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New Hope for Stem Cell Research
ExE122 writes "A new scientific breakthrough allows scientists to harvest stem cells without harming the embryo. From the article: ''We have shown that we can not only generate stem cells without destroying the embryo, but that the remaining embryo also has the potential to go to on create a healthy blastocyst' said Dr Lanza, whose team's research is published in Nature. Asked if he expected the advance to satisfy President Bush, Dr Lanza said: 'Well, as you know, the President objects to the fact that you would be sacrificing one life to save another, and in this instance there is no harm to the embryo.''"
Lab Tech 1: "Ok, we're going in, to harvest a few stem cells."
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Oh no you aren't! You're going to kill an unborn life! That's murder!"
Lab Tech 2: "No, we've got a process now where we can safely remove a few stem cells and the embryo will be unharmed and develop normally."
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "What? Really?"
Lab Tech 1: "Yep, 100% safe from killing unborn babies."
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "I don't believe you!"
Lab Tech 2: "Watch." *poit* "There we go, got a stem cell out and the embryo is totally unharmed."
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Gosh! What do you do with the embryo's when you're done?"
Lab Tech 1: "We plant them in women who wish to have a child but can't concieve or volunteers who wish to give them a chance at life."
Lab Tech 2: "Would you like to adopt one?"
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! I insist they not be murdered, but I'm no charity, go find someone else to raise it!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Pro-life people are generally against cloning. I don't understand the objection if no embryo is destroyed, but it does bring up some difficult issues regarding souls.
This is similar enough to cloning to trigger the same hostility. I don't really see the difference it will make.
Not to mention the problem of what to do with the excess embryos after the desired number of offspring has been reached. I don't understand how pro-life POV can accept fertility treatments that generate extra embryos.
Man, you really need that seminar!
hrm... as a right-to-life-zealot. I sure appreciate the scientists' even keeled response to the President. I doubly appreciate that we have figured out a way to do this w/o harming the embryo. It is always amazing that given the incentive, science always finds a way to work through the requirements if the application is worth working on.
as an aside: I've adopted two children so some of us practice our beliefs.
I'll have you know that I plan on, and know many "right wing right-to-life zealot's" that plan on, or already have, adopted. We are well aware that if we say adoption is the best option we have to step up and make it possible. You insensitive clod.
Hopefully, this will take the controversy out of this issue.
where's the Left Wing Say-anything-to-get-me-elected-zealot?
now all those banks that have unused, stored embryos can keep them alive until they throw them in the garbage instead of killing them!
/obvious
'Well, as you know, the President objects to the fact that you would be sacrificing one life to save another, and in this instance there is no harm to the embryo.'
I can just see it now. Bush will claim something like, "By sticking to our upstanding morals, we have driven science further than any other generation ever."
Bush is like a broken path in the Internet. Science will route around him.
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! I insist they not be murdered, but I'm no charity, go find someone else to raise it!"
Some people really do think that a microscopic clump of cells is a baby. Perhaps there exists an untapped market in teeny tiny baby supplies for these really small children. A playpen made out of a ring of hydrogen atoms and an amoeba for a pet.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
"Lab Tech 2: "Would you like to adopt one? Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! I insist they not be murdered, but I'm no charity, go find someone else to raise it!"
Makes sense.... as much as the idea that anyone opposed to the death penalty being should be required to take death row inmates into their homes.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I've read about other methods, such as harvesting a person's own stem cells from his or her bone marrow. Some medication is able to encourage the marrow to produce and release stem cells that can be collected from blood samples or something like that. (it's been long enough to forget some details) Why dont' we get a few of them that way for research?
And I still think it's an awful waste to toss everything into a biohazard disposal or incinerator or something when someone has an abortion. I'd rather see some benefit come from that kind of thing, rather than take that life and simply throw it in the trash. How is that better than learnign new ways to save lives?
I wish folks would stop using that word and find another one. "Harvest" gets a lot of folks riled up and gives them the impression that people are going to be farmed (or whatever) for their parts.
Yeah, yeah, I know that's not the case, but in this day and age of bumper sticker sound bites, that's all people hear and they don't want to investigate further. They'll just jump to the first two-bit opinion that fits or the opinion that was given to them by a pundit and to hell with the facts.
The President objects to things he doesn't understand.
That's not true. The President does not object to a great many things that he doesn't understand.
Perhaps you meant that he objects to things that he is aware he doesn't understand.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
This is great news!
Now we can do our research and all the "pre-babies" that would have been destroyed in the process of creating stem cells can instead be thrown in the trash, just as God intended.
IVF is already legal in the United States. If this process does no harm to the embryo, what complaint could the right to life movement possibly have? It's not like the embryos are being cloned. Even this administration would have an impossible time passing a law based on the idea that a "soul" might be damaged.
> The President objects to things he doesn't understand.
Clearly untrue! The President has always been an avid supporter of the war in Iraq.
Forget where I read this but it illustrates the hypocrisy of the right-to-life kooks.
Your friend is working in an in vitro lab. The place catches fire, do you save your friend or the freezer full of frozen embryos? Most pick the friend.
Trolling is a art,
"A playpen made out of a ring of hydrogen atoms and an amoeba for a pet."
You do have a "No Smoking" sign in the vicinity of that playpen, I hope?
Where were you when the voynix came?
ME: Shit, Karl, what do we do now? Abortion is a dead horse, and now we've lost yet another wedge issue to drive 'moral' Christians into the Party who would otherwise realize that we're bending them over at every possible moment.
KARL: Look, over there! A terrorist plot! Here's a chip for your More Secure[1] passport!
And here's some FAA guidelines to prevent people from bringing liquids onto planes, which will prevent[2] terrorists from hijacking or destroying a plane in flight!
And here's some legislation that will stop[3] terrorists from eating our babies by allowing us to monitor their email and telephone calls without a warrant!
And here's some statements by the Prez that say he can legally[4] ignore any law he wants in the name of NatSec.
[1] Not really.
[2] Not really.
[3] Not really.
[4] Not really.
Ok, I'm done ranting for the day. But seriously, the Fundies are going to have to find a different wedge issue now, especially as we gear up for the Nov elections.
On the down side, what I see coming from this promising research is a "See, if we forbid it, they'll find another, permissible, way to do it" reaction which may or may not be true with the next contentious research issue we face.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So, at what point does it become a baby? When it is born? When shows similarity to a human in the womb?
So you extract stem cells from an embryo, and allow the embryo to come to term, so now you have a baby and a stem cell line. The baby grows up. What rights does this person have over the stem cell line? Can they demand (e.g.) that the cells be used only thereputically, not for research? Can they charge a licensing fee to use them?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
"now all those banks that have unused, stored embryos can keep them alive until they throw them in the garbage instead of killing them!"
You think the banks throw the embryo's AWAY? I bet you also think that those ATM machines are controlled by microprocessors and electronics. If it makes you feel better to believe these things, go right ahead.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I often run across the assertion that many viable embryos, suitable for harvesting stem cells, would actually have been "medical waste" otherwise. Can somebody confirm or deny this? and back it up with references?
If true, it kinda makes the extreme right a bit hypocritical, doesn't it? Kinda like saying you refuse to sacrifice one life for the sake of another while maintaining a war in the mid-east....but I digress.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
When it can survive on it's out outside the womb.
If it can't, it's eligible for le Scrape.
Trolling is a art,
Feminists for Life of America would completely shatter the grandparent poster's parody script (which was quite funny IMO). There are a lot of pro-lifers out there who don't bomb clinics, adopt kids, and who believe strongly in societal safety nets for the working and poor class.
Pro-life liberals outnumber pro-life conservatives but they get almost no press.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Nope, only Promicin (http://www.the4400.com/) will do that.
"The baby grows up. What rights does this person have over the stem cell line? Can they demand (e.g.) that the cells be used only thereputically, not for research? Can they charge a licensing fee to use them?"
Looks like Darl McBride's a daddy again!
Where were you when the voynix came?
Apparently, but your only weakness will be equestrian events. Oh, and I'll take a window seat, thanks.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
When its neural structure begins to self-organize and exhibit patterned firings.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
That makes no sense at all.
People who are "pro-life" are also "anti-choice" it's true, but the opposite end of the spectrum isn't actually true; the "pro-choice" people aren't "anti-life" at all.
Abortion isn't something women do for recreation, it's a very major life choice. One side beleives a woman doesn't have a right to make a choice, and that having an abortion is evil, while the other side beleives that no matter how evil abortion is or isn't, that taking away a womans right to make that choice is the greastest evil of them all.
Also, while the objection of President Bush and other moderates is killing the embryo, the Catholic Church and real "right wing zealot" Protestants have another deeper objection: the separation of sex and procreation. The idea is that it is fundamentally disordered to separate the two, as we have done since the 1930s. There is an analogous separation of eating and nutrition - also enabled by modern technology. While the Catholic Church has not said anything (that I know of) about the food angle, it is less emotionally charged and may help understand the reasoning concerning sex and procreation (described in full jargon laden glory in The Theology of the Body and various attempts to explain it to laymen).
Technology enables us to separate eating and nutrition. You can eat without nourishment thanks to Olestra, Aspartame, Sucralose, and friends. You can nourish without eating thanks to IVs, vitamin pills (get your necessary nutrients while eating junk food), feeding tubes, and friends. You can justify the nourishment without eating in various special circumstances - but the attempt to repeat the pleasure of eating beyond the requirements of nourishment is gluttonly and has generally bad results.
Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.
most of those folks don't protest against wars and have no problem sending our young folks off to a dubious war.
Where's their outrage over those lives?
They have a voice? They can choose to be part of the military or not. Last I checked, there was no draft.
Neither side does any of that. One side believes we have a right to choose wether or not you should be forced to bring a child into the world when you can't take care of them. The other believes that its not an ethical choice and you are supposed to spend your life doing the best you can to take care of your child. These aren't a bunch of evil people arguing over which one can outdo the other... they are expressing the views that they believe are the right thing to do. Both sides have legitimate arguments, and to dismiss them all as hypocrites is to be just as bad as any extremist.
That's what makes this stem cell find so amazing... it offers a solution that can satisfy both sides. How often can a news headline say something like that?
--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He replies that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
and improving National Security
I hope I caught sarcism as your post reads very well. While there are extremists on both sides, being pro-choice is not pro-get-laid-and-go-kill-all-the-unborned as the extremists of the pro-life side would like people to believe. It means letting the women have the right to choose and one of those choices is to have the baby(ies). Regardless "Hypocrites, all of them." applies across the board.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Your friend is working in a daycare. The place catches fire. Do you save your friend or the cage full of screaming toddlers? Most pick the friend.
Hint: cages weigh as much as freezers, and most people can't lift them. It's not hypocrisy, it's just efficient use of resources. You don't throw away your life AND your friend's life on a mission with a 99.9% chance of failure when you can save yourself and your friend with an equal chance of success. And I doubt most people would disagree that toddlers are people too. Of course, this ignores the fact that there may be enough time to save some or all of the toddlers/embryos before the fire reaches a critical point, or that it's possible that the freezers won't be harmed by the fire and there's no sense worrying about it anyway.
In short, your illustration is very flawed.
Neither do you. Although I am not religious myself, I can understand well enough not using goverment funds on something controversial. Fortunatly we all agree that making weapons to kill hundreds of thousands is agreeable.
Got it?
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Now a team at Advanced Cell Technology - a private company - has found that it is possible to create human stem cells using one or two cells from an early embryo, without doing any damage to the embryo.
If you split cells off of an early embryo, aren't they also viable embryos in their own right? Isn't this what creates identical twins?
I expect the Bush administration to object to this technique on the basis that each separate cell bundle from the embryo is an "individual".
Have you read my blog lately?
So you guys are stepping up and adopting all the unwanted babies? And you're working to reduce the social/societal consequences on young unwed mothers who carry children to term?
I'm pro-choice, but I do think there is a negative moral angle on abortion. I don't think any truly advanced society should have a place for abortion; education, contraception, and societal support for young mothers should completely remove the need for any such thing.
But you know what? The same right wing that preaches so hard against abortion, also preaches against practical sex ed, available contraception for minors, and social services for unwed mothers...not to mention the moral stigma they attach to young unwed mothers.
So don't talk about how you're adopting some of the babies who actually got born...That's the smallest part of what you need to be doing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
> The President objects to things he doesn't understand.
Clearly untrue! The President has always been an avid supporter of the war in Iraq
I love it how lazy couch potato video game addicted Americans claim they understand stuff like the War on Terror better than the President and other government officials who are right in the thick of things. I mean clearly these lazy Americans are not at all biased by the slanted media. They also have absolutely no tendancy to become impatient and start to just look at where they can point their fingers. Oh no, I can't afford to go to the movies! I must blame the President, the War, Gas Prices, and every other item out of my control. It by no means has anything to do with the fact that I throw all my money away on dvd's, alcohol, video games, and whatever else. It also has nothing to do with the fact that I can't hold a job because I get bored easily and claim to have several disorders that make it hard for me to concentrate. Everybody is just looking for handouts and a place to point their finger if they don't get them.
There are other methods of Stem Cell research that are not destructive or do not involve embryos which the president does not support. He does not support any form of Stem Cell research regaurdless of the method, even though some of his right-wing constituants are warming up to the idea. Unfortunatly, I don't think this will do anything to change his mind.
Also, what is so wrong with doing Stem Cell research on discarded embryos anyways? The research would be putting them to good use instead of letting them go to waste.
It really is an "out there" example.
Say the lab has my wife's frozen embryos stored there. Say maybe we have no chance of conceiving again. Sorry, "friend." :)
Or again, say a night club is burning down (Great White venue*). I might save my friend even over several strangers. Maybe. It just all depends on finer circumstances.
* What? Too soon?
Dark Reflection
The embryos are in a cooler, you can fit hundreds in one.
Day care? I'd save my friend and let the kids burn to a crisp, I never argued otherwise. What's your point?
Trolling is a art,
Look, I'm not going to go around and pretend like our current US President is doing a great job. But it's tiring to see a supposedly intelligent, educated base like Slashdot fall for the Democrat propaganda machine.
Under Clinton, you couldn't do any research on ESC using federal funds-- at all. This is a bill that Clinton signed into law in 1995. In fact, Bush's rules are less stringent than Clinton's, and yet all we do is demonize Bush for his stance on stem cells. Why is that?
There are a lot of us crazy Christian conservatives who are against:
1) abortion
2) IVF
3) death penalty
4) war
5) George W. Bush
6) the Republican Party, which has gone off the deep end
There just don't seem to be enough of us to rival the rest of the voting population.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Seriously, as it stands today these leftover embryos are being discarded and destroyed, and the President's policy says, hey, I'm not going to get in the way of that, but for the love of God, don't try to get any medical benefit from them first! Because it's wrong to destroy an embryo for medical research, but just fine to destroy one for no benefit whatsoever.
So now we've been reduced to investing our research dollars in finding a way to make sure that they aren't harmed until after we take the cells, just to appease people who can't grasp basic logic?
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
But these embryos were alive and their lives were taken because of inefficient IVF procedures. That is, they were murdered for the sake of efficiency of resource usage and science. So how can IVF be changed to be acceptable? One method is to fertalize one embryo and implant one embryo at a time. Another method would be to adopt out any remaining embryos that were not used in the implantation part of the IVF procedure. That would mean each life would get a chance to live
So does the this new breakthrough solve anything?
Well that all depends on the facts. If this is true then it is a great breakthrough. There are some more ethical questions but generally I would feel comfortable if the government sponsored this kind of research. This last quote makes it seem like it is possible that the procedure could cause harm to the embryo. If that is the case then this is going to face a lot more scrutiny in the court of public opinion.
Harming the Embryo is half the fun of Stem Cell Research!
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
I call bullshit. You clearly have never had a kid, because the absolute first instinct is to go for the kids. Rationality never even enters into the picture.
And frankly, it's much easier to carry two kids than one adult.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, it's more like pulling the tail off a lizard. The embryo will correct itself by growing back the missing cells.
_signature creation failed.
I expect the Bush administration to object to this technique on the basis that each separate cell bundle from the embryo is an "individual".
In the interest of science: Ssshhhhhh!
Exactely, the first thought would be from my first brain which be along the lines of "Man, this is kinda of illegal and stuff"
The second thought would come from my other brain saying "OVERRULED!"
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Then we're killing thousands of ourselves everyday. Won't someone think of the skin cells?!?
The very idea that a purely scientific world, unchecked by philosophical thought,(let alone religious), could exist raises a huge red flag to me. The way I see it, religion and science play to a sort of balance of powers situation, and that's the way it's always been.
Religion and science CAN co-exist. Some religions moreso than others, that's clearly obvious, and the level of peaceful co-existance will vary from scientific field to scientific field. And, I would argue, that there is a great benefit that comes from those who question science from outside the scientific perspective. Not always, and great advances may be held back by ignorance, but I would say that sometimes, it is a good thing.
Take this breakthrough, for example. Religious truth aside, we managed to preserve the embryo without permanently damaging it or destroying it. Now, this probably won't matter when it comes to the ones that are frozen and slated for destruction anyhow, as people have noted -- they'll still be gone at the end of the day. But what, I might ask, if even one embryo (in the future) is implanted and grows into something? We came up with something better. A less invasive method that wouldn't have happened had there not been some questioning of the original method.
I realize, of course, that my point there may be a minor one, and a grasp at a straw. That's fine. But consider the danger of many like-minded individuals. While they have a great deal of potential, and may do something very well, they don't tend to see the other side of the coin. It is a "group think" problem. Were it that I had time, I would come up with more examples, but I think the point can lead you, the reader, to your own challenging quesitons.
Religion and science provide much needed diversity to our way of thought. They cannot do so, however, if they don't interact and don't have the ability to interact and encourage (or discourage) each other.
I might save my friend even over several strangers. Maybe. It just all depends on finer circumstances.
And what those strangers look like...chicks dig guys who jump through flaming debris to save them.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Because it's fashionable and popular?
It is always amazing that given the incentive, science always finds a way to work through the requirements if the application is worth working on.
It is also amazing that we make them work through the requirements at all. It would also be amazing what they could have done if their work had not been bureaucraticly retarded for how many years now? At least they did manage to do it. Give thanks.
Bless Dr Lanza
Lab Tech 1: Put it right back in the freezer with the hundreds of other fertilized embryos that we got from the fertility clinic down the street. I'm sure you know that, by and large, once their customers successfully have a kid, they either keep them on ice indefinitely or simply throw them out away after a few years?
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: What? No! That's murd... [remembers own kid conceived in a petri dish]. Oh never mind.
Nice rhetoric, but the truth is, most of the people that are anti-abortion do support groups (with their $$$ and time) that aide young unwed mothers, providing health care and adoption services if needed. They get almost no press for it because, surprise surprise, the good that people do almost never gets covered-- the press prefers mean and nasty to helpful and compasionet.
I'm agnostic and pro-choice, but I have friends that are christian and pro-life, and they, more than anyone else I've seen in the issue, put their money where there mouth is and actually try to help people. And adopting unwanted children that would otherwise grow up in foster care, is far from a small thing. And tell me, have you done anything as selfless as that?
The soul, as a philosophical concept, was not primarily developed as a pacifier of the fear of mortality, I believe. It was developed to address the issue of good, evil, and karma. People got caught up in their mental models and started believing that their mental model of themselves was who they really were. That self-model is cut off from the universe, seperate, so people began to see themselves as seperate.
If everything is one, and nothing is seperate, there is no need to place blame, no need for judgement, no need for the concept of good and evil. If the self is seperate, it raises the paradox of good and evil. In a just universe, why do good deeds go unrewarded and bad deeds unpunished? We have one of three choices: we accept that seperation is an illusion, we accept that the universe is unjust, or we create a kind of clearinghouse of judgement: the soul. As the first option is unacceptable to a person caught in their mental model (it feels like death!), and the second is unacceptable because our genetics cause most of us to desire and expect a just world (it's part of what makes us great cooperators) we are left with the third option.
The soul accumulates judgement so that things may be evened out. If not in this lifetime, then in the next, either through the mechanism of impartial karma or through a divine Judge. Justice prevails. This, to me, is the primary purpose of the concept of the soul.
As for me, I prefer to stare into the void with my eyes wide open.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Unless you were being sarcastic, there are other valid reasons for abortion, like medical -- for either the mother or child to be or, arguably, cases of rape, incest, etc...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Which is all not to mention victims of rape and incest. Do they get the abortions or not?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The kids are in a cage. You either carry them all + a huge chunk of steel, or you leave with none. It's something to contain them like the freezer does for the embryos. Note that embryos can't run, whereas kids could... if they weren't in a cage.
Should we be outraged about that, too?
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
The point is that the kids in that daycare are very much alive at the time you allow their death, and yet the decision you claim you would make hasn't changed. It invalidates your argument that your friend is worth more because embryos are "not real people". You'd make the same decision even if the alternative is a group of real people.
I'll have you know that I plan on, and know many "right wing right-to-life zealot's" that plan on, or already have, adopted.
Are you adopting a real macroscopic kid who needs parents, or a clump of frozen cells?
Anonymous Coward wrote: I flush viable human genetic material away all the time.
There is such a thing as TOO MUCH INFORMATION.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
American Right to Life, you're correct. Roman Catholic Seamless Garment of Life, well, that's a different animal.
Ok, so this actually does address the Pope's main concern, and reduces stem cell donation to no different than kidney donation. Thus, as a Roman Catholic, I'm ethically satisfied. But the science half is still dissatisfied: What, exactly, does this get us? As we've been arguing all along, unless by some chance you have an exact DNA, RNA, and Mitochondrial match with a living human being who has a disease, the embryonic stem cell is likely to turn into tissue rejection upon growing & implantation. Where Adult Stem Cells don't have that problem. And now that we've even got brain neuron regeneration from adult brain stem cells in the pipeline, exactly what is this discovery good for again?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
hear hear.
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
Can we start harvesting skin grafts from coma patients now too?
This might (or might not, depending on risk) eliminate the "murder" question, but it certainly isn't a morally unambiguous practice.
-Peter
PS: I'm an athiest.
this gives me an idea...Someone should start a news show that is ONLY allowed to report on GOOD things that have happened. Peace accords, people helping each other, non-controversial life-saving medical breakthroughs. Happy nice things. I wonder if anyone would watch the show. Is is the news that is pushing bad events, or does the news show bad things because that's the only time all of us hypocrits watch the news?
"The GPL is viral by design, like any good religion."
I was very much against embryonic stem cell research for ethical reasons. I still have real concerns over then entire set of processes around artifical conception and such but this is great news. These cells do have the potential to be of great help to some people. I think its wonderful that we might now know how to get them without having to do serious harm to someone else.
That said this is a clear case where more caution should have been observed. In the scheme of things this discovery did not take long to come about at all. Had we waited to better understand we might have avoided doing a great deal of harm and at the same time only lost a decade or so advanceing other areas of the science.
Lots of folks like me get dismissed here on Slashdot as fundies or luddites which is very unfair. I and those like me are as excited and interested in new advances as anyone here we just want to take time to look around were we are before plodding blindly forward in a mad rush to some unkown ends.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What part of "pro-choice" was unclear to you? I'm not in the business of telling anyone what to do with their body. I think abortions have a negative moral component, but I think a lot of things have a negative moral component, and I'm generally not in favor of frivolous laws governing behavior that is not detrimental to society.
And, for the record, screaming "Rape and Incest" in a discussion about abortion, is like screaming "Nazis" whenever you're talking about war. You're not adding anything to the discussion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
the grandparent poster's parody script (which was quite funny IMO)
Actually it was meant to explore the issue and it has fostered a debate of sorts. The problem, from where I live, is a community crammed with children where social programs have been slashed, education is underfunded and the cost of living is very high. People who do insist upon populating the earth and saving every embryo need to do more than just adopt, they need to do ensure society has a place for them and has the necessary services in place, otherwise they will be debating where the build the next prison to house them as adults.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't really want to step into this debate, but just as an aside: It's not inconsistent to disapprove of abortion and to disapprove of out-of-wedlock childbirth. Reducing the consequences of the latter would not be a priority for people who held both beliefs, since such a reduction would reduce the disincentives to out-of-wedlock childbirth.
I will grant you that there is some tension between the two beliefs, since an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant must do something that the hypothetical right-winger disapproves of. In this case I believe any true right-to-lifer would opt for the birth.
(Note that the statements above do not necessarily represent my own beliefs; I'm just stating the beliefs of the right-to-lifers as I understand them.)
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
So you guys are stepping up and adopting all the unwanted babies? And you're working to reduce the social/societal consequences on young unwed mothers who carry children to term?
There are lots of us who are. However, I'd point out:
I'm pro-choice, but I do think there is a negative moral angle on abortion. I don't think any truly advanced society should have a place for abortion; education, contraception, and societal support for young mothers should completely remove the need for any such thing.
There are two situations where abortion would still be neccessary, in any caring society: Physical health of the mother (abortion, for instance, remains the *only* treatment available for ectopic pregnancy), and mental health of the mother (where, due to incest, rape, or mental retardation the mother is simply unable to do what it takes to carry a child to term). Maybe someday prenatal adoption will replaces even these two situations- but not yet, we're simply not that advanced medically.
But you know what? The same right wing that preaches so hard against abortion, also preaches against practical sex ed, available contraception for minors, and social services for unwed mothers...not to mention the moral stigma they attach to young unwed mothers.
Why would you need contraception if you had good sex ed and UDHR Article 26 rights for women and children? That's the sticking point for me. After all, the best birth control I know of is Abstinence- this from the father of a three year old that we made the mistake of not introducing to the crib before 3 months. We want another one of our own- but may end up adopting merely because sex becomes impossible if the little monkey wakes up and decides riding on your back is a fun idea.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Its a self-imposed "requirement" that they met simply to recieve federal funding.
Evil, malevolant Bush never decreed from his mountain that harvesting stem cells from embryos were banned, or sent you to prison, or damned your soul to eternal torment. There is simply no federal funding on the stem cell research when harvested from an embryo.
Scientists actually made new discoveries and made their methods more efficient because of the legislation! Imagine if there were restrictions placed on oil research back when it was first discovered as a fuel source. Either people would have researched other solutions or private investors would have furthered the original research.
Science doesnt come to a complete halt when the US government decides not to pay for it.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
It is also amazing that we make them work through the requirements at all. It would also be amazing what they could have done if their work had not been bureaucraticly retarded for how many years now? At least they did manage to do it. Give thanks.
This was NOT a matter of bureaucrats thwarting research with red-tape and bullshit forms to fill out. This WAS a case of a significant number of people voicing moral objections to what many of them considered wholesale murder.
Whether or not one agrees with those objections (I, personally do not, but I can understand them), surely examining the morality and ethics of aresearch technique before proceeding blithely ahead is a good thing?
While I certainly don't think stem cell researchers are murderers or monsters, there ARE a significant number of people who do believe that certain kinds of stem-cell research are as bad, or worse, than what Josef Mengele did back in WW2.
In this case, the objections aren't to the research itself, it was to a way that the research was being performed, and a workable solution that addresses the needs and desires of all sides was found. If people opposed to this research previously on the ground that it "kills babies" *STILL* bitch and moan, NOW we can dismiss them as zealots and idiots who're retarding progress for nothing more than some stupid and inconsistent belief system.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Nice rhetoric, but church-funded social services are not the answer, they are part of the problem.
This is an area where secular services are needed...We know the churches views on contraception ("Abstinence is good enough for anyone"), sex education ("Don't have sex until you're married, and don't enjoy it or you'll go to hell"), and on adoption ("Even though you're a slut and a whore for having this baby, we'll be willing to take it away from you and raise it to be the sort of kid that you're not").
Frankly, what this issue needs more than anything else is for the goddamn moralists to take a step back. This is a practical problem: women are getting pregant who don't want to be pregnant. There are practical solutions: help women not to get pregnant unless they want to be pregnant. This means education, and healthcare, and a whole bunch of things that the chruch cannot and will not provide.
If we provide these things, the numbers of abortions will decline, and isn't that the fricking point?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Frankly I just thought it was rather convenient ignoring the strongest claims on abortion when discussing how a civilized society could do without them. If you want to try to make a case that they're immoral in general, don't go after the weakest cases.
Here's a hierarchy of abortions (I think most people will agree with this, at least roughly):
Most moral:
Incest
Rape of a minor
Rape
Life of the mother
Long term Health of the mother
Short term Health of the mother
Life threatening birth defects
Misery causing birth defects
------ Your proposal stops here, at best
Early Reproductive Control
Late Reproductive Control
Enjoys killing fetuses
As you can see, you really haven't covered much ground, morally.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
A truly advanced society would have eliminated rape and achieved a high enough standard of medicine to eliminate the need for medical abortions.
Societal support might go a ways toward eliminating rape, and contraceptives could be supplied to prevent pregnancies in such emergencies. Incest...well, that's a matter of choice.
25% plurality, if you could get all Catholics to vote the same way- which is why the Constitution Party was created.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sarcastic tone. Inflamatory, baseless personal attacks.
You, sir, are trolling. I'm not 100% sure you know you're trolling, but you are.
A few things: ..... many others.
1) How many cells can you harvest before harming the embryo?
a. What's the margin of error?
b. Risk of overharvesting.
c. Likelyhood that all harvestors will use the most conservative approach.
The possibilty of risking even one embryo is cause to abort the whole thing.
2) Getting tools close enough to an embyro to harvest stem cells sounds inherently dangerous.
3) No amount of safety will satisfy some as they're just against the whole concept.
4)
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
The bolding was done by me.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
It doesn't invalidate my claim at all. I was referring to the RightToLife kooks who say all embryos are people. They're the ones who'd leave the cooler of hundreds of "kids" to "die"
Trolling is a art,
What part of "practical" do you not understand? You'll never be able to keep everyone who doesn't want a child right away from having sex. The closest you can get involves a lot of repression, social stigmas and a host of other side-effects. That's where the whole practical thing comes into play. It is IMpractical to try to force behavior onto people when it goes against one of their most fundamental drives. Witness Catholic schoolgirls and the failure of abstinence-only sex ed.
Amen! It's impossible to have a resonable discussion here that doesn't devolve into "lowest common denominator" type of Bush bashing and hatred. It's like every waking second of the day for these people is filled with irrational rage and hatred about Bush, deserved or not.
The person these people hate the most seems to be the single greatest force that defines their very existence. Ironic, don't you think?
There are other means that are much more effective. Supposedly fifty percent of teenagers who take an abstinence vow have sex within the subsequent year.
The choice isn't between pregnancy and abstinence. It's between pregnancy, spending a bit of money on contraceptives, and abstinence. But if people don't know where to get contraceptives, they will not have the third option.
So now it's the teenage "live-forever-no-consequences" instinct against the prohibitions instilled by their parents, who quite obviously had sex. How do you expect it to turn out? And do you want one mistake to dominate a person's whole life? Or even simply derail it for a year? Because you don't want people to wear a piece of rubber?
Right. Cause screaming "ABSTAIN! ABSTAIN!" has worked OH so well so far.
How about a realistic approach? How about telling kids "Abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and STDs, and it'd be great if you practiced it. However, that's probably unrealistic, and so here are some ways to protect yourself if you do choose to have sex."
Because, you know, many of them WILL choose to. And which would you rather have? Pregnant teenagers with untreated STDs because they don't know fuck-all about protection and are too ashamed to go and get treatment when they get sick, or teenagers who're at least armed with the information to make an informed choice, and who might avoid some heartace (or worse)?
Abstinence is great, but teaching abstinence only does NOT work.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
What is the negative moral angle? A truly advanced society shouldn't be basing its moral imperatives on rhetoric which doesn't distinguish between various stages of life, such as gamete/embryo/fetus/child (much less the various stages of embryonic development). This "negative angle" which you conceive of is merely the result of a group of ignorant fanatics attempting to put undue guilt on women who are faced with the already difficult choice of whether or not to fully carry a pregancy to term.
The fact that pro-lifers often equivocate abortion to murdering children, and paint pro-choicers to be pro-abortion, or advocating abortion, should show that their argument is fundamentally flawed. If you concede that aborting a pregancy is morally wrong, then what of morning-after pills as a contraceptive option which prevents a pregnancy even after the egg has been fertilized? And what about masturbation? When you carry the logic further based on their false premises, you can come to all sorts of absurd conclusions. Accidents will always happen no matter how advanced a society is. And the fact is, having a child should be a planned out decision, and a woman should have the right to abort an unplanned pregnancy if she has no desire to bear a child.
What is immoral is persecuting women who make a choice about what to do with their bodies realizing that bearing a child is a life-changing event that can't be undone. This persecution can be as extreme as blowing up abortion clinics, or it could be in the form of taking away access to contraceptive drugs, or it could even be passive persecution in the form of placing guilt on young women who have abortions or have ever considered having an abortion. This guilt leads a lot of women to make choices that are not in their best interest and create more social problems that arise from these poorly made decisions. Thus, calling abortion immoral has the same consequences as relating it to murder.
When it gets its first doctorate.
Yeah, he's trolling for sure, but it does get old for nearly every article on slashdot to get hijacked by the Bush Hatred crowd. Even the most unrelated articles are rife with anger, irrational Bush hatred and people whoring for karma.
Care to explain how, exactly, that church funded social services are "part of the problem"?
Sure you get plenty of moralizing on both sides of the issue, but the stereotypes you've resorted to are pretty damned far from the truth of the situation. Demonizing people on one or the other side of a particular issue isn't particularly helpful. I'm not against any of the remedies you've suggested, but church funded groups can and do provide decent solutions for people that want them. Private charities are not the be-all end-all, and I'm certainly not suggesting that, but they do tend to spend their money a bit better than the government has EVER managed to do.
Lanza just pulled off quite a clever little begging of the question. And for a good cause, too. :)
To wit: We are nowhere near the point where the stem cells from one embryo can save one life. We are still in the research stage. But, if we can publicly circulate the idea that one embryo can be traded for one adult life, then the misguided resistance to stem-cell research will wither.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Rabid right-to-life advocates claim that all lives are equally valuable. In the theoretical universe of their minds, perhaps. In reality, they're not. People make judgements about differing value of life every day, and those judgements make sense to those of us who choose to use our rational minds to understand the world around us.
Regards,
Ross
Ok.... here's practical sex ed.: Don't want a child? Don't have sex.
Here is why that isn't practical. First, this occurs with people who have not yet fully developed and are often incapable of making responsible, rational decisions. Second, this is fighting against the single, strongest instinctual drive hard-wired into our brains. Anyone who thinks copulation is a way for us to reproduce if fooling themselves. Copulation is how DNA retransmits itself and everything we think of as "us" including our consciousness, feelings, instincts, and body parts are just adaptations that have evolved to make that more likely. Anything you do to lessen that is simply the process weeding you out of the gene pool because you're defective.
irrational Bush hatred
It may be emotional bordering on hysterical, and it is often inappropriate, but it's entirely rational.
Clinton tried for years to open up stem-cell research using embryos from pregnancy clinics, but the Republican dominiated congress ammended or voted down any law he put forth. People are right to place the blame on the republicans (and religious right) for the lack of funding for stem-cell research. Putting it all on the current "head" of the party isn't exactly correct, but not completely off base.
PS - sorry for using wikipedia as a reference, I'm at work and don't have time to look up a better one.
Cells from the Blastocyst are totipotent, they can become any other cell. "Stem" cells from an adult are multipotent, the types of cells they can become are more limited.
There is also the issue of that ol'Hayflick limit, cells from an adult are 'older', they have a more limited number of times they can duplicate themselves before errors start showing up. Each time an adult cell divides, it's telomoric DNA gets shorter, and short telomeres lead to increases in copying errors (aka somatic mutations). Cells from the blastocyst ("embryonic cells") still make telomerase, which repairs the telomeres. Adult cells don't (unless they are cancerous, but we don't want them8-0).
This is one big problem with adult stem cells as cures for older folks, older folks have cells that have been duplicated many more times than younger adults, their 'stem cells'; if you grow their cells outside of their body to make new organ tissue, the resulting organ tissue is even 'older' (has been duplicated more times) than the patient's original organ tissue. Thus a new heart grown from an adult's stem cells will likely have a shorter lifespan than the person from whom the stem cells came.
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Without committing myself to a particular level of pro-[choice|life]-ness, I would disagree with the upper ("more moral") end of your chart for a few reasons:
(1) Hair-splitting: Incest shouldn't be a separate category here. Either it's Rape of a Minor, assuming one of the parties -can't- consent, or it's Rape if one of the parties -doesn't- consent, or it's just icky consensual brother-sister stuff. I never understood why it's always trotted out like it's a whole new category.
(2) Life of the mother, in my opinion, is a much more compelling reason for termination than anything to do with rape (assuming the two don't overlap).
Not necessarily. These examinations cost much time and other resources.
Suppose that you are currently in pain or dying. Some random breakthrough will save you. But then a bunch of religionists insist on a delay while they satiate their fear of complexity.
You wait, in pain, while these fear-driven blowhards march in their demonstrations and gleefully soak up each others' sermons.
You die, in pain, because the cure did not come in time.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
So the president is dead and so are all his conservative friends and followers...wait no there he is on tv trying to ban evolution in schools. And i thought this was new hope
The transition from a fetus to a human being is a gradual process not an instanteous divine act. But if you had some background on biology and neuroscience you could choose much more rationally at which point should a line be drawn.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Word.
We computer geeks already possess the solution:
Fertility should be off by default.
Put something in the water supply to turn it off, and then hand out free pills for anyone wishing to turn it back on.
Better: the pills can be engineered to require 30 days' continuous dosing in order to enable fertility. That way there will be no accidents.
Even better: both male and female will need to take the pills.
Best yet: the pills can be engineered to cause the user's armpits to turn polka-dotted. That way there can be no failures-to-disclose.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Pro-choice is not the same as pro-abortion. Being pro-choice means you support the right to making either choice and doesn't say whether you advocate one choice over the other. My girlfriend and I are both pro-choice. However, she had an unplanned pregnancy when she was 17 and chose not to have an abortion at that time, and we're both extremely happy with the decision that she made.
Frankly, people who can't make the distinction between a gamete/embryo/fetus/child should really have no say in the argument until they get some basic background in biology.
Wrong. A human embryo starts out as one cell. One cell is all you need to hatch an earthling.
How do you think identical twins are formed? 2 eggs and chance?
Man, you really need that seminar!
What does the number of categories have to do with anything at all? I can change your categories to make it look more appealing the other way in this manner:
First-month Reproductive ControlSecond-month Reproductive Control
Third-month Reproductive Control
. . . Ninth-month Reproductive Control
Now OP has covered "more ground" according to your scale. Ridiculous, isn't it?
What makes more sense is to look at what's more common and frankly, I don't think a really high percentage of the abortions in the U.S. are due to health or rape. Some of them are, yes. But if you look at some statistics, you'll see that out of the 1.31 million abortions in the U.S. in 2000, only 8.2% were for reasons in the "moral" categories, leaving 91.8% in the "not much ground covered" category.
The situation surely differs in other countries, of course, but I suspect it is similar in post-industrial Western countries, at least.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Well, it wouldn't make much sense complaining about that now, now would it? Or at least not unless you were bitter or something...
Newsflash: people care more about what's going on now then political conditions over a decade ago.
If it was wrong then for Clinton to oppose ESC research, then it's still wrong for Bush to do it now. The Bush administration is the current impediment to scientific progress in this area, which is why there's so much criticism against him for it and not Clinton.
You have to have available birth control because a percentage of young people will gleefully start having sex as soon as their hormones kick into gear...No amount of education will stop this. This will also help adults make intelligent decisions about reproduction.
And when I say education, I mean education. I don't mean "teach abstinence". I mean "this is sex, this is what goes on, this is what you can catch, and this is how you can do it safely." I'm talking a significant course here, not just a day out of gym class.
The only way to help people make the right descision, is to make sure they have access to all the information. They may go through the whole class and not learn a damn thing, but they have a much better chance than if you'd tried to keep them in ignorance all along.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So do you honestly believe there's a little man running around inside your head pulling levers? What part of your head isn't defined by neurons? When exactly in the fertilization process does the "soul injection" happen? If you broke down the fertilization process into its purest chemical states, is there a specific spot where "life" happens? What if we were able to control the process down to the last molecule and then hold off on the final chemical reaction. Is that not life anymore? How much has to be complete for the soul injection process the finish? Just wondering.
I addressed this in my post at the end of it.
Objecting to unfettered experimentation on human subjects by researchers without any concern for the well-being of the subjects? Perfectly valid, and I'd be one of those shouting against such research.
Superstitious objections based on "My holy book says you can't use the color red" and similarly flimsy/absurd arguments? Should be ignored.
There's a middle ground between these two extremes, however, where the line is not so clear. At that point, discussion and debate and inquiry need to take place. And yes, while that discussion and debate and inquiry happens, some people will die, and that's very unfortunate. However, I think it would be much more unfortunate for humanity to completely abandon any sense of ethics in the pursuit of progress.
How many lives can be saved by having a treatment come a little sooner? I don't know. How many lives would be spent if we had a society hell-bent on progress with no regard for human life? I don't know, but the 20th century gives us some pretty damn good estimates...
I disagree with the notion that embryo == full-fledged human being, but as I said in my previous post, disagreeing with someone does not mean that I cannot understand and respect their views if their views are sensible, self-consistent and based at least somewhat on reality. I will not dismiss someone as an idiot if they say they have a moral objection to destroying embryos during research. I would dismiss someone as an idiot if they say "Well, you're not killing babies anymore, but now you're playing god, so stop it!" I would also dismiss someone as an idiot and a monster if they were to say that *ANY* restrictions on research should be removed.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
On #1, I think incest is usually separated out because the victim is seen as even more vulnerable. The force involved in the rape tends to be of a different nature. In addition, the resulting pregnancy is fraught with risks due to genetic disease factors.
For #2, that is certainly debateable. In the rape of a minor and incest cases, a risky pregnancy is guaranteed, so life of the mother is an automatic background fact. Rape of an adult woman by an unrelated man vs risks to life of the mother is a more debateable case. Forcing a woman to carry will carry risks (mental health, and others) that at least make that strongly comparable to other health of the mother issues, and of course every pregnancy carries a not insignificant risk of death to the mother, so you have to ask at exactly what life risk level it becomes acceptable to force a woman to carry a child to term.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Nobody wants to kill babies. It's the definition of the start of "humanhood" that's the ultimate core of each side's argument, and for all of the attempts to draw firm black/white distinctions by both sides, what is actually a human being, with all of the rights and responsibilities of that label, has a very fuzzy start with lots of shades of grey.
A scenario: A couple has trouble conceiving. A doctor harvests eggs and sperm and fertilizes eight embryos, which are then frozen. Over the next three years, the doctor attempts to implant four embryos, and two children are born. The delighted couple stops trying to have children and move on to raising their family.
A question: What should happen to the other four embryos? They are the genetic and actual property of the couple. But the couple have no intention of using them and don't want to pay for indefinite storage. The couple also don't want other people to bear their genetic children.
But they are post-conception embryos, and therefore are full human beings according to the right-to-lifers. So what does that mean? Who should pay to keep them frozen? If the electrical system in the storage fails, can the maintenance company who flipped the wrong switch be charged with the manslaughter of more people than were killed in the holocaust?
The right-to-life crowd have far too simple a worldview for the real world. Their morality just doesn't resemble the realities of the world in which we live. That square-peg/round-hole mismatch might be quaint and entertaining, except when those people try to force their broken moral decision making on others, right when their morality is at it's most clearly ridiculous.
The future will certainly be interesting.
Regards,
Ross
Theres always going to be some people who do not agree with embryonic stem cell research and perhaps rightly so because these issues do raise difficult questions about life and its value. You don't have to be religious either to recognize this. I think most scientists would admit there are very touchy phlosophical questions here. I think most would admit there are touchy issues with cloning and late term abortion too.
This is what seperates these issues from the science vs religion issues dating from heliocentric/geocentric to evolution vs creation/ID or old earth vs young earth today. Essentially those are only issues if you are religious - or in fact Christian because there are a whole bunch of other religions out there for which these "debates" don't matter one whit. Science did not care what the general opinion on heliocentric vs geocentric models are and it certainly ignores the ID/creationist arguments.
That is the distinction and it makes all the difference even if it isn't much of one.
Science does not take values into consideration because there isn't an right and wrong in science and it isn't a democracy. Scientists do though. This developement is great - it effectively sidesteps a lot of thorny issues of when life begins, and what value it has. It will satisfy a lot more people who were queasy about embyonic stem cell research though not necessarily because of religious arguments. I think it will satisfy a lot of people who opposed it on religious grounds but are perhaps more moderate. Hopefully there will be some beneficial research that will come out of this.
Sure there are going to be arguments about the sanctity of the soul in a process like this one. I'd suspect most scientists will ignore them.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The research group has succeeded in generating stem cell lines for study from a single cell in an embryo while leaving the rest of the embryo to develop normally. Do not be fooled into thinking this answers all the ethical questions! The embryos from fertility clinics that go unused will still be destroyed, no matter how successful this procedure is (currently, however, it is still not as efficient as using the whole embryo). Thus, it STILL makes much more sense to use those fertility clinic embryos for research -- they will never be implanted, and they WILL be discarded already. The arguments that the Bush camp and the so-called pro-"life" camp are putting forth are total BS in this respect -- failing to fund stem-cell research has absolutely NO impact on destruction of embryos. It is simply a political maneuver into fooling the conservative base into thinking that scientists are rampantly killing little babies.
The recent research is most promising as a source of patient-specific stem cells for that particular baby when it grows up and gets diseases. As a source of stem-cells for research, it is highly doubtful that most fertility clinic clients would allow the embryo that they are IMPLANTING to have a cell removed from it. It is much more likely that UNUSED embryos would be donated to science. Even this method of generating stem cell lines is NOT ELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING! It will continue to be like this until Bush is kicked out or congress gets a spine and/or a brain.
I'm not demonizing anyone.
However, I do believe that the bulk of our societies sex issues have a religious root, and I don't think that adding more religion is the answer, especially since their method of dealing with the problem is basically to deny it exists until a child is born.
The first step is to slow down the number of unwanted pregnancies, and that takes education, and that takes contraception, and since the church is anti-sex ed, and opposed to providing any form of contraception, and only promotes the use of abstinence/"Please god don't let me get pregnant", I don't see how getting them more involved is going to help in any way.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Dr Lanza said: 'Well, as you know, the President objects to the fact that you would be sacrificing one life to save another, and in this instance there is no harm to the embryo.'
If this was indeed a fact, I too would object to it.
But referring to destroying an embryo as factually "sacrificing a life" is really scary to hear coming from a stem-cell researcher. Clearly it was not intending to get into the right-to-life arguments, but that's how it could be taken out of context.
Dr Lanza probably meant to say "The President objects to the belief that destroying an embryo is destroying a life, and in this instance there is no harm to the embryo."
Despite this advancement and satisfying certain ethical quandaries, this will not satisfy the anti-science anti-stemcell nitwits any more than anything short of prohibition will satisfy certain members of, e.g., MADD. Mark my words, the people who are celebrating the Earth's 7000th birthday don't give a crap about ethics.
I hope our fine president doesn't eat eggs for breakfast.
There is always another exception to the rule. Frankly, I'm not into their being a rule at all. I think abortions are a bad thing and I think they're a symptom of a problem in our society that we need to deal with. I would like to see the symptom go away, but I don't think that's going to happen until we deal with the problem.
Trying to stop the symptom, without adressing the problem is madness. Let people get abortions, but try to reduce the need for them...Trying to reduce it to moral and immoral abortions is absurd.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Who the hell locks babies in heavy steel cages at a daycare?
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! I insist they not be murdered, but I'm no charity, go find someone else to raise it!"
Should read:
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! You mixed the sperm and egg to create that embryo, you're responsible for it!"
Or at least, I think that's a scenario a lot of us worry about. Embryos being created specifically to be harvested and then discarded as medical waste. Sure, scientists may throw out a lot of fancy terms to explain why that isn't what's actually happening, but by and large that's exactly what is likely to happen because it's the cheapest and easiest.
A sapling does not bear fruit, provide shade, or blossom in the springtime. But a sapling, left to its own devices in the environment it is most suited for, will eventually grow into a mature tree that carries out all the functions of a mature tree.
A sapling represents the *potential* for a future tree. Similarly, an embryo is a *potential* future human. If you destroy an embryo, it is provable that the embryo does not feel pain. It is debatable that the embryo has a soul (or indeed that *anybody* has a soul. However, it is unquestionably true that by destroying the embryo, we reduce to zero the probability of its ever developing into a living, breathing, productive human.
I should note that I myself am pro-choice but anti-abortion. I think an abortions at *any* stage of pregnancy are a terrible thing, and should not be used as a substitute for responsibility or forethought (contraceptives, anyone?!?) However, I freely acknowledge that:
a) there are cases where abortion becomes a medical or ethical necessity, and
b) since the mother is carrying the fetus, it is her right to choose the baby's destiny and I have no say in the matter.
For both of these reasons, I am pro-choice.
:golf clap:
Good answer.
:)
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
First, most people that object to stem-cell research also object to the destruction of embryos via IVF. The vast majority (95%) of embryos are frozen for later implantation/research/adoption, and will eventually become non-viable due the freeze/thaw process or simply the ravages of time. The are rarely "thrown in the trash" while still viable and never need be. In any case, the number of excess embryos has steadily been declining and in some countries has been mandated to be zero.
As this new research shows, the intentional destruction of human embryos is nothing more than laziness.
Can't use amoeba for a pet! It will eat the (so-called) baby!
That is like the question asked of animal rights supporters who claim an equivalence between humans and other animals: If you can only save one from drowning, would you save the child or the dog? If the person says he would save the child, he's called an hypocrite, while if he chooses the dog, he's a monster. But neither answer would show that he would be happy to let the other die, or that he's actually supporting the deaths of dogs or children (or that he shouldn't oppose it lest he be tagged an hypocrite).
Likewise, even if a "right-to-life kook" chose his friend in that scenario, that would not suggest that he's an hypocrite for being opposed to the deliberate destruction of embryos. It calls into question only whether he truly believes the equivalence argument. But what if the scenario involves two strangers, alike in all respects? Would choosing to save one over the other suggest an inconsistency to believe their worth equal? Or must he be Buridan's Ass?
Fair enough. But I didn't hear anyone call Clinton "submental," like the dean of my med school did today. The fact of the matter is, people have an illusion that things under Clinton were peace, progress and prosperity, and all of the world's ills are due to the man in the White House. Which might be true, but the arguments that are made for it are patently absurd and absolutely short-sighted.
But who cares, right? The majority of Americans will just go right on believing what's spoon fed to them by the media.
Perhaps there exists an untapped market in teeny tiny baby supplies for these really small children. A playpen made out of a ring of hydrogen atoms and an amoeba for a pet.
Are you daft? What do you think Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is??!!
That is why the Catholic teaching provides for "Natural Family Planning". There is a "logical possibility" of procreation, so in their view it isn't separating sex from procreation like "artificial birth control". But the method effectiveness of NFP is better than that of condoms (as opposed to the user effectiveness which varies) and satisfies your criterion. Note that modern NFP is *not* the "calendar method" but involves observing multiple symptoms of ovulation: basal temperature, mucous, cervix.
I'll be vulnerable here and share my actual experience with NFP. I am not Catholic, but my wife and I gave it a try, and are still with the program after about 8 years (since the birth of our youngest). Before that we used mostly barrier methods to space babies. We of course always avoided methods that work via spontaneous abortions.
All the artificial methods put some kind of barrier between us. In some cases a physical barrier for the barrier methods. Even the pill (which we used for a while) causes subtle emotional changes. Over all, the physical barrier methods (condoms, diaphrams) were least objectionable. The NFP program brought us closer together. I became intimately aware of her cycles. As the first green day day approaches, anticipation builds. You get several days warning, giving time to plan a special day. There are no barriers. Thanks to the "breaks", you don't get burned out or bored with sex. In short, quality more than makes up for reduced quantity.
Having more kids cheapens life all by itself. When the supply increases, the price goes down.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The problem with your approach, as with all approaches that start with conception is that people will never agree when life begins. Is that fertilized egg human life? What about at the embryo stage? When we start from a state of non-life a sperm and an egg and try and determine when life begins, it's anybody's guess.
However, start at a point when we all agree there is human life, say a 1 day old baby and work backwards and see what happens. Is it still human life at 1/2 day? What about just outside the womb? How about coming down the birth canal? What about 1 day prior to birth? Two? Three? So far, most people would all agree with yes.
However, with agreement that even before birth, we have human life, but continuing to work earlier and earlier in the development of that life, it becomes very difficult for people to decide at what point we went from having human life to not having it (much earlier, it turns out, than going the other way from non-life to life). It all depends on the perspective one takes (kind of like a glass half empty or half full).
So maybe those people aren't trying to force their broken moral decision making on others, but instead have a different perspective of things. Who's to say their morallity is any better or worse than yours or mine? It's just different.
As for them forcing their moral decision making on others, how is that any different, at least from their perspective, with the pro-abortion view?
Excellent post. Very few people get that abortion isn't the problem, it's merely the symptom of bigger, more important problems.
Unfortunately any sane potential parent would consider an embryo with even a single cell taken and its outer membrane penetrated not to be as good as untouched embryo and not use it.
This method has been proposed for very early genetic screening. In practice a missing cell is not noticed in an embryo.
I am not a religous fundamentalist, but I don't think your position is sustainable. First off, a dead embryo is no good for harvesting stem cells, it has to be living and multiplying, so by definition, it must be life. Having a nervous system, heart, etc, have nothing to do with whether or not there is life.
Next, we know, if the embryo is allowed to continue to live and progress through all of the devopmental stages that it will eventually be, not a horse or a pig or a bird or a cow, but a human. That is all it can be.
So, by definition, the developing embryo is alive and what kind of life? Human life.
Now, whether there is a soul and all of that, that is for the philosophers and theologeans to debate, but you cannot get around the fact that a developing embryo is human life (not necessarily sentient, but human).
The real question is the same moral question we are faced with time and time again. Which life is worth more. Just like the question of who are you going to through out of the lifeboat, it is a value judgement. Society for the most part values human life more once it is outside the womb or at least close to be outside the womb than it does at the beginning stages (or end stages, for that matter).
However, at some point between fertilization and birth, that human life does take on enough value for most people that it should be protected to some extent (even the majority of Americans are against abortion on demand for late third trimester abortions).
You state that the embryo is just a cluster of cells, which it is. But that does not mean it is without value. A heart is also just a cluster of cells, albeit a lot bigger. And yet, most people are opposed to cloning a fetus, just to harvest it's organs, even if those organs could save another life.
The whole debate over embryonic stem cells is not about science or faith. It's about basic moral values. It's the same basic question as with abortion. However, this time, instead of being a private issue between a woman and her doctor, people's money (taxdollars) are being used (at least that's what the researchers want) to pay for something that many may be opposed to. In short, the embryonc stem cell debate is about whether the government should force people to pay for research (through taxation) for something they are morally opposed to?
I take it you're of the opinion that all marriages must have children, and as many as possible? There are people who want to marry and stay with one partner, but not have children. Or who want to have children, but limit themselves to one or two, rather than keep going until biology calls a halt.
I can guarantee you, people of those opinions will still see a need for birth control.
You started with some good comments... however: Frankly, people who can't make the distinction between a gamete/embryo/fetus/child should really have no say in the argument until they get some basic background in biology. I guess before I comment, I'll validate my right to argue (wouldn't want you accusing me of ignorance): Gamete = Seperate germ cells from male and female genetic donors (egg and sperm) Zygote = Meiosis has transformed gamete from male and female into a zygote (unique DNA from both donors at this point) Embryo = Zygote split at least once... mitosis has occurred Fetus = Major structure and organs are formed... continuing development Child = Fully developed organism, capable of sustaining itself outside of the womb with little or no assistance Notice that after meiosis, and before mitosis we have a cell with completely distinct DNA from both donors? This is a compelling argument for pro-lifer's, but if science were cut and dry, there would really be no argument, would there? Understanding that all points of view (pro-life, pro-abortion, and pro-choice) make assumptions and render seperate interpretations of the same science is a good step towards fully comprehending the issue. Too many people on /. think that science paints a black and white picture, and themselves become as narrow minded in their interpretations as the right-wing ultra-zealots.
Ambiguous science only becomes valuable when it is properly interpreted... more so in cases such as this where ethics play a role. The real issue isn't the science... it's the interpretation of the results within one context or another.
BTW... people with little or no background in biology should comment... they might learn a thing or to from the impassioned responses they invoke.
# man tar
Argghhh... sorry if it's hard to read... forgot the line breaks. :-)
# man tar
Right on all counts, except for the case of men with hairy armpits. That's unappealing, though, so call for all men to shave their underarms! I already do my part.
How is the fetus the woman's body? It's certainly not genetically hers, nor would a worm living in her gut be considered her.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Bought ACTC this morning at .90 and have already doubled my money.
The market is excited about this development. Its not often you see a stock more than triple in a single day.
A cluster of skin cells or brain cells is living human tissue as well, but that doesn't qualify it as a human being. An embryo, or even a fetus in its early stages of development, does not possess any form of consciousness, so equivocating the abortion of a pregnancy during the first two trimesters to murder is simply being ignorant of the human reproductive process. You might as well say masturbation is mass murder because gametes have human DNA and demonstrate the characteristics of life as well.
And how is whether or not to bear a child not a medical decision that should be up to the woman? Who's choice should it be then? Do you think a pregnancy has no effect on a woman's body? An embryo/fetus is biologically attached to a woman, is produced by her body, requires her body to sustain life, affects her health and vice-versa, so how is it not a part of her? Are the gametes living inside of you separate human beings also?
but that happens a lot here... :)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
..those who could not, in good conscience, follow the Democratic Party with the strong pro-choice platform, and have been Republicans in great part due to this stance (even though ideals of the Democratic Party may be more relevant in most other areas). Defections of those would come in great amounts were a viable pro-life platform available in the Democratic Party (in all areas - the Democratic Party is very pro-life beyond the gestational period).
". First off, a dead embryo is no good for harvesting stem cells, it has to be living and multiplying, so by definition, it must be life."
he didn't say anything about dead, he said discarded. All embryos used in stem cell research is used from embryos that where removed for artificial insemination, and they already have taken the ones there going to use.(the get around a dozen)
If they don't go to stem cell research, they go into the trash.
In fact, if you find sten cell research unethical, you MUST find artificial insemination unethical.
Thats fine, but I don't see a whole lot of people being against that.
"
So, by definition, the developing embryo is alive and what kind of life? Human life."
by your definition, hair is l;ife and we chouls shut down all barbers.
It is not human life. It is cerianly not sentient life.
"And yet, most people are opposed to cloning a fetus, just to harvest it's organs, even if those organs could save another life."
that's not true.
"In short, the embryonc stem cell debate is about whether the government should force people to pay for research (through taxation) for something they are morally opposed to?"
sure.
I note that the loudest oppents of stem cell research have no issue with sending people to kill others.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's not true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think we might agree that proper education is enough for the first step. Also, I'm quite sure the Church (well, the Catholic Church, at least) doesn't mind teens knowing that having sex will most probably lead to pregnancy. Nor does the Church mind kids learning some basic Economics that should deter them from wanting to have babies too soon. So I'm pretty sure your anti-religious statements about the big bad church's "method of dealing with the problem" and how religion's "anti-sex ed" is part of the problem is just plain bullshit.
It's not religion. It's just plain ol' White American reactionism, stupid.
- Francis Ocoma
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Fair enough. So where do we draw the line, because a human is also a cluster of cells.
Excellent. Now we're getting to some actual meat. Allow me to point out to immediately obvious objections: being unconscious, vegetative people are not people at all by your definition. Or at what point does consciousness count? Obviously, we're both conscious. Is a person unable to communicate with the outside world conscious, or non-human? Do we cease being human when we're knocked out or when we are just sleeping? How do you know how much consciousness a foetus does or does not possess? What is your metric?
Ah, but they don't. They have more or less half the full complement of DNA and do not reproduce in any stage of their cycle (save for the part where they form a zygote), hence do not have the full human gene complement, nor do they satisfy the criteria for life. So they are neither (individually) alive nor are they fully human.
If it can be shown to be a separate human life (which I currently belive to be the case) then it's obviously not solely up to the mother, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Nor may a mother kill her child once it's born.
Of course not. Are you daft, man?! Where did I claim such a thing?
So is any other parasite
It most demonstrably is not, as women don't randomly get pregnant.
As does any other parasite
As does any other parasite
You also forgot to mention that it should also necessarily affect the father's life as well , but somehow this often gets missed in the discussion. The father should be as integral a part of the baby's life as he was in her initiation. If not physically and emotionally there, then at least monetarily. IMHO, if fathers were forced to be more involved in things, I suspect that the unwanted baby problem would be much less of one.
Because it's demonstably not, as discussed above.
No, as discussed above.
Now, back to the question you attempted to side-step: How is the fetus the woman's body? It's certainly not genetically hers, nor would a worm living in her gut be considered her. You tried to turn it on its head, and now I've re-addressed your points (they were originally answered, no?) So, what are your criteria for claiming it to be a part of her body?
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Point your ire somewhere else. I am firmly pro-choice.
I'm also a recovering philosophy major, and once upon a time I sat down and tried to work my belief in a woman's right to an abortion into a moral framework, and it doesn't fit.
Toss all the rhetoric, okay. Here's my logic:
If a human life has value, then, logically, a potential human life has value...You can't really get value from something that has no value. That doesn't make sense. Something may become more valuable, but there had to be something there to begin with (The pro-lifers would say God puts the value there...I think this is why they don't mind killing people from other religions).
But aren't sperm cells potential life? Can sperm cells ever become life without intervention (e.g. an egg)? No, so no. By the same token an egg is also not potential life, because, left to its own devices, it's nothing.
But sperm plus egg equals a mass of cells, that, left to its own devices (barring accident, intervention, etc), will become a human life. Therefore, if human life has value, then that little wad of cells must have value, and to take an active step to abort those cells is to destroy something of value.
Therefore abortion has a negative moral component.
The only weakness in the argument is that human life has value. I just assume that, and a number of atheistic materialists would say, "Life is just meat that moves, with no intrinsic value." I don't agree with this (I value being alive, therefore life has value q.e.d) but I can understand how my argument isn't really compelling if you hold that point of view.
I'm sure, by this point, all the non-objectivists out there are losing their shit. Before you start composing irate replies, allow me to continue.
I believe this, and I still think women should be allowed to have abortions if they so choose. It is not the governments role to protect the rights of potential citizens. It is not the governments role to make moral judgements in cases where there is no conflict between actual citizens. And this act, while having a clear moral component, is directed at a potential human life, and the concerns of a potential life are not sufficient to warrant any restriction of personal freedom.
So, in a nutshell, the hard core pro-choicers comfortable assertion that abortion is without a moral element is questionable (assuming human life has value), and the pro-lifers view that potential life is the same as actual life is unsupported by practice, legal precident, or any actual evidence.
In the end, both sides are trying to gain an ethical/moral high ground, and both sides are willfully distorting the issue in an attempt to make the other side into monsters. Abortion is not a good thing, but in our society, as it stands, it's a necessary evil, and we should all work toward a time when the only abortions are abortions of medical necessity.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
My opinions:
1)Permanently vegetative people are no longer people...They are corpses being kept alive by technology.
2)Fathers should have say in abortion when they can carry the baby to term (I am a father)
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
How permanent of permanent? As evidenced by...?
Furthermore, the discussion wasn't permanent vegatative state but rather mere lack of consciousness.
Not at all what I was claiming, actually.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
From my understanding of large amount of different research, the embryonic stem cells are rarely rejected. (Even post-embryonic cells from babies upto 7 days old have very low rejection. That is why the skin from circumcision is often used for skin grafts - very low chance of rejection.) Since the embryo has not developed an individual cell signature, the host's immune system completely ignores the cells. The embryonic stem cells have also been used in some research as "rejuvination" potion, by putting them into the damaged area and having them induce the local cells to heal.
re-rereading my comment, I see your confusion. No, I was thinking more along the lines of child support and having to be there for children. Unfortunately, fathers can tecnically sire children and get off scot-free. I do not believe that this should be the case socially, unless abortion is allowed, in which case it becomes a thornier issue and I am heavily leaning towards it still being socially required. In fact, much more so, since in thinking about it, it should reduce male promiscuity (decreasing unwanted pregnancies), and it's not like the baby made itself, i.e. the man had a chance to make a decision to avoid having a child and still decided to go ahead with the procreative process anyway.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
The problem is when disapproval makes it into legislation, and budget allocations. On campus housing with daycare for young mothers who still want to go to college? Don't bet on it. Financial assistance to help you make it through what should not be (but is) the difficult of having a child? Not much.
It's hard in this country to have a child out of wedlock, especially if you're young. No one makes it easy, and you take a lot of crap from holier-than-thou types who see that child as proof that you're some sort of moral faliure, and not as proof that you took the hard road and didn't have an abortion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Personally, I think his baby arguments were pretty crappy. Mine are all over this thread, so I won't repeat them, but the parasite and lack of consciouness arguments are pretty weak. Parasite doesn't wash...many people agonize over having an abortion, no one agonizes over having a tapeworm removed. Likewise, consciouness is way too nebulous to use as a standard for life...no way to prove anyone is conscious but yourself.
I think I hold with the Catholics on the vegatative state issue...Sure you can hope for an eventual recovery, but there is no sin in allowing them to go peacefully if recovery is unlikely. I've put my money where my mouth is on that one, and I feel pretty strongly about it, but it's just an opinion.
Same with the father issue. The woman has to bear the burdens, risks, and responsibilites of pregnancy/childbirth...It's not something she can avoid. If she feels wholly unequal to that, she should not be forced to go through with it just because the father is keen on the idea of having a baby. Again, just an opinion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Technechly, all body cells have two sets, so should all cells be protected? I know that seems silly, but the issue I am pointing out is can you really call something a seperate organism if it cannot, in any way, live outside in another organism? If you remove an embryo from a mother, it would die, just like if it were skin cells you scraped off. Also, if the mother is not in good condition for some reason (injury, malnutrion, ect.), the body will get rid of it, causing a miscarrage. It is totally dependent, and therefore, IMO, it isn't a life yet, just another part of the woman carrying it.
Also, no matter what you do, women will have abortions by inducing miscarrages, often in unhealty ways. By making it illegal, you are trading potential lifes for actually lifes of women everywhere.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Preaching abstinence is not the answer. It doesn't work. They already know they're not supposed to be having sex...hell, that's probably one of the reasons they're doing it! And if you don't tell them anything besides "Don't have sex" you haven't taught them anything about how to be safe when they actually do have sex. And they will! It's a sad specimen that goes through life with no sex, and very few people wait until after marriage these days.
And economics? To minors who think that money is something you ask your dad for more of? I don't think that'll be a compelling argument.
I don't have problems with those things being taught, but they should be only a small part of the total lesson. Those kids should be taught about sex, they should be taught about rape, they should be taught about many different kinds of birth control AND HOW TO USE THEM. They should be taught about abortions, and how to make sure you don't need one. STDs, abuse, health issues, legal issues, the works, all the stuff that we had to learn the hard way.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Lol. Excellent counterpoint. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "Government should stay out of peoples uteruses."
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Would you accept a revision to your proposal? Just drop the words in bold.
Telling students they are likely to fail has the effect of actually making them more likely to fail. Drop the abstinence defeatest attitude, if you're really looking for a successful middle ground proposal.
A cluster of skin cells or brain cells is living human tissue as well, but that doesn't qualify it as a human being.
Fair enough. So where do we draw the line, because a human is also a cluster of cells.
----
easy answer to the whole where do we draw the line
P L A C E N T A
since the placenta is more or less a DMZ between the mother and baby (the baby's cells are used btw) that is where we draw the line
oh btw i would say if you get a woman pregnent without consent:
1 you are an adult and so is she---- you get to work in a prison farm
2 you are an adult and she isn't ---- you get hung and your body gets sold
3 you are not an adult she is --- shortish trip to a low end work farm
4 you are not an adult and she isn't ---- income gets garnished and if you don't mantain a job see case 3
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Indeed, as was my point. Sheesh.
The criteria I put forward were: Genetically human A cluster skin cells or brain cells are human, is is the whole human organism Alive While the whole human is rather obviously alive, the skin or brain cells within the cluster may individually be alive, but arguably the whole is not an organism in and of itself (a failure of scope?). An embryo is also alive, as the cells are, and they also are the entire organism at its current stage of development.Interesting. Unfortunately, abortion would consist of killing the attached fetus, an invasion past the "DMZ" and hence a violation of the other side's rights. Also, why is attachment suddenly the differentiator? Is it a human after it attaches, but not before?!
[Note to slashdot: is the Definition List broken in your CSS?!
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Similarly, an embryo is a *potential* future human
Similarly, a spermatozoid is the half of a *potential* future human. Sould I be convicted for genocide for killing millions of potential future humans on a daily basis?
You can also say that there are as many actual potential future humans (after all potential doesn't mean "in production" or anything) as ovules, that's about 25 billion potential humans a year that don't make it. A chance we don't consider them as such, because after all if you isolate a spermatozoid and an ovule, even if you don't make them meet each other you still have a potential future human with as much potential as an embryo ;-)
You just got troll'd!
Right Wing Right-to-Life Zealot: "Absolutely not!!! I insist they not be murdered, but I'm no charity, go find someone else to raise it!"
I am what you would probably call a "right wing right-to-life zealot" if by that you mean someone who is a conservative Republican who also believes that abortion should be illegal. My wife is also a "right wing right-to-life zealot" although she has a little more perspective on the issue since she was adopted herself (thankfully) after being conceived by a 15 year-old girl. She was raised by a wonderful family whose conservativism makes me look like Joe Stalin so I guess that makes them "right wing right-to-life zealots" too. Our adopted son is 11 months old and sleeping upstairs right now. In about an hour, when he wakes up, I will be giving him a bottle and putting him back sleep. I don't know what his political leanings will be, but I have no doubt in my mind that when he grows up he will be a "right-to-life zealot" also.
Maybe you should go out and meet some real people in the real world instead of just formenting your hateful, ignorant stereotypes of them by spending all your time reading dailykos.org, commondreams.org, and democraticunderground.com. What are you afraid of?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The big hint ought to be:
By the way, birth isn't an absolute either. Other cultures have argued that a baby doesn't have human rights until one or more days after birth. It's a pragmatic approach which can allow poor mothers to avoid starving all of her children because she happened to get pregnant again.
Back to your remarks:
All moralities are equal, eh? I have a few questions for you:
- Can different moral systems result in more or less happiness for people who follow them (all other things being equal)?
- Do different moral systems result is more of less happiness for people in communities where most people in the community follow them (all other things being equal)?
I assert that people choose a moral system because they believe that following those morals gives them a greater chance of having "The Good Life", which I approximately define as long-term happiness. I further assert that the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the community are both important, though an appropriate balance of happiness between self and others is a much larger discussion. I also assert that some moral systems are better at maximizing self and other happiness. Finally, I'll assert that rule-based moralities (like all Bible-based moralities) are inferior to moral systems that ask you to think through consequences to achieve goals.Ultimately, they are inferior because the world changes and rules can't adapt the way thinking can.
So, in answer to your question: who am I to say their morality is better or worse than mine? I'm me. I'm free to reach my own conclusions on the matter, and I have. From here, though I'm frequently learning new things (and changing my mind on various subjects as a result), I sincerely doubt that I'll learn something to reverse my big conclusions about morality. The details? Sure. But on the big picture, I just don't buy that there's a big guy in the sky who's got anything useful to say about right and wrong.
Regards,
Ross
Good question. I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does anyone, because it's a matter of opinion. So the question is whose opinion should matter most in the case of a particular pregnat woman. I find it hard to imagine answering that with anything but "Hers".
Pro-life, Pro-choice. Stupid namby pamby frolicking-around-the-point.
How about this: pro-abortion, anti-abortion.
But noooo, no-one likes to say "abortion", so we'll invent some new sickeningly cheery PC euphemisms. Oh and we also can't be "anti" anything either. *spit*
</rant>
While the embryos all do indeed have the potential to one day live independent lives, one shouldn't deny the fact that at best MOST of them will die, and, possibly ALL of them might die. Many, many, many embryos die for one successful implantation. At least the friend represents an already independent life that will definitely live if you help him. There is no possible way to save a single embryo without being complicit in the murder of many more. This seems like an effort to push the problem of what to do with all these embryos back on pro-lifers. Sorry, but the vast majority of these embryos are doomed because of those who created them outside of the womb, not because of those who objected to this abuse of life from the beginning.
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Of course preaching is not enough! Why do you think I disagree with your condom-preaching? You talk about having pre-marital sex as "one of the reasons they're doing it". So? Do we fix the problem of rebelliousness by adding another taboo for them to break? When it becomes normal for parents to nag their children not to have sex w/o condoms, that will be another thing for the adventurous ones to do. Besides, as you say, they can always ask Dad for child-support. So what the heck is the difference?
Education is enough for people who have sense. Nothing, not even the PowerPoint presentations of the more-liberal-than-thou sex-ed teachers, is enough for those without sense.
Let me clarify things for you. I don't object (not too much, anyway) if certain poor souls want to engage in consensual and legal fornication. I don't even see why I should care about them using condoms, since that'll just add to an already existing wrong. People have the right to do legal yet stupid things, even when they are wrong in doing so.
What I object to is when these people make the mistake of getting pregnant without wanting to, and then guys like you start blaming it on religion. I mean, if I was going to break my religion's teachings, I wouldn't do it half-assed and get myself into trouble. Only a dimwit would say "God, I'm sorry I fucked her, but at least I didn't use a condom".
As I say, even though it's likely that reactionary Christians are at fault for the lack of awareness in kids by banning all talk about sex, the emphasis is on reactionary. Atheists could prevent the spread of knowledge just as much as theists, and many atheists do... mainly by their incessant finger-pointing.
- Francis Ocoma
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The point is that injecting stem cells into a live person is not the only reason to grow them.
When you have an ES-cell line you can grow any tissue type you want, knowing that it will have a particular set of genes. Then suppose you have a virus, or a drug, which you are investigating - the ES cells allow you to see how that drug interacts with different types of tissue, while eliminating genetic and environmental variation.
Basically, ES-cell technology has already accelerated our knowledge of disease and our drug technology by decades - even in the face of the bans emplaced by people like you, who think that scientists are all like Dr. Frankenstein.
Maybe you should find out some more facts before you declare people 'too stupid to live'.
It's almost certainly a little more complicated than that. For instance, monogamy is advantageous from an evolutionary standpoint, since it prevents the large-scale spread of disease, and it has social advantages as well.
http://outcampaign.org/
You shouldn't be drinking if you're pregnant!
http://outcampaign.org/
Another thing I forgot to mention:
In the vast majority of stem cell therapies, you don't inject the embryonic cells. You use the embryonic cells to derive tissue stem cells, like liver cells, and you inject those.
There are already a large number of successful transplants of these kinds of cells.
You may ask, why not just harvest adult stem cells? Well, ideally you need 'autologous' cells - cells grown from your own lines - so that the transplant won't be rejected. Adult stem cells just don't exist in your body for every tissue type. For example, there are a few stem cells in your brain, but it would be very hard to get at them. The solution is to treat embryonic cells so that they differentiate into brand new neural progenitor cells, and inject those.
The more differentiated a cell is, the less likely it is to form a tumour.
So one value of totipotent cells (or 'totempotent' as you wrongly put it) is that you can derive non-totipotent cells from them which are otherwise unavailable.
The moral of the story: don't get your scientific information from the church!
An embryo, "when left to it's own devices" dies. Even if it's kept alive in vitro, it still just sits frozen inside of a petri dish forever unless it is eventually implanted into a woman's uterus and the gestation cycle is completed.
Religious rhetoric aside, an undeveloped embryo is as sentient a lifeform as a culture of fungi or any other simple organism with a comparable level of complexity. It does not suffer, it does not experience consciousness, and it certainly can't be considered murder any more than killing any other organism sharing the same level of sentience. Objectively speaking, it's far worse to kill, say, a grown chicken or cow than to let an embryo die by preventing gestation.
Your differential in value between various "classes" of potential life seems rather arbitrary, and what little logic you've given for it is self-contradictory (rather poorly reasoned for a "philosophy major" imho). How does something of little value (gametes) develop into something of much greater value (human life)? If you can give more value to something (a gamete in this case) by facilitating biological processes (implantation/fertilization, for instance), then why isn't it possible to give value to something which initially had no value? Where do you think gametes come from? Do you think they just magically appear as mature eggs and sperms? Does your body not give each collection of atoms and molecules, which initially had no value in regards to being potential for human life, value by organizing them in a particular cellular structure?
If you want to be logically consistent, then you would have to at the very least concede that masturbation is also unethical to some extent. But your argument that preventing potential life from developing into life is unethical is still absurd. That potential can still only be fulfilled if facilitated by external forces. Who says that just because the potential is there that it is wrong to not realize that potential? A woman choosing to abort a pregnancy and not allow the fertilized egg to develop into a human-life is no more wrong than 2 sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex choosing to use contraceptives during intercourse to prevent their respective gametes from developing into a human-life. They are actively destroying those gametes' potential for life, but whatever "value" those gametes have to you, you still haven't provided any reasoning why it's wrong to destroy it.
Frankly, your argument is rather flimsly for someone who has supposedly studied philosophy, so before you toss aside all rhetoric, you might want to give a little more thought into your own. Perhaps you need to elaborate on what kind of "value" you are talking about, and why it is wrong to destroy something with this kind of value. Something less vague and of more tangible nature, like the level of sentience a lifeform possesses, might be preferable to vague metaphysical qualities that you've subjectively assigned.
The placenta is an organ that women develop during pregnancy to facilitate gestation. You might as well arbitrarily assign the umbilical cord or endometrial lining of the uterus as the cut off point.
And my metric is what the embryo/fetus is biologically capable of at that point of development. The human reproductive cycle is well understood and the biology behind it has been extensively studied. Consciousness in the context I was using it in refers to the state of being sentient. Being asleep or "unconscious" does not mean that one is braindead or has lost sentience.
Also, even though gametes are the only haploid cells in a human being, that doesn't mean they don't possess a full set of chromosomes which are expressed in a human being (the monoploid number in humans is the same as the haploid number). If you want to say that gametes aren't human beings because they are haploid cells, then what about a culture of tongue cells or any of the many other types of diploid cells in the human body which can live in vitro and grow and reproduce?
Why not make the distinction based on the abundance of other biological characteristics which are different between embryos and a 3rd-trimester fetus? Or on more fundamental differences such as cognitive capacity or biological complexity?
Why should we let the facts get in the way of our zealotry?
http://outcampaign.org/
Why would you think he would care? I think that personally he doesn't a hoot about whether you kill embryos, just like he doesn't really care whether civilians are massacred in his war game in the Middle East. He will care if he is told to care by the guys with most money.
Anyway, I think this debate about not killing 'human life' is totally out of proportion with reality. We are talking about a tiny lump of cells, not unlike a drop of snot; in fact, you shed more human cells each time you blow your nose of go to the toilet. If 'human life' is that holy, should we fight against people cruelly killing off body cells? Or how about cancer cells? They are most definitely human - is it wrong to treat cancer?
Of course not - it would be silly to suggest this, but no sillier than being against harvesting stem cells from ammbryos.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp of biology so you ought to also realize that genetic mutation is an inevitable consequence of our biological design. A tumor also has distinct DNA from its host, but that doesn't really imply that it's a separate human life or that excising a tumor is wrong.
And I never said that science is cut and dry, but there are some things which pro-life rhetoric blatanly contradicts. The issue of abortion may not be self-contained in the field of science, but it clearly requires a certain measure of scientific background to properly grasp it.
Problem is that they *don't* get implanted in infertile women. Most unused embryos are destroyed (and in the UK, that's actually mandatory). I've yet to see a "right-to-life zealot" complaining about the mass murder committed every day by these infertility clinics in disposing of these unused embryos.
Not that I think they're right, but they should at least be internally consistent. Either destroying embryos is murder or it isn't. And if it is, every infertility clinic in the world "murders" around half-a-dozen embryos per treatment. In fact, if it is, then every woman on the Pill "murders" 13 embryos per year, and most women who aren't on the Pill "murder" a fair number whilst trying for a child.
Grab.
he didn't say anything about dead, he said discarded. All embryos used in stem cell research is used from embryos that where removed for artificial insemination, and they already have taken the ones there going to use.(the get around a dozen)
If they don't go to stem cell research, they go into the trash.
It is true he didn't say anything about dead embryos, however, he did say they weren't alive. If they aren't alive, what is multiplying in the petri dish that they are harvesting the stem cells from?
In fact, if you find sten cell research unethical, you MUST find artificial insemination unethical.
Thats fine, but I don't see a whole lot of people being against that.
I thought the discussion was on whether embryos are alive or not, not on how they are created. However, isn't artifical insemination where the sperm is injected into the vagina? I believe you are meaning invitro fertilization where the egg is fertilized outside the body. In and of itself that shouldn't be considered immoral (unethical really wouldn't apply). I believe the people who are opposed to it, however, aren't opposed to the concept but the fact that multiple embryos are created but only a few are used. It's not the process of fertilization and implantation that would be immoral but what happens what happens next to all of those embryos, or so the argument goes.
"
So, by definition, the developing embryo is alive and what kind of life? Human life."
by your definition, hair is l;ife and we chouls shut down all barbers.
It is not human life. It is cerianly not sentient life.
Well, if we let a hair folicle continue to grow and develop, it will always be a hair folicle. If we let an embryo continue to grow, it will develop into a full adult one day. So, just as a baby becomes an infant who becomes a todler who becomes a child who becomes a teenager who becomes an adult, following various developmental stages, isn't the embryo and then fetus, just early points along that developmental process? If not, exactly at what point in the womb does it occur that there is a human being growing in there today, but not yesterday?
"And yet, most people are opposed to cloning a fetus, just to harvest it's organs, even if those organs could save another life."
that's not true.
Well, according to the USA Today and the NY Times polls they are, but maybe you have other data.
"In short, the embryonc stem cell debate is about whether the government should force people to pay for research (through taxation) for something they are morally opposed to?"
sure.
The sad part is that there are other researchers already dismissing the technique used in this original article saying that it isn't efficient enough. However, it has already produced as many viable stem cell lines as what are usuable from the allowed pool that Bush authorized. Personally, we, at my research centre, are waiting to hear from legal as to whether this new technique can be used to get around the government funding issues and allow us to access to new cells for research. If so, it doesn't have to be the most efficient method around, it just needs to be around.
note that the loudest oppents of stem cell research have no issue with sending people to kill others.
I assume you are meaning the war in Iraq. Again, I thought the discussion was on whether embryos were human life or not. I haven't seen any data correlating peoples views on embryonic stem cell research vs war, it might prove interesting, but I don't see how it is related to this topic.
Is that my approach? Either I dramatically miswrote something or you dramatically misread something. Looking back at my post: you misread something. Take another look. I think you'll find that I do not assert that life begins with conception (or state any other conclusions about when life starts).
While you mention "humanhood," that is a pretty modern and to date undefined concept. If I'm not mistaken, the notion of humanhood as the basis for when a person exists has only been around for the last 40 years or so and is still in the debate stage of what it means. From my limited understanding of it, but some definitions, for instance, new born infants, since they are not aware of their own existance would not considered human persons. Because of it is such a new concept and hasn't stood the test of time and the rest of your post was refering to more traditional concepts, I didn't focus on the "humanhood" aspect of what you were saying. Sorry about that. However, since most of the rest of your post was about fertilizing the embryo and it's status, that is where I picked up the "life begins at conception" argument, because for most people that's where they see the issue.
BTW, I agree that birth isn't an absolute either, however, I assumed we were talking about western culture as that is where most of the controversy over the research is taking place. I don't buy the arugument, however, that a poor mother starving her newborn to keep from starving the other children is an example of the newborn not having rights. It could simply be the mother being place in the terrible position of having to choose which child has the greatest chance of survival with the limited food at hand. Kind of a very real and sad version of the life boat question of who are you going to throw out of the boat so the others can be saved.
I find your comments on moral systems very intresting and for the most part don't disagree. I don't think, however, that rule-based moralities, like Bible-based ones, HAVE to be as inflexible as you make them out to be. There's nothing to keep them from allowing for adaptation to the situation and circumstances (whether they do or not is a different story). I also am not sure that the purpose of a moral system is for happiness (you mention that several times) or for an ordered society (which ultimately leads to certain level of happiness). If the purpose is really just to maximize happiness, then that would seem to lead to what many would view as an immoral society by today's standards anyway and would seem to allow for the infringement on others "rights."
So, if the purpose is to maximize happiness but with certain restriction on how far you can go, then we are back to a rule-based morality like you are opposed to.
As for the question of "Who are you to say your morality is better or worse..." I have to admit, that was a cheap shot and I shouldn't have made it. My intention was, however, to emphasize that in the argument on pro-life argument people are using two (or more) different moral frameworks for their reasoning. To one group, the threat is the other group is trying to take something away. To the other group, they think they are trying to restore what was taken away. Until they come up with a common framework, however, it is unlikely the debate on this issue will go away (even if politically, the laws changed, the debate will rage on, it will only change who is doing the protesting).
As for the big guy in the sky, whether you believe in one or not or whether if there is on who's got anythign useful to say about right or wrong doesn't change the fact that all of those people who came before you that did believe and were influence by such a deity have passed down their morality through social norms that you have been influenced by (we all have). Our basic sense of right and wrong is culturally based and is based, at least in the U.S. on judea-christian values. They aren't set in stone, but they don't change easily, either. So, like it or not, even if you think through your consequences to achieve the goals you want, it's still influenced, in some form or another by the big guy in the sky (or at least by those who believe there is a big guy in the sky).
Well said.
Speaking of which, given scientific research and medical advances are of benefit to society, and Bush believes that abortion is murder...
Why did he find it abhorrent to "murder" for profit, but decide that it's ok to profit from "murder" that's already happened?
If you're taking the amoral pragmatic view, this makes perfect sense. If you're trying to make it an issue of morality and principles, I don't see a significant difference between the two actions.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"I know of a few NEAR lands that need colonizing- BLM lands in Nevada "
We could put a bunch of diverse people there. It's not like people have ever fought over desert land before.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Only if you're lucky enough to avoid the 00 on the roulette wheel of life. Unlike Abstinence, none of your methods exceed 99% effective rate- even when used in combination. And their side effects are much worse than you've been told- hormonal birth control and abortions have been shown to cause death at about 3 times the rate of pregnancy, and the condoms available at Planned Parenthood and free on college campuses were shown by Consumer Reports to have a dismal 65% failure rate.
Tisk tisk. Someone skipped their stats class to go to theology class. Using two forms of 99% birth control put your chance of birth control failure at 1 in 10,000. Assuming that your girlfriend in question is fertal 1 week out of 4, that further drops your chance to 1 in 40,000. Further, "failure" of a condom does not mean that you get a full load of semen blasted into your significant other. "Failure" means that it failed is a STD control device. It is rate of failure is actually much lower then 99% as a birth control device if it is properly used. Finally, there is the old stand by of simply aborting should the stars line up despite proper birth control usage.
There's this institution that solves all of the above, called Sacramental Marriage. You should check it out sometime.
Lets go over my check list and see what sacramental marriage solves.
Effective form of birth control? Hell no. It is in fact by far one of the worst forms of birth control. It actually tends to produce babies at an alarming rate. If you don't want babies and but do want sex, sacramental marriage is almost certainly NOT what you want.
Feeling like a looser for being a 35 year old virgin? I don't know about you, but if I had a single shot at selecting a single woman from the tiny pool of women that make up the number of people that want to enter into a sacramental marriage, I would take my time. Only an idiot would pledge their life to someone for the rest of their life on anything less then a few years of knowing that person. I would also be damn picky as it is supposidly a one shot deal. If during this selection process you are not allowed to live with or have sex with any woman whom you are dating, I could very easily see 35 year old virgins. Anyone who enters a sacrimental marriage when they are still relativly young is either very lucky, very stupid, or very horney.
No significant others? See above.
Compulsive masturbation? If I was still 35 and not getting any, I would probably have built up a very strong right arm.
A dramatic increase in dull and/or fanatically religious significant others? People that refuse to have sex until they are married make up a very small pool of people. Of these people, almost all are to some degree religious fanatics. Either that, or they are very boring. Either way, enterting into a sacrimental marriage will NOT solve this side effect.
Depression? I don't know about you, but if I was not getting any sex at all until I was married and I actually took getting married seriously to ensure that I am not miserable for the rest of my life, I would be pretty damn depressed.
>Harming the Embryo is half the fun of Stem Cell Research!
You're being funny, but the sick thing is that this is true.
Look for stem cell research to get far less trendy and popular and for people to be far less gung-ho about it if this (getting the cells without killing the embryo) pans out. Something about destroying the embryo made this weirdly attractive to many.
Always is a very short period for you. Before the time it's always been, there was a time where we were offering human sacrifice to apease the wind.
...
Science and Religion can NOT co-exist. One is based on reason, the other on faith.
There shouldn't be any 'I believe' in science. And there are very little of reasoning in Religion. But we are all human and we all make mistakes to mix/do things, that we shoud not.
---
Science should not be held back by ignorance, religious or others.
To be more precise, we have to make a distinction between scientific knowledge and scientific methode.
There should be no limits in the scientific knowledges we are pursuing. (I don't want things like : Don't study the Big Bang because you may show that God does not exist!)
There should be limits on what we do with our knowledge. (e.g. don't test nuclear weapon in the atmosphere because it pollute.) Those limits should be set by the community at large using all the knowledge at our disposition. These decision should apply to everybody/everything including but not limited to the scientific methodology.
Can you or can you not destroy an embryo? The origin/reason should not matter: abortion, extra embryo from fertility treatment, scientific experiment,
Much likes screwing around with nuclear weapons, it only takes one mistake to completely blow yourself up. I have my doubts this is 100% harmless (as nothing ever is), and after a couple dozen ebryos that don't develop or children that are severely handycapped, this will probably get shot down.....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Slow down there! What you meant to say was that "the Catholic church is opposed to contraception". In the United States, about 26% of adults are Catholics - hardly a majority of religious practitioners. I'm not aware of any other major religious groups that oppose contraception, and I'm certain that less than 100% of Catholics agree with that policy.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
See, this is why we need precedence brackets in the English language:
"(complete picture from wikipedia) instead of half-truths", or
"complete picture instead of (half-truths from wikipedia)"
Of course, the beauty of it is they're both true.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Isn't that methode just creating a second embryo that could develop into the twin of the unborn
...
...
child this method is supposed to save?
To the newly born child:
Science has saved you. Without such discovery, they would have destroyed you. Now, they had just to create your twin and destroy it
Unless they let the twin grow and remove one of his cells.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
This research will be most usefull when you will be able to keep the stem cell line for 100 years.
At conception, one cell of the embryo which will be you, is harvested. Then the embryo is implanted in you genetical mother or in your womb mother or in a canister.
The cell is used to keep a stem cell line alive for the duration of your life.
Later in life, when your liver die from all the vodka you drank. they can use the stem cell to grow you a new one.
Later, you may loose other organs without too much worry, if you have the money.
I am sure they are kidding, but it doesn't really matter. Your statement has sparked a need within my very core to respond. I'm not directing this at you "Anonymous Coward", rather, at anyone reading these posts. "the philosophy behind the war on terror" is not "Kill people in other countries to "prevent" Americans being killed". The philosophy behind the "war on terror" would be more accurately summarized as forcing our politics (political system) into places where we have been unable to enforce "our" religion.
This whole argument clearly boils down to religion. However, those religious types who believe that "god" put plants and animals on the planet so that we could eat them should really try to understand the big picture: We're all animals, and all plants are alive as well. The bacteria and parasitic organisms which depend on humans to survive, and subsequently cause a myriad of health problems, are alive and reproduce as well - your own immune system is fighting to keep them in check daily. By the time you've come home from work or school at the end of a hard day, how many lives have been cut short simply as a result of your own selfish need for survival. If "god" created those life forms for you to consume and/or live with you in harmony as you feel fit to freely define, how do you know he didn't create embryos for you to experiment with? You don't, and the reason you don't know is because "god" hasn't told you anything at all...ever - and never will. If you're speaking with "god" on a regular basis, ask him/her/it that for me, then get yourself checked out because the voices in your head have obviously driven you completely mad.
The meaning of life is to live. The meaning of death can be surmised by contributions made by that life form whether during its life or as a result of its death. If the embryo, which eventually developed into my extremely attractive body, could have led to a cure for cancer 30 years ago - I'd have signed the dotted line were I to have had the mental faculty and opposable thumbs to do so. I don't wish to die or to have never existed, but if that had been the case - I wouldn't know about it right now, would I?
Go to a 3rd-world country and eat at a McDonalds and then tell me about how "sacred" life is. The only thing sacred in this world is money and there will be no major advances coming out of stem cell research because there is more profit to be made from the sick and dying than from the healthy.
In fact, if it is, then every woman on the Pill "murders" 13 embryos per year
The Pill simply prevents ovulation, so no embryos are involved.
*sigh* back to work...
Can we stop letting religious fundamentalists who do not have an ounce of scientific understanding (or deliberately practice ignorance) on the matter frame the debate?
Not if they keep managing to get elected to high office, no.
Why was this modded troll?
Why would masturbation be unethical? Is spitting unethical? Masturbation has nothing to do with potential life, because it is impossible for masturbation to create potential life. Sperm + egg brought together in a hospitable environment is potential life. A fertilized embryo in a freezer is not potential life, because without some serious intervention, it will never become a life. If you think I'm arguing that stored embryos shouldn't be used for medical research you're out of your mind.
Sentience means nothing. Consciousness means nothing. And no, it ain't murder. You're trying to prove it's a person, and I'm not, because it's not. But if it will grow into a human life without intervention/accident, it is undeniably a potential human life. Not a parasite or a fungus or any number of other things which will never ever become a human life.
Chickens and cows are beyond the scope of this argument, but, for the sake of argument, are you saying that the life of a chicken or a cow should weigh against a human life? I don't argue with vegans in the same way I don't argue with drunks.
I have a very narrow and defined range for potential human life. Implanted embryos only. If you can provide a proof that a viable implanted human embryo is not a potential human life, I would be glad to hear it. Until they find a way to bring a baby to term without a woman, this definition is extremely specific. This is a boundary condition. It is not a class. It is a definition for the sake of argument, which you completely ignored.
Within that very strict definition of "potential human life" which coincidentally covers all of the cases where abortion is necessary, and assuming human life is valuable, the termination of that potential is an act with a negative moral component. End of story.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Let's not forget the safest sex of all, with the person you love the most.
It works in several ways - preventing ovulation *and* preventing implantation.
I guess the case is more clear-cut for the "morning after" pill, about which there are complaints by pro-lifers. Although I don't believe they also complain about IUDs, which is curious.
No, it is NOT banned. Federal funding of research involving new lines is banned. That is all. Check out Stanford's stem cell research institute. Private funding for harvesting new stem cell lines is still possible. Perhaps you should get your facts straight, idiot.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
in my experience usually those who subject themselves to chronic frustration develop serious long term side effects, none of which are positive.
There was no chronic frustration because I took the simple and obvious expedient of avoiding the problematic situation. If you're on a diet, frequenting the donut shop might not be the best course.
What *is* extremely unhealthy is sexual promiscuity. Sex glues you emotionally to your partner. When you switch partners, it is like ripping your tongue off a frozen flagpole - only it is your heart instead. I have seen the trauma and pain of fornication and divorce over and over again. It really doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to call it marriage or do a religious ceremony (though a public commitment is very helpful) - but just stick with one man and one woman until death. You'll save yourself and your spouse a world of grief.
you ought to also realize that genetic mutation is an inevitable consequence of our biological design
I absolutely do understand this... it is true that meiosis is a kind of genetic mutation, but one under the control of the cells themself. It is a genetic mutation called translocation that occurs neither randomly nor accidentally. A tumor is only a slight variation from the original DNA (a deletion, insertion, or point mutation) caused by copy errors, or exposure to harmful radition or chemicals. The difference between these two kinds of mutations is huge: one ultimately results in a seperate and distinct human being... the other results in a benign or harmful lump of tissue, but never a seperate organism that can one day survive on its own.
A tumor also has distinct DNA from its host, but that doesn't really imply that it's a separate human life or that excising a tumor is wrong
Correct... partly. The DNA found in a tumor is differrent from the rest of the body, true... but only slightly. We're talking a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent difference. The DNA found in a fetus on the other hand has a much greater difference. Meiosis works to produce a crossover from the chromesomes of both donors... these are new chromesomes not inherited completely from either parent. Mutation as a result of deletion, insertion or point modification is the same DNA as before... only slightly modified.
Given this understanding of the differences between one genetic mutation and another yeilds an answer to the ethical question (for some, well... OK, for me anyway). There are 2 parts to my conclusion:
1 - A tumor is not a seperate organism and excising a tumor is not wrong because it is essentially 99.99999% your genetic material. Excising a fetus is wrong because it is 0% your genetic material. In laymans terms, we could say it's 50% of each donor... but that's not a literal copy of the donor's DNA... it is a crossover between yours and another persons.
2 - Although "The Hidden Life of a Tumor" might make a great title for a show on the Discovery channel, the tumor doesn't really have a life apart from your body... cut it out now, and the cells rapidly die. Cut it out in 9 months, and it's the same story. With a fetus, an abortion will result in its death because it is not mature enough to survive outside of the mother... wait 9 months, and we have [insert your name here]. The difference between day 1 and month 9 is only the maturity of the organism. Absolutely nothing happens at birth, mystical or scientific, that now makes it wrong to end the life of the child just because it's outside the womb.
I always find it interesting when pro-choicers include a fetus in the same group as a tumor... it's a convenient argument that has no merit when examined in the proper scientific context. One is caused by an accidental genetic mutation resulting in only a slight variation in DNA, the other is caused by a natural process within the organism that starts at fertilization resulting in a crossover of DNA and a seperate organism.
The issue of abortion may not be self-contained in the field of science, but it clearly requires a certain measure of scientific background to properly grasp it.
Absolutely! And speaking of having a scientific background, it doesn't seem you understand the difference between translocation mutations and insertion/deletion/point mutations. If you did, I dare say you wouldn't classify a fetus as a tumor.
# man tar
So, you're saying that 74% of churches are willing to provide contraception to parishoners who are in need?
While the bulk of protestant churches do not ban contraception, they do not, by any stretch of the imagination, promote the use of contraception. They do not educate about contraception. They do not provide free contraception.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You're right: few of them provide contraception. Even fewer of them provide toilet paper, bug spray, furniture, or bus fare. While all of those may be necessary for the people who can't afford them, most churches aren't in the "give a man a fish" business. Some are, mind you, but most aren't.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
have the "same" rights - just "any" rights will do. Five year olds do not have the same rights as twenty-one-year-olds. There is nothing wrong with this.
Also, you should quit begging the question - by claiming that embryos should not have the same rights as "persons", you are presuming that they are NOT persons. Yet this is the crux of the debate.
I see nothing insane about banning the intential killing of living human beings, at any stage of their life. Please, explain what would be insane about such a commitment?
I thought Jesus was big on giving people fish? I bet he'd have even sprung for bug spray for the 5000, because he was that kinda guy.
This is the exact attitude I've been talking about through this whole thread...Religious groups putting huge protests together about abortion, but when you ask 'em to shell out for a box of condoms, it's all "Hey, we don't do welfare, we work for a living."
Make up your goddamn mind. Either you help people make smart choices with regards to contraception and family planning, or stop bitching when the bad choices they made because they couldn't afford birth control or didn't know how to use birth control, lead to them getting an abortion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It is a very nuanced issue. That is why, until you can resolve all those nuanced issues, I am going to come down on the side of individual freedom (pro-choice). If the issue can't be resolved, then let each women decide what they should do. And you have the freedom to try to talk them all out of it.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
I'm sorry, but if you're adopting a child to make a political statement then you're not a fit parent.
Food is needed to sustain life. Condoms sustain the imprudent.
I just said that potential life trumps actual life, not that it wasn't worth something. It isn't black and white. If the eggs hurt the species in the long run, omelet away.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
No need to agonize if it isn't a living human.
Friends don't let friends listen to Great White.
I would say "living human being" and "living organism with substantial potential for sentience" are very relevant qualities. By 'sentience', I mean sufficient intelligence and self-awareness to deserve rights. Where we draw THAT line is another tangential debate.
What 'concerns' do infants have? You will quickly find, if you think about it, that wherever you draw this "sentience" line, either:
1: You must grant most mammals rights of citizenship
or
2: you must permit infanticide
An adult chimp is about as smart as a 2-3 year old. Which do you prefer? Citizen Bobo or allowing post-birth abortions up until age three? What about Fido? He is smarter than infants out to a year or so. Great. Now your dog can sue and collect Social Security!
As you can see, drawing the line for "personhood" at the moment that something actually achieves 'sentience' winds up being absurd. Clearly, we have rights BEFORE we are actually smart enough to earn them.
Another problem with the 'must be sentient to earn rights' logic is that it does not explain why people have rights when asleep, unconcious, in comas, etc. By no means is a guy passed out drunk in the gutter "sentient". He still has rights.
And then the imprudent have abortions. Enjoy the outcome you so clearly desire.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No comment.
I honesly feel sorry for your sir, you obviously have been brainwashed since you were very young and are/have missed out on an excellent part of the human experience.
I can say the same thing about people who think that 30 seconds of pleasure shouldn't be paid for.
You view sex simply as a function of procreation, when it is in fact dual purpose. There are a great deal of positive things show by a number of studies I've read over the years.
Studies by biased people who have a reason to lie don't count.
I'm not able to post any links because I work for a government institution and viewing anything reguarding sex at work is strictly off limits. IIRC studies have shown that people who engage in sex on a regular basis tend to be much happier people, and also tend to live longer.
When done properly, it allows you to live forever, in a sense. But of course, that's the point of view that sex includes being a parent and raising children; anything less does not have that benefit.
Sure.... that makes sense... a person that by your definition is irresponsible by having sex in the first place because it was for recreational purposes is now supposed to be responsible enough to parent a child....
Marriage, having sex, and being a parent is all the same act. If they're responsible enough to be allowed to have sex, then they're mature enough to be a parent. In fact, one creates the other- having a child makes you grow up.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'm of the opinion that Marriage, Sex, and Parenthood are really three stages of the same basic act- raising the next generation.
In reality though, I see four types of marriage- Natural, Sacramental, Secular, and Sinful. Each of these is a corruption, because everything man tries to regulate, he corrupts. Natural marriage and sex are the same thing- you're doing something plearuable that is pleasurable solely to encourage you to create the next generation. If sex didn't create the next generation, it would not be pleasurable- because the people that did it would not be passing their genes on to the next generation. Simple evolution. Sacramental marriage is a corruption of this- but not much of one- it basically says "we need to have morals and we need to insure that the children have role models of both sexes to raise them". This is religious marriage in the most conventional sense- it completes the natural marriage act of sex by finishing the task. Secular marriage is the government getting involved- and saying, originally, "we want to encourage certain types of parents that seem most successfull with tax breaks and other benefits". One early form in the United States was that multiracial marriages did not make for good parents, and so they were banned. The final form, Sinful marriage, is the inevitable corruption once money is involved: "We want all the benefits of being married without the responsibility of raising children". Personally, I see this as no different than cheating on your taxes or any other form of stealing money from the government.
I can guarantee you, people of those opinions will still see a need for birth control.
Of course- having children would ruin their scam of stealing money from the government.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you leave a spermatozoid alone in its environment (the testes) , it will not grow into a human. Similarly, neither will an unfertilized ovule. In both cases, some preconditions for have not been met, and so the cycle of mitosis and cell differentiation cannot commence.
But -- combine that sperm with an ovule in the right place (the uterus), allow it to implant itself in the wall of the uterus, and *then* you've got a potential human. The host environment provides nutrients, and the embryo grows on its own.
You can introduce a sperm to an egg in another environment (say, a petri dish) and if the conditions are right, the meeting will result in an embryo. But -- you must quickly transplant the embryo into a suitable host (a uterus or something similar) or it will quickly die. So, a fertilized embryo in a petri dish does not meet all the preconditions for a potential human.
It occurs to me that the embryo alone is not a future human. In fact, the mother-embryo *system* has the potential of a future human -- but if the does not mother continue to provide nutrients and act as a host, the fetus will die. Therefore, we can justify the mother's ability to choose abortion -- she is part of the system, after all.
And they're cheaper than they should be. A good hooker should cost you around a million with my method of sexual morality; she's called a wife ($50,000/year for 20 years).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What I object to is when these people make the mistake of getting pregnant without wanting to, and then guys like you start blaming it on religion. I mean, if I was going to break my religion's teachings, I wouldn't do it half-assed and get myself into trouble. Only a dimwit would say "God, I'm sorry I fucked her, but at least I didn't use a condom".
I agree.
Or at least I agree with blaming it on religion in general.
Some religions are better than others. There are a lot of decent Christian sects out there, while other "Christians" are the American version of the Talaban.
Overpopulation scares the shit out of me. That's why I think we need to allow religion in school, specifically, the The Church of Euthanasia. Kids these days need more than sex ed. They need the four pillars of Suicide, Abortion, Cannibalism, and Sodomy.
That's right Sodomy. It feels good and it's not just for homosexuals anymore!
Of course that is not going to protect you from VD, as many who receive an "abstinence only" education believe, but I say stupid kids dying of VD is a good thing.
And really, any parent who does not make sure their children have the knowledge they need to survive in this world are stupid, and again it is a good things if their kids die of VD, hopefully before they spawn any more idjets.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.