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Obama To Reverse Bush Limits On Stem Cell Work
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Associated Press:
"Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Barack Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. ... Under President George W. Bush, taxpayer money for that research was limited to a small number of stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001, lines that in many cases had some drawbacks that limited their potential usability. But hundreds more of such lines — groups of cells that can continue to propagate in lab dishes — have been created since then, ones that scientists say are healthier, better suited to creating treatments for people rather than doing basic laboratory science. Work didn't stop. Indeed, it advanced enough that this summer, the private Geron Corp. will begin the world's first study of a treatment using human embryonic stem cells, in people who recently suffered a spinal cord injury. Nor does Obama's change fund creation of new lines. But it means that scientists who until now have had to rely on private donations to work with these newer stem cell lines can apply for government money for the research, just like they do for studies of gene therapy or other treatment approaches."
Anti-abortionists are going to have a field day with this. If stem cells can be harvested from aborted fetuses, and stem cells actually fulfill their promise as everyone expects they will, then getting an abortion suddenly becomes not so much the destruction of one life but the preservation of many.
Embryonic stem cells do not come from aborted fetuses, at least not from the traditional type of abortion. Embryonic stem cells come from left over fertilized eggs at fertility clinics that are to be thrown away. These are thawed, encouraged to begin development, then harvested for stem cells, which destroys them.
(I find it ironic that the last time stem cells came up, someone accused pro-lifers of trying to say that stem comes come from abortions)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Life does not begin at conception, the sperm and egg cells that exists before conception are very much alive themself already. Albeit lacking the ability to divide into anything useful without first combining their genetic materials and finding a generous donor of nutrients and growing space.
As for the eggs, the fertility treatment doesn't work by picking out one egg, fertilizing it, putting it into a female and then seeing if it falls out again or gets stuck. It's more like picking a basket of eggs, fertilizing them all, screening them for defects, picking out the best one(s) and putting them back into the mother. This leaves us with a basket of motherless embryos(or zygotes in the early stages, but still motherless)(which in reality looks something like a basket full of seemingly empty petri dishes, not a pile of screaming dying babies as some would prefer us to belive). Calling them aborted is retarded simply because they aren't.
Oh, and they're only called fetuses after 8 weeks. they're embryos until then. And as they'll be put to the torch either way, why not try to derive something useful from them? If a few human cells lacking a nervous system is of so great importance then the prospect of saving several billions of human cells with a nervous system by providing reconstruction of failed organs and systems should be a national top priority.