human soul is create on conception, but then you have to believe in souls, which brings us back to religion (again).
Sure. It is fair to assume that most would rather have a 1/10 shot at life than a zero percent chance.
How about women that go horseback-riding when pregnant (an activity which apparently increases the risk of a misscarriage and thus qualifies as killing a living human) - should it be forbidden? Should pregnant women be mandated by law to stay at the hospital for the whole length of the pregnancy so as to avoid that they do activities or consume products which might increase the risk of a misscarriage (and thus the death of a living human)?
We already have such laws for children after they are born. The same principles regarding abuse and neglect should apply to pregnancy.
Using the threshold of "being a living human" as the frontier between what needs to be protected or not would entitle any fertilized egg, even one which does not take hold in the wall of the uterus (and thus never turns into a pregnancy) to protection.
Yes. Implantation is irrelvant; just one arbitrary point on a path that signifies no important change in the fetus or its status.
To me, giving protection to a living cell containing 23 pairs of chromossomes which can develop into a baby (even if the chromossomes are damaged in such a way that the resulting human has no higher brain functions) but not to a primate (chimp) which has the inteligence of a 7 year-old human, is a very partial and arbitrary choice.
Actually, chimps are more like 2 or 3 year olds, not seven year olds (it depends on the test). You bring up a good point, however. If you want to be logically consistent, adults dogs are about as smart as eighteen-month-old babies. Therefore, under what I believe to be your logic, they should have the same rights. Can you imagine such a world? It makes no sense at all. Therefore, the idea that one's CURRENT abilities are the only meaningful ones seems to contradict common sense. Either we would have to give full rights of citizenship to any upper mammal born in the US, or permit infantacide.
I don't quite see the moral imperative of protecting a brainless unicelular organism that happens to have the right set of chromossomes to turn into a human
It has nothing to do with souls. As I pointed out above, CURRENT abilities cannot be the only ones that matter. In addition to the animal-or-infantacide problem, one could also argue that if only CURRENT abilities matter, you have no rights when you are sleeping, unconcious, or otherwise temporarily impaired. Again, this conclusion is silly - the fact that you WILL be a sentient concious being in the future matters, even if you are not one at the moment.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that potential matters. I believe that all unique entities with a reasonable opportunity to be sentient in the future should have basic rights and be protected from destruction. This applies not only to abortion and stem cells, but AIs, space aliens, animals, euthanasia, and any other situation where this question has or could occur.
Actually and following this logic, every day hundreds of thousands of human beings die of natural causes since (in the 100% natural process) often a fertilized egg will not take hold in the wall of the uterus. Amongst other things, the likellyhood that a fertilized egg will or not take hold in the uterus wall of a woman is very dependant on the moment of conception with relation to the period of a woman.
We are all going to die someday. That has no bearing on our rights today.
To illustrate just how illogical the rule of extending to just fertilized eggs the protections offered to human adults, consider that people which knowingly have sex at the wrong part of a woman's cycle could be accused of murder (since they concieved a human knowing that said human would die).
??? At no point does having sex create a blastocyst that is sure to die. Even in such a non-existent scenario, it could only be considered murder if the parent's DELIBERATELY caused the blastocyst not to implant (ie, various forms of abortion). It is not murder if someone dies naturally. cells, but AIs, space aliens, animals, euthanasia, and any other situation where this question has or could occur.
Although i have to admit that the potential of becoming a sencient entity should be a consideration when deciding whether or not to extend to a being the same protections that adult humans have, placing the border of being protected in that way at the point of conception is an arbitrary choice
And wherever you draw the line is even more arbitrary. The only two bright lines in the whole business are conception and birth, and waiting to grant basic rights birth is even more of a ridiculous choice than conception. Five minutes before birth, it is "choice", five minutes after, murder? Even though nothing has changed concerning the fetus except its position and its connection to the mother, neither of which is relevant to rights.
which has absolutelly no consideration to the rights of everybody else (especially the parents) nor to the amount of harm done by having the border there.
We do not deny one person rights because they may be inconvenient for someone else. Anyway, ALL of the fetus's rights beat anyone else's sub-sub-sub minor rights hand's down.
Following pure logic, the rule of "potential to become a sencient being" can just as easilly aplly to sperm or unfertilized eggs as it can to a fertilized egg
I note you dropped my qualifiers. I usually use either "significant" or "high". The chance of an individual sperm or egg becoming a human are sufficiently small as to disregard them. It is the same principle that says I cannot shoot a gun at my neighbor's house (which has a significant chance of hurting him) but I can drive to work (where there is a non-zero but vanishingly small chance I hurt him). The chances of a just-fertilized blastocyst is about 1/4. The chance of an egg is around 1/20000. No need to worry about slippery slopes - you have three orders of magnitude to work with. Also, note that there are QUALITATIVE differences as well. A blastocyst is a human. An egg is not.
If the only criteria of protection is "potential to become a sencient being", then my PC should be protected since it has the potential of becoming an AI (with the right sort of programming).
You again dropped another of my qualifiers. That is a bad habit you have. Note my word "unique". While I doubt your CPU is AI-capable, CPUs would not have rights until they were different from other CPUs. Mostly likely, this means that they would not have rights until the AI programs were first run. Identical, AI-capable computers just coming out of the factory would not have rights. After the programs were run, they would be exposed to different imputs and their minds would diverge, creating the uniqueness that is necessary for rights.
me correct my statement in my second response: Using [only]"potential for.
Take a look at this document and search for the quote by van Etten. It's not just that aSCR is *ahead* of eSCR; it's also *growing faster.*
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.