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US Finalizes Stem Cell Research Guidelines
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Cosmos Magazine, to wit: "The US government unveiled final rules for embryonic stem cell research, laying out ground rules for 'ethically responsible, scientifically worthy' studies eligible for federal funds. The new rules, which go into effect today, follow President Barack Obama's March 9 executive order lifting a ban on embryonic stem cell research, an order that went into effect under his predecessor, George W. Bush. ... The US National Institutes of Health's (NIH) guidelines are slightly less restrictive than those outlined in a draft document released in April in that they allow the use of existing stem cell lines, in addition to new ones derived from IVF procedures. ... The NIH received some 49,000 comments from patient advocacy groups, scientists, medical groups, and other interested parties before issuing the guidelines."
During the 6 years that this has been banned how much research into life saving treatments has been delayed? How many living, breathing, people have been denied these treatments? How many more will die over the next 10 years that could have been saved?
And all to placate the extreme pro-life fringe, who count fertilized embryos (that would be destroyed anyway) as sacred, and the ignorant who continually refer to "aborted fetuses" whenever the subject comes up.
For shame.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The point is that if the bans were there, then the embryos wouldn't be destroyed in the first place.
This, of course, ignores comepletely that most embryos held by fertility clinics (and other sources) are ultimately destroyed anyway.
My view is simple: Why not recycle? If another use can be found for them, great. If not, that's fine too.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Your entire post is misleading. President Bush was the first President who had to make a decision regarding stem cells. He limited federal funds to existing adult stem cells because of misplaced moral considerations. The embryos would have been destroyed by the fertility labs anyway, but when signing the bill, Bush was flanked by children conceived from embryos. There was no scientific reason to limit the federal funding. It's not even clear the moral justification was that great, either.
After Bush crippled competing research, it's no wonder that adult stem cells are ahead in the race. Imagine what would have happened if stem cell research was not limited out of political considerations.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
It was effectively a ban, since if you ran any privately funded stem cell research in the same labs as any work (even with nothing to do with stem cells), the federal funding would be withdrawn for that research.
A "ban on federal funding for X, Y, and Z" is effectively a ban on X, Y, and Z.
Take abstinence only sex-education for example. I'm not sure what the current situation is, but for a long time schools either taught abstinence only sex ed (no instruction about condom use. No mention of birth control at all, unless it paints the users as morally bankrupt) or they had to stop taking certain funds from the state and federal government. There aren't too many school boards that will vote to turn down money... Even if it hurts the kids.
If you control the purse strings, you control the outcome. Are you surprised people see this as a ban?
There's a few possible candidate thresholds but, when it comes to destruction, the ones that make the most sense are:
Experimentation is a much broader issue with many more possible scenarios and lots of grey areas. That said, I can't see a significant ethical problem with experimentation if you're dealing with individual cells for therapeutic purposes.
As someone else pointed out, there may be significant ethical issues in how you obtained the embryos or eggs due to the risk it poses to the donor. I think some totalitarian state having "farms" with captive unwilling donor women to produce embryos for export to Western hospitals is definitely a scenario we would want to prevent through legislation, and the source tracking as with the current legislation should address that.
To use your example, experimenting with cells from low-division embryos is not significantly different from experimenting with skin or bone marrow cells. You don't have a problem with donating a few skin cells because, with a local anaesthetic, you wouldn't even feel it. On the other hand, if someone endangered your life by ripping 50% or more of your skin off for stem cell material, I expect you would be pretty upset. Conversely, an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything.
Certainly, if successful embryonic stem cell therapies actually get developed, then there will be an issue with supply vs. demand and access criteria. That said even if we don't find an ethically satisfactory technical solution for solving the supply scarcity problem, we've already got a similar issue with a limited supply in the case of organ transplants. Yet there doesn't seem to be a credible broad movement arguing for the cessation of organ transplants.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Jumping in here...
A bit of background, I am an atheist, and I am against abortion (except in the cases where the mother could die). I am not against stem-cell research though, because the cells were already extracted, and would be destroyed if otherwise not used. If every cluster was brought to term (an absurdity), then I would be against stem-cell research as well.
The reason I stated I am an atheist is to make it perfectly clear that I don't have an idea of sin, or "ensoulment" involved here, basically this is ethical and not a moral judgment. I bring up my opposition to abortion, because these are related issues, and I am for stem-cell research for the same reasons I am against abortion, and have the same caveats to my support as I do my opposition.
I also agree with the person above you; the "humanity" of an embryo is determined by its neurological properties. Without a brain, or a nervous system above a certain threshold of complexity, you cannot be considered to be human, much less sencient. The caveat here is potential, an embryo may be a person someday, and this must be weighed as well. In the case of abortion, the odds of fulfilling this potential is rather high left to its own devices, wherein the case of stem-cells the odds of reaching the point of being human is completely nill. The cells that we use for research will NEVER turn into people left to their own devices, and thus their potential is much much lower than an organic (in utero) cell mass.
We must weigh the potential here. Being a human is obviously the most important, but we must also balance this with the utility to science, and the well-being of humanity as a whole.
The caveat here is that I will not inflict these opinions on anyone, this should be the choice of the parent or donor. I say this because I am pretty sure I don't know any better than any other person, much less the people effected by these decisions. While being against abortion, I still am pro-choice, as I am towards stem-cells.
If you have a brain-dead dependent, you, granted power of eternity, can pull the plug. This should be no different for undeveloped cell masses in deep freeze. The donor should choose the fate. Not a bunch of self-righteous asses such as me and you (or really anyone else).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey