Slashdot Mirror
Skin Cells Turned Embryonic
anik315 writes "Nature is reporting a major breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research. A straightforward procedure using mouse fibroblasts harvested from the skin can be used to produce pluripotent stem cells that can potentially become any other cell in the body. Not only can Yamanaka's method use the most basic cells, it can be accomplished with simple lab techniques. Possible applications of this breakthrough are to check molecular changes in cells as certain conditions develop. Stem cells produced using this procedure, however, can not be used safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant."
I knew there was a better way than using dead babies.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The embryos are all protected by law, so this technology means they're going to be coming after us adults!
Soylent Green is made from people!
Just a few more years and it should be possible to cause fibroblasts to grow into embryos. IRC, it's more or less possible now but it involves mixing and matching parts of different cells (the nucleus from the fibroblast and the cytoplasm from a fertilized egg cell.
Anyway, that should throw the anti-abortion crowd for a loop: "Oh no, he's cut his skin. He's killing babies!" After all, the usual argument is that if something can develop into a human then it should be considered to be a human even before it develops into a human.
Is there a word for biological vaporware ? I've seen so many claims likke this lately.
A straightforward procedure using mouse fibroblasts harvested from the skin can be used to produce pluripotent stem cells [...] Stem cells produced using this procedure, however, can not be use to safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant.
I think I found the source of the problem.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Actual papers for those interested (it was published simultaneously by three groups): (Nature probably requires subscriptions, the first one is free access)
e xt?uid=PIIS1934590907000203
t /full/nature05934.html
t /full/nature05944.html
Nimet Maherali, Rupa Sridharan, Wei Xie, Jochen Utikal, Sarah Eminli, Katrin Arnold, Matthias Stadtfeld, Robin Yachechko, Jason Tchieu, Rudolf Jaenisch, Kathrin Plath, and Konrad Hochedlinger
http://www.cellstemcell.com/content/article/fullt
Keisuke Okita, Tomoko Ichisaka & Shinya Yamanaka
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurren
Marius Wernig, Alexander Meissner, Ruth Foreman, Tobias Brambrink, Manching Ku, Konrad Hochedlinger, Bradley E. Bernstein & Rudolf Jaenisch
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurren
Are we finally looking at a slash in hotdog manufacturing costs?!
Who needs high tech when your skin cells can turn you into a bionic person. I just can't wait for the IPO!
They claim they can reprogram cells with only 4 factors. The system only "correctly" reprograms a small percentage of cells.
They use a new technique that adds antibiotic resistance near markers for what they consider the properly reprogrammed cells. Antibiotics are used to kill off the baddies.
The fact that nearly 1/4 of the lines go on the form cancer, indicates the reprogramming is far for perfect.
Methylation Errors? Errors somewhere else in the chromatin? Something from the retroviruses they use to do some of the heavy lifting? Something we don't know (of many, many things) of other epigenetic mechanisms when gametes aren't involved?
In any case it sounds like interesting progress. In the end, science will end the political controversy, as we gain understanding, we will be able to turn any cell into any other cell. Embryos can rot in the bin, we won't need them given time.
> After all, the usual argument is that if something can develop into a human then it should be considered to be a human even before it develops into a human.
Not quite. You need to take better note of the verb tense. It's that if something is developing into a human, then it should be considered as human beforehand.
Well, except for the issue with the "human" part. Because we all know it's a living homo sapien. If you disagree, exactly what species is that embryo, blastocyst, or fetus? The only question is when it has a soul^W err, mind, personality and intellect worth preserving with legal force.
Okay, now you can go into flamewar mode over whether or not that's speciesist (handy hint: adding -ist or -ism automagically makes it wrong!) Won't someone please think of the great apes?
... when I hear it's been replicated at a few dozen labs.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Why are they running these experiments on mouse cells? Why aren't they starting with human skin cells and developing their techniques there? It would avoid the secondary step of having to transfer the technique from mouse tissue to human tissue.
I always assumed that the reason that experiments are done on mice and other animals is that they are easier to obtain than human subjects and that we can do things to them that would be considered unethical when done to a human (leaving aside some people's feelings that they are unethical when done to animals too).
But with skin cell experiments, I don't see the reason to do the research on animals. Human skin cells ought to be readily available, ethical to obtain, and ethical to experiment on.
Why start with mice on this? Why not start with humans and cut one step out of the process?
"The four transcription factors used by Yamanaka reprogramme cells inconsistently and inefficiently, so that less than 0.1% of the million cells in a simple skin biopsy will be fully reprogrammed."
As noted, the major problem is not just the inconsistency, but the locating of the modified cells.
However, unlike many other slashdot articles, this is is in a peer-reviewed journal, it is based on a technique which has been run for a while and altered based upon other followup work, and it might prove a useful addition for labs to do research, while of limited use in therapeutics.
But that also depends on cost. People forget that a successful research lab has got to get costs per experiment down - if it costs me $20 per sample and I have a plate of samples, I'll go broke trying to run any sizeable research of any note, especially that with significant data that can answer more than 2 basic questions of statistical significance.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Time to sell my stock shares in abortion clinics.
You can't take the sky from me.
As a cell ages, divides, ages some more, there is a particular section (damned if I can remember which) that shortens till it reaches a point that the cell is somehow considered too old and dies off. So, making stem cells from skin cells may have the effect of developing pre-aged cells. I wonder if that has been considered or addressed.
of creating stem cells on the very near horizon, what is the justification for using public money for research that tens of millions of people consider murder? Why not limit public funds to the tens of thousands of research projects (health-related or otherwise) that virtually no one disputes? Additionally, no stem-cell research that I know of is focused on any public health concern such as communicable diseases; rather, it is focused on private health issues such as cancer or Parkinson's disease. Hence, it is debatable whether such research is the domain of government at all. If the government is going to intrude so deeply into the private sphere, should it not do so under only the most benign of manners? I say this because some would argue, for example, that some military research is immoral. That may be true, but what is not particularly debatable that military affairs are the domain of government...indeed, one of its primary roles. The government MUST do military research, and inevitably, some will disagree. In contrast, there is no compelling reason for the government to fund stem-cell research at all...and even less so, given its controversy.
Let's spend the money on cellulitic ethanol, or a new super-collider, or anti-AIDS vaccines instead.
When studied, it was discovered that very low level DC currents were measured throughout the body and at the wound area on tested salamander. Later tests determined that artificially stimulating the cells with DC current triggered the cells to de-differentiate.
Interesting!
Even more interesting, the cells of more complex organisms, (humans), also react to low level DC current, and in fact, naturally occurring DC current plays a role in the normal growth and healing cycles of cells. All manner of tests have been performed, leading to a variety of strange discoveries, such as the finding that human cancer cells increase their growth rate by several orders of magnitude when exposed to electrical fields.
Why has this never been studied in depth? Well, the multi-billion dollar cancer and stem cell research industry would be upset if new and simple knowledge were to come to light. Conspiracy theory? Who cares. Salamanders can re-grow arms and nobody in the main-stream scientific community seems to have bothered to look at this closely. Apparently, the scientific explanation for how Salamanders do this is slip-shod at best; the semi-official explanation is that Salamander cells don't really de-differentiate, but rather, somehow, new stem cells migrate through the blood to the region of the wound. (This by people who have not actually looked at the puzzle closely, but who would lose stem cell research grant money if it were accepted that Salamander cells can do the 'impossible' (de-differentiate). How's that for the grand and noble scientific community?
You can read all about this, and all manner of other fascinating elements of electromagnetics as they relate to biological life in Robert O. Becker's book on the subject.
Incidentally, EM from cell phones and powerlines is covered in some depth, and several mechanisms by which low-power EM pollution can have a profound impact on living tissues, and the nervous system.
Typically, however, most people don't like to hear stuff like that as it means their cell phones and WiFi and other beloved toys are suddenly suspect. Awww.
-FL
They wasted a billion on Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
Stupid!
Leave it to the market to decide, they find cheaper and better solutions over the long run.
Bush was right but for the wrong reasons (has a tendency to be that way the few times he is right).
Fi8st 4void going
Why not start with human cells, thus saving the effort of transferring the techniques later?
A bit like saying why deploy changes onto a test system instead of straight onto the live system - after all, you'll only have to migrate to live later?
There are too many things that could go wrong - I'm not a molecular biologist, but I guess it's possible that if cells are persuaded to change their pattern of development (by switching on/off certain areas of the DNA, in a process that is not fully understood), a set of cells that briefly become, say, liver cells, could switch again to something altogether less benign? A tumour, say? Or maybe something that could spread and infect other regions of the body, or other people?
I'm sure a proper specialist could think of more plausible potential problems - but the point is, it's seriously unproven technology, and experimenting on humans would be highly unethical.
If DNA is like a library of code, would you install on your own system patches with lots of unknown and untested system calls, that you'd got from some site on the net?
Unless you run windows update, I guess ;-)
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
the same people who are the biggest advocates against abortion also tend to be the ones that seek to limit access to birth control, so that argument doesn't get very far either.
Sure it does, if reasonable people can ignore the others. The problem is unwanted pregnancy and reasonable people can work together to reduce it and support the people who have the problem. The use of obnoxious and confused advocates is an underhanded way to kill off a proposal.
The counterexamples are communists, extreme feminists and corporate monsters who put production above personal well being. They don't value babies because they don't value each other.
You don't have to be religious or hate sex to think that abortion is murder. In almost all cases, if no one does anything to a pregnant woman, a child will be born. The person who stops that birth has ended a human life. It is a terrible thing to do and it is not justified by other terrible things, lack of resources or potential uses for the remains.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I love the irony of your post. I wish I believed it was intentional.
Wow! If this technique is researched further, it may not be necessary to use embryonic stems cells any more. This sounds good on many levels, and will probably make both sides of the argument happy.
I know TFA says that these cells cannot be transplanted into a patient, it is too dangerous. I wonder if improvements in the technique could lower these dangers to an acceptable level however...after all, embryonic stem cells are in the same boat as far as I know.
it can develop into a baby, and that it already is a human
I thought it was a cat. No?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The poster makes a serious ethical point.
However emotively he put it, surely it's quite different to take tissue from a consenting human donor than from a subject whose life has just been ended - however "potential" its (his? her?) humanity may be.
Don't all but the most extreme "it's the woman's body till it's born" zealots regard the abortion of a foetus (with its potential to grow into a human adult) as a necessary evil, rather than a simple lifestyle choice?
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
I thought this article was going to be about Sepultura and their song "Dead Embryonic Cells" being some sort of inspiration for science. Maybe it was, the scientists just didn't want to cop to it.
How do you verify that someone has been taking their birth control?
How do you prevent people who are not eligible to have abortions because they wern't 'responsible' from having abortions anyway?
paintball
In almost all cases, if no one does anything to a pregnant woman, a child will be born.
In almost all cases, an egg will die before becoming fertilized.
In almost all cases, sperm will die before fertilizing an egg.
In almost all cases, if no one does anything to an egg that has been fertilized outside of a woman, that egg will die.
Therefore, killing an embryo is OK, as if you left it sitting there it was going to die anyway, right?
paintball
> They want to punish women for having sex. Nothing more, nothing less.
Inventing evil motives for those who disagree with you is intellectually dishonest. I've yet to see even one pro-life person claim that as their motivation. Ever. Let alone all of them. If you can't disagree without inventing a reason to hate those who hold it, you are well outside the bounds of rational discourse.
There's a word to describe you: bigot.
Believe it or not, that word has an actual meaning, although I wonder if anyone knows what it means given how carelessly it gets thrown around these days.
OK, not exactly a third way, but there is a libertarian compromise that respects, as far as is practicable, both positions. (Granted, anyone who finds themselves in one camp or the other will disagree, but hear me out.) This compromise was worked out by Loyola professor Walter Block. It recognizes that abortion is two things: eviction of an unwanted intruder from a woman's body, and the murder of a unique human being. A woman has the perfect right to evict any intruder from her property, that is, her own body, at any time, for any reason. (Self-ownership is the first principle of liberty.) Block maintains that if the fetus can be evicted without killing it, there is a moral obligation to do so. To kill it when there are other avenues of eviction available is murder. Fetal viability comes into play, but not in the way that pro-lifers think: they think it has to be brought to term inside an unwilling woman's body once it is viable. Not so. Do a c-section and move the baby to an incubator. Happens all the time these days. Nor is anyone obligated to care for a baby so evicted, but people seem to be lining up to do just that, and good for them. Anyway, the paper is here.
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
Creating a life to terminate is ghoulish to say the least, but it can be justified. Fertility treatments and research are both justification, as long as the practitioner is competent. As you point out, there's no practical way to keep all of the results alive.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now all we need is a bunch of over-religious nutters telling me that the skin on my ass is a child that hasn't been born, yet is entitled to all the rights of an individual.....
Maybe I'll even get to use the "Stem cells are people MY ASS!" line, and actually be correct on BOTH sides of the issue at the same time!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I'm a bit sceptical about this, as a previous claim to turn adult bone marrow into stem cells, by Catherine Verfaille, later turned out to be impossible to reproduce. A critical article appeared in Nature, as well as a more popular article (in German).
While your final line makes logical sense in the lab, it does not apply in the womb, nor does it apply to an organism that one creates for that purpose. There is a distinct moral difference between directly destroying life, and by inactivity failing to protect it. A simplified (but admittedly straw man) analogy would be to say that there is in fact a difference between allowing an acorn to be eaten by a squirrel, and cutting down a tree. Or more aptly, eating a fresh chicken egg vs killing a chicken. There is in fact a great difference between actively destroying life and allowing it to end, and while verbose arguments may soothe an individual's conscience, they do not erase moral or ethical implications.
The fact that there is any doubt whatsoever is what gives many of abortion's moral opponents issue with in vitro fertilization, as well. One need not share the view to comprehend it.
This entire issue seems to be clouded over by emotionalism. And admittedly the problem seems to be that most of those who publicly vocalize opinions on the issue are so polarized, usually pandering to one side or the other in hopes of gaining political support. Ultimately, the trouble with logical or technological answers to these issues is that those on both sides of the actual "debate" so deeply fear the end of the dispute itself.
I will pay you ten to one that in 2030, there will be no major health-related treatments that are based on destroying human embryos.
Nazi researchers didn't know how long you could dunk someone in ice water before you could no longer save them. That is why they researched it.
I hate bringing out the N-bomb but you set yourself up for it totally.
Its great that they can do this in mice now, but at some point this stuff has to move beyond experimenting on animals and being tested on humans. I don't think I would jump up and down at the chance to be a human guinea pig, regardless of how promising this procedure may be. But I do hope they are able to continue their progress because it does seem to be a valuable technique down the road :/
I guess you MIGHT call that a bit of a downside. I don't know how many people trying to relieve some of their Parkinson's Disease or Diabetes symptoms are going to be cool with a 20% chance of "trading up" to cancer.
You know, after the first read of your comment I agreed with you. But after I thought about it, if I had Parkisons, which isn't as treatable as diabetes, I just might consider this new treatment as an alternative. At least some forms of cancer are treatable, and with the prior knowledge of a 20% chance of occurance, it would seem that doctors would be able to get a jump on treatment of the cancer. Tough call.
So, you went from the actually-advanced argument, "fetuses frequently miscarry naturally, so inducing a miscarriage isn't particularly unnatural", to pretending that the original poster said, "people die, so killing them in ways that have little or nothing to do with natural causes of death is morally right"?
It sure is easier to attack positions that your opponent doesn't actually hold, isn't it?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
While religiosity is a good predictor of how patriarchal someone's views are, it's not the only predictor. The real drive is the belief that women who have sex deserve to be punished for it, and you don't have to be religious to think that--though it helps. I'd be interested in knowing what portion of people who oppose abortion hold misogynistic views as well.
For evidence of how bad-faith the anti-abortion movement is, there's always this handy-dandy chart.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Then again, your wailing about "encourag[ing] promiscuity" and how those damned sluts deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because, well, they were asking for it, what with the having sex and all, leads me to believe that your motives may not be that different.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You make good points, but waving your unverifiable qualifications around (after all, this is the internet; no one knows you're a Nobel Prize winner) doesn't help you. If you're a genius, show us with your blazingly incisive rhetoric. Any idiot can claim to have a Ph.D.; not everyone can put together a coherent argument to support their point. Doing the latter is worth far more than doing the former.
(If you're going to ask how you should have responded to the assertion that you're an incompetent human being, if not by claiming credentials for yourself, the answer is that it's not worth responding to. It's just an ad hominem; it doesn't contain anything of worth.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I think that the grandparent poster is aware that "Star Trek" characters are fictional, which puts him way past religious folks who've historically taken their fandom so seriously that they've set people on fire because of it.
Also, "a unique set of DNA" is an incredibly stupid definition of human. From that point of view, a chimera is two people; a set of identical twins is one person. These are not in fact hypothetical situations; in them, we consider a chimera to be one person, and identical twins to be two. Conjoined twins are two people if they have two separate brains, implying that what we think of as human is a mind, not a set of DNA.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Get this through your head: crying about the possibility that you might have been aborted as a blastocyst is like crying that the rapist might never have attacked your mother. No one is denying that you're a person, or that you're capable of doing good, or any of that. Because pro-choice advocates say that grown human beings aren't people because of the circumstances of their conception? Where the hell are you getting this from?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If the source cells are just skin cells, why can't they simply be taken from the patient? Why is rejection considered as a problem, when patients could receive transplants of their own stem cells?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I reject your premise that in every case a fetus is equivalent to a fully formed human.
In that light your points are completely irrelevant.
In addition, whether you realize it or not, you sound incredibly draconian and misogynist. Your views, quite frankly, are totally dated and unrealistic in modern society, and regardless of how loudly you bang your drum, you'll never get the world you're preaching for.
Ultimately, your insistence on repeating the "murder" tripe is a clear indicator of your inability to rationally consider the realities of the situation.
Catholic moral teaching opposes both abortion and contraception (with the exception of NFP). However, I think you would find very few Catholics anywhere who believe that the two are morally equivalent, and I can't believe you would find anyone who would prefer an abortion over contraception. This is reflected in Church teaching as well, as by the teaching that anyone who procures an elective abortion automatically excommunicates themselves, which is certainly not true of contraception.
...but I agree with scuttlemonkey's heading - from the "awaiting-further-objections dept".
I'm "awaiting objections" from the side of the political crowd that has been demanding unrestricted Embryonic Stem Cell harvesting for years.
Because, you see, if indeed there is a way to create pluripotent stem cells without necessarily taking them from fetuses, one might say that Pres. Bush's moral qualms were in hindsight justifiable, and acted as a spur toward the development of less-morally-questionable sources.
And it seems to be inconceivable to one side of the political spectrum that anything Bush & co. would do could be right in both a scientific and moral sense.
-Styopa
The issue is really whether fertilization creates a human being. Neither an egg or a sperm individually can possibly be considered a human being, as it only has half the requisite number of chromosomes. The same thing cannot be said of a fertilized egg, and although many people don't believe it's a human being, some do.
With respect to an egg that has been fertilized outside of a woman, you're quite right: if it is not implanted, it will die. But how did that fertilized egg get there in the first place? It isn't as if they're just laying around on the floor and someone picks them up and uses them to do cloning research. If you believe that fertilization is sufficient to create a human being, then you probably shouldn't fertilize any eggs unless you believe that you have a pretty good chance of being able to keep them alive. If you don't believe that, then of course there isn't any problem.
The vast majority of eggs fertilized outside of the natural process are fertilized for ... surprise ... fertilization treatments. Even most of the eggs actually implanted in the uterus die, and there are plenty left over that are not implanted at all.
So if you have a bunch of fertilized eggs that are going to die anyway, why not do something productive with them?
paintball
That's a good question. If the "something productive" happens to be implanting them in the womb to be in rathof someone who wants to be a Mom, then I think it's a great idea. In fact, there are programs like Snowflake that attempt to accomplish exactly that.
If the "something productive" happens to be stem cell research, then it's a little bit more iffy, because if you thought that it was wrong to create the embryos in the first place, then you run the risk that by using them you're creating an incentive to (wrongly) create even more such embryos in the future. And, if you do happen to believe that they are human beings, then they deserve a certain amount of respect in both life and death. Most of us would, for example, consider eating our deceased relatives a rather disgusting prospect, even if it could be rendered safe from a public health perspective, but why not do something useful with all that good meat? Well, AFAICS, it's out of respect for the deceased, even though, in practical terms, they're not in a position to care.
"Wow. The majority of this article's discussion are children of my -1 troll first post."
You said something stupid and people lined up to correct you. How is that surprising?
"Not bad, I'd say."
Well, no one agrees with you on this, but I doubt that's new territory for you. YES BAD. If what you said was so colossally ridiculous and inflammatory that it brought a ton of people out to tell you how ridiculous and inflammatory it was, that's an indication that you're way off the mark with your thought processes. It doesn't make you a rebel, or a forward thinker, or insightful, or and individual. It makes you wrong and incapable of comprehending it.
Get it?
The "pro-choice" movement doesn't kick people out for "choos[ing] life". The "pro-choice" movement kicks people out for telling women that they cannot choose, that they will be forced to give birth whether they wish to or not. The "pro-choice" movement does not lobby for mandatory abortion; it lobbies for women to have the choice (there's that word) of whether or not to have an abortion. They are neutral on the issue of whether one should or should not get an abortion, taking the position that that's the business of the person lugging around the fetus.
Nice, though, how you think "choose life" means "exert control over others' bodies".
Skipping the bit where you complain about the school's sex-ed not properly discouraging people from having sex, as it doesn't relate to anything I said... See, this nonsense about using abortion as birth control is more of that "women don't get abortions for the right reasons, so we need to step in and stop them, so that stupid sluts learn their lesson" bullshit I mentioned before; you want to punish women for what you see as their irresponsibility in having too much sex. I reckon that should a condom break or somesuch, you and your ladyfriend would be getting an abortion, assuring yourselves that it was a good one, that you weren't like those other people.
Here, I have a fat stack of anecdotes from people who sound very much like you. Please read them and see if you notice anything familiar.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
> Well, there's also the rapist's fear that even after a guy has gone to the trouble of raping a woman, she might go and undo all his hard work.
Yeah, because we all know that the pro-life people are supportive of rape, I mean, it's not like they consider it a mortal sin or anything, right?
> Where the hell are you getting this from?
Might have learned to cast ridiculous aspersions on peoples' motives from someone like you? I dunno, but it'd make a lot of sense.
If you're going to disagree with someone, you can do better than to invent ridiculous motives that give you an excuse to hate them. Doing so is bigoted.
Well, AFAICS, it's out of respect for the deceased, even though, in practical terms, they're not in a position to care.
You don't not eat dead people because of the wishes of the dead people, you don't eat dead people because people who are alive want to believe they won't be eaten when they die. And if dead people get eaten, then people who are alive can't live life in the comfort of knowing they won't be eaten.
It's not a good analogy - because living people are GOING to die. Nobody who is alive has any risk of being killed for stem cells. We're already past the point where that COULD have happened to us.
So, are all the currently not-dead-yet embryos served by knowing that they won't be killed for stem cell research? Of course not - they're just embryos, and not aware of anything.
paintball
Really? I'm not sure I care if someone eats me when I die, but I'm positive that I don't want to eat anyone else. Yuck.
It's not a good analogy - because living people are GOING to die. Nobody who is alive has any risk of being killed for stem cells. We're already past the point where that COULD have happened to us.So, are all the currently not-dead-yet embryos served by knowing that they won't be killed for stem cell research? Of course not - they're just embryos, and not aware of anything.
I guess I'm dubious about the idea that morality is driven by fear that something similar might happen to oneself. I'm at very low risk of being the victim of an insurance scam because I'm well-educated and financially savvy; I'm at very low risk of being raped because I'm male; I'm at very low risk of being killed in a friendly fire incident because I'm not and have never been part of any country's military forces and I'm too old to be drafted. But this doesn't mean that I'm indifferent about those things happening to other people, because I'm capable of imagining myself in their place. I would not have wanted my mother to have an abortion when she was pregnant with me, because then I wouldn't be here writing this comment on Slashdot when I should be working.
I don't think anyone could label these cells "embryonic" because they were made to resemble embryonic cells. They didn't come from mouse embryos; they came from adult skin cells. That being said, I don't know why anyone would have ethical objections to adapting this technique to human cells. I am firmly opposed to any operation that harms humans at any stage of development, but since no adult person would be seriously harmed by the harvesting of their skin cells, I say this looks like a useful advance in science.
"You rejection means nothing but your lack or inability to objective view anything concerning the topic."
No asshole, my rejection was meant to get you thinking beyond the assumption that a fetus is a living, whole human being. Your argument relies on that premise from it's inception, and I do not believe it to be true.
So instead of actually reading my post, you make a baseless assumption and proceed from there. Very much in line with your previous posts, and your whole line of reasoning in general.
"And I don't really care what you think my Ideas and thought sound like."
Which is exactly what I was getting at, you're irrationally attached to a position, so much so that when honestly criticized you react with aggression. I bet when asked, racists say EXACTLY what you said. I doubt that's a coincidence.
"I know why you posted as AC, it is because you could add nothing to counter the argument presented."
I would say disagreeing with your central premise adds something. I would say asking you to consider that your ideas are antiquated and socially backward is something. I would say that line you wrote there is you being defensive because of your total lack of rationality for your argument, resulting in a complete inability to defend it from genuine scrutiny.
If your argument had any basis beyond your own assumptions of correct moral behavior, it would have been trivial to debate it with me. Instead, you flame me because you argument is flawed and indefensible.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Here's a chart; please note the part about rape and incest exceptions.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Communicable disease issues. Demographic issues. Education issues. Wow! The public is affected.
Clearly, such activity should be regulated!
Somehow, I don't think you like your argument anymore.
That made less sense than your first post. You should have just cut your losses.
Apparently you do not understand your own logic then. You claimed, in essence, that any behavior that affects the public is something that can be regulated. I hate to inform you, but that means EVERYTHING you do could be regulated and that NOTHING is private. I am sure you would not want to live in such a world.
Cancer, for example, is a private issue. It is not contagious and only has effects on third parties (such as your family and doctors) are via voluntary relationships. Claiming that it is "public" because you will be out of work and therefore not paying taxes is silly. If your definition of public is so broad, it covers everything and there is no privacy.
Pah. Blind freaks can't tell a joke's a joke.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Cancer is a huge burden on the public in terms of costs paid by medicare (read the public). In fact, direct payments made by medicare for cancer treatment is over 60 billion dollars a year. Research has led to increased ability to detect and cure cancer, which is why cancer rates have dropped recently. So it's in the best interest of the public to fund research because they not only directly benefit from new cures, but they also save money by reducing the amount of money paid by medicare for treatment.
Yes there are potential impacts of sex on the public, which is why sex *is* regulated. Don't believe me, go have anal sex with a 10 year old in Alabama or ask yourself why blood tests for STDs are required in a number of states before marriage or why there is gov't funding of sex education.