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."

Comments

Obtaining stem cells, genetic engineering, farming

[aersixb9]

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...

Education for moderators

[EQ]

My ecomment modded "flamebait" for calling the main article old news & possibly troll? My post wasnt flamebait - see wikipedia:

"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 /. 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).

As for my commentary being flambeait: Lets see - the /. 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.

Whoa, real news there! /sarcasm

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 /. for stuff that matters - nto a rehas of old arguments, but real news!

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".

Re:Let me kick this off

[CRCulver]

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.

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.