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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.''"
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!
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.
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.
"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 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.
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,
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.
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
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!
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
The bolding was done by me.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.