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Stem Cell Bill Passes in Australia
nickd writes "Having recently being passed in the Senate by only 2 votes, an Australian bill to overturn the ban on 'theraputic cloning' has now been passed in the House of Representatives by 82-62. The amendment that was seeking to prevent stem cells being extracted from the eggs of aborted late term female fetuses has also been voted down. The changes will allow scientists to create and use embryos up to 14 days old for research."
believe it or not, some people find *not* doing this more unethical/immoral than doing this.
This can take something that is rather upleasant in the first place, that would not be avoided, and turn it into something that can save millions of lives.
That being said, I hope the bill has a rider in it that says a person cannot recieve compensation for donating the genetic material.
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I think the problem most Christians have with stem cells is not using them, but where they came from. So using stem cells from someone's bone marrow is okay, but using them from an aborted child is not. The big problem is the same that people have with organ donation. Not that what can be done with them is bad, but people become afraid that if someone's life is on the line, a doctor may not be as inclined to save them if their organs can be harvested. It's similar with stem cells, why not just encourage abortion and harvest the cells? It can be a little to close to Soylent Green for most people's taste.
All this stuff about Stem Cell Research, Abortion... Is really about one thing really which no one want to define.
Where is the line between Ethical Science and Unethical Science. This is the issue which needs to be debated not every single thing that falls in the gray area.
We know there are some things that are defenatly beyond the range of ethical science. Like Killing healthy and productive people to examin how a perfectly working body and mind works, or taking identical twins away from their parents at birth and giving one a loving family and putting an other one in a box with no human interaction to see where the limit of Nature vs. Nuture lays. Even though these things if widly experemented could help out greater humanity but it beyond the range of Ethical Science, and should be avoided.
Now things like Stem Cell resheach is falling in a Gray areas. Where people feel both ways about it. For Sciencetist there is no real line for this gray area so it is up to them to realize how far to go. This could be good or bad. But that is where the problem lays.
For those people who are against this type of science, it is not because they are religios extreamest or sciencetificly enept. It is just that when they look into the gray area it seems to dark for them to say yes this is right. As well the people who are for it are not always Unreligious, imoral, who only listen to science as the only source of wisdom. They look at the spot in the gray area and they see it is more light then dark.
We can't allow Scienctist to do whatever they want just because they want to see the results, just as much we can't prevent sciencetist from learning more just because interpration of books written over a thousand years ago say it is not right.
So Stem Cell research is actually a very difficult topic and not something that is compleatly sensible at all. It is a difficult decision.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
People can volunteer for experimentation right now.
Too abd this isn't about people, it's about a ball of about 128 cells.
Or do yo cry for all the 'people' that your body sheds every day?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since you can't join every religion (many of them won't allow it), and since you cannot know for a certainty in advance which of them is right (out of several thousand), plus you cannot rule out the possibility that the "one true faith" died out thousands of years ago (have you ensured you can get into Valhalla?)... basically you're screwed no matter what you do. The odds are against Christians as much as they are against everyone else.
Pascal's wager is bunk, and always has been.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
True. Throughout the 30's, european scientists often had moral issues with the medical research they were performing, but their work expanded the field of medicine greatly. True, many complained that the test subjects were not being given a choice, or that the experiments were a bit cruel and often resulted in maiming or killing the patient. However, science won out over ethics at that time, and it was science and the extent of human knowledge that benefited. Of course, it also left psychological scars on the world that won't go away for a very long time.
I do not have a significant qualm regarding stem cell research. I have limited issues with cloning ONLY for the purpose of producing more research material. I also do not consider an embryo to be on the same moral level as a fetus, or a fetus to be the same thing as a viable baby. But I do think every major advance in science presents us with a new slippery slope, and that concepts of morality change drastically over time, based primarily on the decisions made by previous generations.
You can rest assured that whatever you consider slightly dubious but warranted or necessary today with either be absolutely shunned by your children's children, or embraced in ways that would horrify you.
Without a clear line being drawn, I guarantee you that some parts of the world will do whatever is possible. Once you loosen the boundries in one area (creating biologically human lives, even if of highly dubious status), the rest can quickly fall like dominoes. Then you end up with debate over how far a test subject should be allowed to gestate before it's consumed, or debate over the legal status of a human created by humans specifically for study. Genetic manipulation only makes the lines blur further.
Progress is the core of modern society. But err on the side of caution, because the last century has shown what happens when you let morality take a back seat to that progress.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
>potential cure for a disease like Parkinson's
Look, I'm as pro-stem cell research as you can be. I think it's great, and I think someone is going to do it no matter what so we might as be the ones who do it.
But I'm tired of the arguement that says, "We must do X, because it could possibly do Y".
It might NOT do Y, also. We do scientific research to gain knowlege. Sometimes there's even a goal in mind behind the search for that knowlege. But this constant shrieking that "We must do stem cell research because it could cure disease (fill in the blank) smacks to much of the the old saw "We must do it FOR THE CHILLLLLLDREEEENNNNN!".
Steve
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