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Neurons Created Directly From Skin Cells
alx5000 writes "The Times is running a story about a neurologic breakthrough that could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's: Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time. Quoting neurobiologist Professor Jack Price: 'This suggests that there are no great rules — you can reprogramme anything into anything else.' The article also points out that this method could work around the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem-cell research."
but where will south park turn to for jokes? skin cells are not that funny
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
...The next time I tell one of my users to get off their ass because they're depriving their brain of oxygen, it'll be more than a snarky, shit-headed remark?
So that's why they cut of the foreskin.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I'm happy for those with MS & Macular Degeneration...
There is Hope!
(Just not the "Obama" kind of hope...)
I'm curious...
Is this possibly a cure for Alzheimers, as well?
Holy happy hippy crap!
Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time.
This research counters all the arguments that people shouldn't do drugs because they kill brain cells. Now that we know how to create new brain cells, there is no excuse for not being stoned. And bike riders can now throw away there helmets. Science brings freedom back to democracy.
So, AWESOME!
Uh, do we have anyway to implant vat grown neurons into people in some meaningful way? Can we actually attach vat grown neurons to, uh, other neurons?
This is going to be one of those "wait 5 years" breakthroughs isn't it?
Oh yes there is: it's too expensive.
-kgj
...until this technology can be used to regrow luscious locks of hair for balding people? Just asking... for a friend... .
If the implications pan out, not much longer.
I like stem cells, but feel that abortion is the most sensitive of issues and ought to remain free of any profit motive.
To me this breakthrough seems like a win-win.
And people still bitch about the ban of embryonic stem cells. If we think of it, the ban actually spurs research to a much better direction.
Sick people don't have money because they spend it all on hospitals and medicine but horny old fat people have tons of money. If Dr. Jack wants some serious grant money he'd better try to turn fat cells in boner cells. He can use some of that cash to help him make Michael J. Fox less shaky and hell, why not give him a giant wang while he's at it.
He'd be great in a commercial, "Hi, I'm Michael J. Fox. You may have noticed that I'm a lot less shaky these days and I also have a giant wang now. I owe it all to Dr. Jack." Boom! Instant Nobel Prize.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
There are no "workarounds" in the need for embryonic stem cells. Each approach and method of stem cell generation have their respective strengths and weaknesses
I like stem cells, but feel that abortion is the most sensitive of issues and ought to remain free of any profit motive.
It's cost us years, possibly as much as a decade, of research time because of religious considerations. In many cases, aborted fetuses wouldn't survive to term anyway, or are a threat to the mother's health -- but many consider that it has to be a baby or nothing at all. It's that kind of black-and-white thinking that has no place in serious discussions of biology -- Nature does not tolerate black and white. It is a very grey and organic process, where few hard lines can be drawn.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Great... its The Thing.
Fine, fine, I accept the mod. I still say eating babies is funny, but there's no excuse for misspelling "smartest". That's just dum.
If you never do research with fetal stem cells, you'll never know what they can do. When the alternative to fetal stem cell research is throwing the fetal stem cells in an incinerator, don't we have a moral obligation to get the best use out of them that we can?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...but your brain?
Emphasis on directly, we've been able to coax human adult somatic cells to become pluripotent stem cells since 2007. The "ethical issues" are pretty much old news, bringing it up almost feels like troll bait. TFA suggests that these cells are much less prone to cancer than iPSCs, which seems like a rather important bit the summary omitted.
the most powerful intellect is that unbounded by indubitable preconception
All of the work with adult cells relies on our deep understanding from the much easier case of fetal cells.
"The article also points out that this method could work around the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem-cell research."
Would we have had this development if there hadn't been any ethical issues with embryonic stem cells?
This is more a religious issue rather than ethical - much like the pro-choice and anti-choice debate. Same people are anti-stem cell as those who are anti-choice.
Don't get carried away and be all rash now.
Some drugs actually promote neurogenesis. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253627/
You wouldn't want to get stoned all the time and then have this new cell therapy and end up with too many neurons.
For a while probably, at least until adult stem cells are actually proven to be as useful as embryonic stem cells and are able to be used interchangeably. Yes there are some uses of adult stem cells that have produced therapeutic results but not every therapy or study can be done with adult cells.
Furthermore there is not much of an ethical dilemma for using embryonic stem cells as they are not children nor will they ever develop into children. The problem is political and based in the morality of others which doesn't consider very deeply the question. The problem is that people often equate potential life for life, and this is wrong and ultimately produces evil.
For instance if you really believed that embryos had the same worth as a fetus or a child and a hospital was burning and you could only rescue all the babies in the maternity ward(we'll say 24 of them) or all of the potential babies in the cryogenic freezer then you logically would rescue the freezer as you would save far more lives. I for one would choose the actual babies and save the maternity ward.
Nature is only organic if it has carbon in it.
For those of you trying to find the actual nature article, here. I know we hate paywalls, but it should really be required for submission to slashdot that a link to the real paper, not preview, be included.
I am not a stem cell biologist, nor am I a neurobiologist, and I will need to read the paper more carefully when I’m at home, but some of my thoughts:
There do seem to be some hurdles to using this in humans, but many are trivial in comparison, and the reason the authors didn’t do them yet is because they wanted to get this out there before anyone else did. For one thing, they haven’t shown this in humans yet, but it should work in human cells that’s their stated next step. These cells were grown using dead mouse “feeder cells” which is common in cell culture, but complicates things for human therapy. You don’t want even dead mouse cells or other people’s dead cells in something that is going to go into your brain. People are working on culturing without feeder cells, I’m not sure where they are on that. The method of getting the 3 genes in is also an issue. These guys used lentiviral transfection, which is not something you want for human cells. Earlier work on IPSC got it done by incubating cells with transcription factor –protein- modified to penetrate cells. That might be a good next step here, though it would probably decrease the efficiency.
A bigger issue to me is what they are transfecting. They’re putting in three transcription factors, Ascl1, Brn2 (also called Pou3f2) and Myt1l. One of them, Ascl1, is found in many cancers (according to wiki anyway) and might be tumorgenic. Especially if they find they can’t get it to work without viral transfection, that could be a concern. The other two though aren’t tumorgenic apparently. Brn2 (also called Pou3f2) and Myt1l are both associated with neuron differentiation, which is interesting.
They did overcome a big hurdle: these are not pluripotent, which probably means there’s less chance of causing tumors, teratomas. With induced pluripotent cells, that is a concern. If you were to inject IpsC into your brain, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You could get bone cells growing in there, cells which aren’t supposed to be there that could potentially cause tumor formation. This doesn’t seem like that will be an issue here, they apparently get all neurons, neurons which appear not to continue dividing. I do find it a little hard to believe though that these only produce neurons and never glial cells, though I’ll need to reread it a few more times.
This is also a interesting paradigm shift for developmental biologists: apparently you don’t have to go back to square one to switch cell fates, it will take longer and be less efficient to do so. IpsC take about a month to become pluripotent and then be grown back into neurons, and only about 1% of the cells do that if I recall correctly. These take a week.
For much of the study, they seem to be using 5 different factors, not the 3 minimal ones. They state that Ascl1 alone was sufficient to make these cells start looking like neurons, but the other two were needed for them to look and behave like mature neurons. Most of the figures were working with a combination of 5 factors. With all 5, they showed a good mix of different types of neurons, but that had less efficient conversion than the minimal 3. I’m wondering if you’d actually be able to get all the different types of mature neurons with just the 3. I’d guess it’s not that they intentionally did it that way, but they wanted to hurry up and publish ASAP, so they skipped doing that characterization for now.
One problem facing all these therapies eventually, as I understand it, is that you want to get one specific type of neuron for therapy. I have no idea what strategies there are to direct differentiation into specific types of neurons, but this seems like it would be the bigger hurdle.
I'm not particularly keen on the idea of using skin cells for this. Sure, they're readily accessible (not very invasive), but skin cells are really close to the surface of the body (or at the surface of the body), and therefore really close to environmental influences. They die frequently (a fair amount of the dust in your house is dead skin cells), and are exposed to many things that can cause genetic mutations, sunlight probably being the biggest thing. If I had to regenerate neurons from other body cells, I'd rather something that was a bit more internal and reasonably far away from damaging sources (liver, for example).
Ask me about repetitive DNA
ah the silicon based organisms in the audience speak up
Is anyone worried about this virus escaping? We could all end up as a big blog of brain cells sitting on the floor! :D
I mean the "This suggests that there are no great rules -- you can reprogramme anything into anything else." quote. From what I remember from bio class tissues in mammals split into 3 different layers early on, the ectodermm the mesoderm and the endoderm. Oddly enough both skin and nerves come from the ectoderm. So what the scientist has demonstrated is he can turn on part of the ectoderm into another. (Not that he could say take endoderm from say the intestines and convert it into skin.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Just print yourself up a new body and replace the brain one hemisphere at a time and you too can live forever!!!!
No guarantees if you can preserve you "ghost"..... or not....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Not the first time, but the first announced. :}
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
We also owe a very very large portion of our current medical knowledge to the Nazis. If it wasn't for their 'human experiments' we wouldn't know some of the stuff we know today.
Where do you think we got the 'how long you can survive without food/water' stats?
Doesn't mean it was right.
> The choice we are talking about is regarding the adult, not the fetus.
If the fetus isn't human, what species is it? By what right do you deny them a choice?
And if you're going to tell me that reasoning is "speciesist," please explain why killing a fly for annoying you isn't speciesist, because the only reason people do it is because they regard flies as less valuable than human beings. No one would regard someone as anything but a murderer if they killed a person for the reasons they might kill a fly.
If someone punched your wife (or you, depending on your gender) in the groin three to 4 weeks after conception and cause a miscarriage, what would you want them charged with?
So the obvious next step is to create neurons in situ for a wearable biocomputer powered by your body! Yes the world of the future is a bit like having bees live in your head but, there they are, and like the lady said "I said live it, or live with it!"
Seastead this.
There is no need for a work-around on Stem-cell research. Stem-cells are taken from already dead fetuses. There is no ethical issue. Why do people have so many damn problems with using dead tissue to save lives? Either way the technical feat achieved here is still remarkable. It is a work-around not from an ethical perspective but getting the same results from a more abundant cell.
If you never do research with fetal stem cells, you'll never know what they can do.
To add to that, you know what research started us down this whole avenue, right? There are quite a few genes in the genome, but they only looked at 19
How did they come up with that magic 19 instead of like 100,000 in the mouse genome? Other studies that used fetal stem cells, or possibly IPsC cell studies, which themselves were discovered based on knowledge gleaned from studies in fetal stem cells.
If there had been no research on fetal stem cells we wouldn't have this, induced pluripotent stem cells, OR much knowledge about adult stem cells (which, not for nothing, haven't gotten us to the finish line yet, which is -why- research continues) and very little hope for anyone who has medical conditions like paralysis or parkinson's disease.
Instead we would have a little more incinerated biomedical waste from fertilization clinics.
Yeah, we really made the wrong decision there.
I am here. Your robotic overlord. You may have heard of my name...Lord Vibrator.
All your vagina are belong to us.
if you really believed that embryos had the same worth as a fetus or a child and a hospital was burning and you could only rescue all the babies in the maternity ward(we'll say 24 of them) or all of the potential babies in the cryogenic freezer then you logically would rescue the freezer as you would save far more lives. I for one would choose the actual babies and save the maternity ward.
False Dichotomy
Or put another way, same proposition, only one choice, a baby or an old grandmother. Which would you save?
Or your old grandma or an unknown baby? which? Or your baby and and unknown granny? which?
For instance if you really believed that embryos had the same worth as a fetus or a child and a hospital was burning and you could only rescue all the babies in the maternity ward(we'll say 24 of them) or all of the potential babies in the cryogenic freezer then you logically would rescue the freezer as you would save far more lives. I for one would choose the actual babies and save the maternity ward.
You would. Others wouldn't, and would see you as evil for making that choice.
"Ethics" != "my own morality". Learn and understand that.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Which medical advances are you referring to?
Ones which come to mind:
Tolerance limit of humans to extreme cold.
Tolerance limit of humans to extreme sound intensity.
How to dispose of large quantities of human bodies.
In the first two examples we didn't need testing to destruction to know the relevant limits.
The third example was included as something of a jest, as it really was more of an engineering problem.
In any case, not exactly a "very very large portion" of current medical knowledge.
oh, sorry. I didn't address your example.
"How long can you survive without food/water"?
We've had lots of data from people getting lost in the wilderness, from well before the Nazi's.
Why did the Nazi doctors think it was worth testing on human subjects?
1. Their primary purpose was to kill prisoners.
2. They were sadistic fucks.
3. The previous information was not the result of controlled experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
Experiments on twins
Freezing experiments
Malaria experiments
Mustard gas experiments
Sulfonamide experiments
Sea water experiments
Sterilization experiments
Experiments with poison
Incendiary bomb experiments
High altitude experiments
Baby, greater potential and actualization.
It isn't a dichotomy it is more of a trichotomy. There is value in actualization, and greater potential in a baby or fetus that is many months developed than a frozen embryo.
For one there are not enough whombs in the world to carry all the frozen embryos. Secondly many embryos never develop into babies and many babies don't develop into adults.
The grandmother has presumably lived a long time and has had a chance to procreate and see her children procreate, where-as the child has only lived a short time but has great potential and developed far beyond the embryonic stage.
Also both my grandmothers are already with the Lord and I have no need of their corpses. Even if alive I'm sure they would have me make the same choice as they would have more chance of escaping the fire on their own where-as a baby would not.
Assault. Three to four weeks isn't very long in development. And while assault on a visibly pregnant woman should carry a stiffer penalty for endangering the life of the unborn child, the development of that child must also be taken into account.
Ethics are however equal to a standard of action that is well thought out and thus can be argued and debated between individuals.
You ignore the most frequent cause of abortion: panic. (combined with the inability to take responsibility)
In many cases, aborted fetuses wouldn't survive to term anyway...
Very few of the abortions performed are specifically because the child will not make it. However, abortions related to the chance of abnormality (such as autism) will climb as it becomes increasingly feasible.
or are a threat to the mother's health...
Rare, but real. (I've heard people claim that this never happens, but that's not true. It's just unusual.)
It's cost us years, possibly as much as a decade, of research time because of religious considerations.
It's not just moral (religious) reasons, but also ethical ones.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Besides, hES don't come from aborted fetuses, but from in vitro fertilized embryos that never get implanted. (similar moral/ethical issues but very different legal debates)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
That makes a certain amount of logical sense. The way you have phrased it, it also sounds like common sense, which may or may not actually matter - good rhetoric does not always make a good argument.
But logical and scientific principles are not exactly the same things here.
There's a number of reasons within the scientific method for thinking that stem cell research on fetal sources would give society valuable tools for fighting various diseases - but those reasons rise only to hypothetical status - that is they individually deserve to be called hypothetical, but don't have nearly enough supporting facts to deserve to be called theoretical. Part of the problem here is that the pro-fetal stem cell research side has talked about it as though there's strong, well established theoretical underpinnings for it producing really significant results of tremendous value to society, which we can't get from other sources such as umbilical cord tissues or adult stem cells. There have been too many claims that fetal research will eventually cure all cancers and other methods simply won't, or will, at the very least, take many times as long to get the same results.
To make such claims justifiably, we would have to know a lot of things we just surmise, such as that certain hypothetical models of the effects of lengthened telomere accumulation were better than other models, all coming from established scientists with solid reputations.
There's probably some real negative costs to society in being asked to decide whose science is better, ahead of normal processes of peer review and reproducing experiments or devising the new ones needed to settle which models have better predictive power.
Who is John Cabal?
From the article:
A further question is why, if cells retain an underlying versatility, they don’t switch between cell types throughout our life
No answer to that. Freaky. Try to figure all nasty corners such technologies could bring the mankind to.
When will living people's skin cells start turning into neurons then?
This is a straw man since we do not know how many of the embryos in cryogenic freeze will survive after implantation.
These are not the same question.
The question would be do you save 12 babies or 24 magical embryos in jars that are guaranteed to become adults in 9 months.
In any case, you are also incorrect in saying that equating potential life with life is evil. What does this even mean?
They are not equating anything, they merely draw the imaginary line earlier than you.
To follow with a bad analogy, say you are on price is right, but you are the only contestant. What do you bid?
If you answer anything but 1, you are being illogical. You may not be close to the right price, but you will be sure to win the prize if you bid under the correct price.
Now imagine that instead of bidding on a car, you are bidding on a box that may contain a man. You are not sure if it does. If you overbid, the man dies. You spend up to nine months jail if you underbid. What do you bid?
It now becomes a risk assessment involving the following factors:
What is probability that there is a man in the box?
How much do you value the life of a stranger?
How much do you value your own freedom?
It is not an easy task to come up with a number, but you must admit that if the mans life is the most important thing, even if you are not sure that he is there, you will still bid one dollar, and risk spending a good deal of your time in jail.
If you do not believe the man is there, for whatever reason, you may bid a very high number indeed, because you don't want to risk jail time.
The real question is, what information are you basing you assumption on? Why do you believe, or not believe, in the man in the box?
Really? A very very large portion? How many people are alive today because of knowledge gained from nazi medical experiments? You are engaging in hyperbole.
Besides, the situation is completely different. Even if you assume that the subjects of nazi experiments were going to die anyway, the experiments caused excess suffering. Stem cell research causes no suffering.
If we ripped fetuses out of women for the sole purpose of doing experiments on them, then you would have some cause to compare it to the nazis. This however is pure trolling.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Where do you think we got the 'how long you can survive without food/water' stats?
Haiti.
Oh, neurons are different than neutrons?
It is not a straw man as I am arguing that the actualized baby life is worth more than the sum of all the potential life in the embryo freezer. Also while many do die a freezer could easily hold more than enough embryos to have a very good chance of forming 24 babies if carried by a healthy mother.
You ignore the most frequent cause of abortion: panic. (combined with the inability to take responsibility)
Not sure that's a defensible claim there. Why not say that the most frequent cause is the desire to not have a child because they're not ready or are unable to properly support one, or any of a bunch of other reasons? What evidence is there that panic is the most common cause? You know, aside from made for TV movies on Lifetime...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
the desire to not have a child because they're not ready or are unable to properly support one, or any of a bunch of other reasons
==> "the inability to take responsibility"
You're argument isn't inaccurate in any way, just disingenuous.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Your phrasing makes it sound as if it's a foregone conclusion that having a child is always the best option though, and only a deficiency in the parents is responsible for their choice to have an abortion.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I can see why you might think that. "Always" is too strong. "Almost always" is closer to reality.
In turn, your phrasing makes it sound like abortion is a valid option in the general case, and any deficiency in the parents is a valid excuse to destroy the fetal tissue.
The only supportable "pro-choice" position I see is to defend a woman's right to choose when to have sex. If she does, she has made her choice. Sex organs are not fun organs, they're reproductive organs. You use them when you want to reproduce. I understand the strong pull, but if you don't resist it, you're responsible for the outcome. It really is that simple in the general case.
I've heard people argue that fetal tissue is not alive, or is part of the mother. That's an outright lie to defend an indefensible position. The real question is: when do human rights begin? At birth, or before? From a religious standpoint it's obvious. From an ethical one, some people think this line is still fuzzy.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The only supportable "pro-choice" position I see is to defend a woman's right to choose when to have sex. If she does, she has made her choice. Sex organs are not fun organs, they're reproductive organs.
I recognize that this position of "sex is for reproduction" is held by some groups. I find it to be rather shallow and naive. There is more to sex than simply fun and reproduction too. Even if it is done just for fun, I don't see that that is a commitment to bear or raise a child. I think the whole "life begins at conception" line of thinking to be ridiculously oversimplified. Ultimately our bodies are our own and we should have the right to make these decisions for ourselves. I definitely fall on the pro-choice side, but I would be willing to accept some limit on late-term (assuming that it is defined in a way I consider reasonable) abortions as long as exceptions are made for the health of the mother. Whether this would make any real impact, I don't know, but that's as far as I'd be willing to compromise.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I feel that our conversation has only been superficial. As such I understand why it may seem "shallow". You may also want to consider that I, in turn, see your position as naive. (fair is fair)
Even if it is done just for fun, I don't see that that is a commitment to bear or raise a child.
Your biology disagrees. It is almost as if you wish there were a second condition to getting pregnant, and abortion is getting shoe-horned to serve your fantasy. It's as if you're saying that you only really get pregnant if you have sex and choose not to abort.
Ultimately our bodies are our own and we should have the right to make these decisions for ourselves
It's ironic that I feel this way too. The problem is, I feel this way about the unborn as well as the adult. Quite unlike child abuse or neglect, though, the state cannot defend human rights by stepping in and separating an abusive parent from child* until after birth. That is the crux of the whole dilemma.
(*always a tragedy, but sometimes a necessity.)
Rights lead to choices. Choices lead to consequences. Consequences give us the chance to be responsible or irresponsible.
Of the things that we do have rights to, we can't always pick the consequences. I can say that I have a right to skydive without a parachute. The consequence for that is well known and fixed. Yes, I can come up with all kinds of bad examples, but it get's the point across. Every action has one or more consequences. You choose those based on your actions, not your wishes. That's life.
...as long as exceptions are made for the health of the mother...
Here, at least, is a point we can agree on. There should be accountability for these decisions, but medical need should not be withheld, even if that means choosing the life of the mother over the life of the child. I believe that in such situations it is reasonable and healthy to mourn such a loss.
I think the whole "life begins at conception" line of thinking to be ridiculously oversimplified.
Ok, if it's oversimplified, then why don't you elaborate. When do you believe life starts (and human rights) and why? Defend your position. Give me an argument that I can respect, even if I disagree with it.
There are many different aspects to this topic. Religious (which I am setting aside for the time being), ethical, biological, psychological, social, legal, historic, philosophical -- the list just goes on and on...
The only thing I've heard from you so far is that you think (meaning feel or wish) that society should be one way. You're frustrated that there are people that feel differently, but you haven't promoted a rational with which you can express yourself. I'm just waiting to see what you're underlying beliefs are. What brought you to your conclusions?
(If you care to share. If you don't, that's fine too.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
In one of my college classes, my teacher sparked an interesting debate on abortion. It turned into a 2 day discussion, it was quite interesting. But the most interesting part was how the teacher ended the discussion.
He showed average crime rate per state and showed when abortion was legalized. Seemed after the same amount of years after abortion was legalized, each state showed a minor decline in crime. It was consistent across every state and every state legalized abortion at a different time. They could not say as to why this happened, but they figured reducing the amount of "unwanted" children or children born to families that could not support the child was the most probable cause.
But really, a fetus is by all definitions, parasitic. Heck, it even releases a chemical that is IDENTICAL to another human host parasite.
Personally, I believe the best fix is better education and people who learn to control themselves better.
Since one person's rights may no take over another person's rights, what happens when a woman decides she wants to get wasted and sit in a hot tub? What if she feels like wrestling? What if she feels like UFC? No one may stop her, but sucks to be leeching off of someone and they decide to do something that may negatively affect the leecher.
Interesting. Anecdotal, but interesting.
Did he say what type of crime was down? That could make a major difference. (I assume the number of illegal abortions dropped when abortions were legalized, but what else? Child neglect? Violent crime, incl spouse abuse? Drug crime? Petty theft? There's just not enough here to come to any conclusions.)
But really, a fetus is by all definitions, parasitic. Heck, it even releases a chemical that is IDENTICAL to another human host parasite.
I think you have that backwards. There exists a parasite that releases a chemical identical to a fetus (or more likely, the placenta). Superficially, it sounds like the Endocrine System functioning properly.
Personally, I believe the best fix is better education and people who learn to control themselves better.
Same here. Unfortunately, there will always be people who don't (even if lectured-- um, "educated"). Hence, this issue will still be a legal debate for a long time.
You bring up a good point that abortion isn't the only issue at play here (it's the one that's most widely discussed). (By the way, you missed teratogens such as alcohol and tobacco.) I guess the biggest difference is that the later is negligent, and the former is willful. I'm not sure just where to stand legally on the larger issue. That is a real conundrum.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Unit 731 Which was Japan, apparently conducted the starvation experiments. Apparently Germany and Japan were equally doing terrible experiments during the war.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.