Yes, thanks, I'm aware. Darth asked why noone was addressing the hardware acceleration issue. I addressed it. Read the context -- I never said it was the only reason Flash sucks.
Apple says that Adobe is dog-lazy. All I'm saying is that Apple is dog-lazy too, and Steve's letter painted an inaccurate picture by only telling half of the story.
Hardware-accelerate h.264 wasn't and isn't the reason Flash sucks.
Darth Snowshoe said "what about the HW vs SW argument?" I answered his question, and never extended my reply to claim that hardware acceleration was the sole reason why Flash sucks. I merely said that this letter from Steve was less than up front about the reasons why nobody had hardware accelerated video before April of this year. While Adobe may be "lazy" in their own rights, Apple is "lazy" too. If Apple is getting blamed for Flash's crashes, then Adobe is getting blamed for Apple's lack of hardware acceleration. Tit for tat and all that, but Apple only told one side of this story in Steve's "letter". Apple has been dragging their feet on this for much of the last decade, and I think it's unfair for Adobe to have to take all the fall on this.
Silverlight plays h.264 video without this magical cure-all API...
It's hardly a magical cure-all. Both of my Macbook Pros are dual-core with 2 gigs of RAM running the latest Apple OS/X, but neither of them are supported by Apple's new hardware acceleration API because they're 2 years old, and not supported by Apple's API. That gives me warm fuzzies, lemme' tell ya'.
...at a fraction of the CPU usage of Flash player. In fact, Silverlight still bests the 10.1 beta (Flash uses the newly publicized API; Silverlight does not).
Citations please -- I'm not finding these benchmarks, and your statement smacks strongly of hyperbole.
Besides, Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration, and does use this new API, so I'm not sure where you're getting your (mis)information. You're obviously out of date, and I'm starting to distrust the authority of your words.
Two things. First, that blog entry doesn't have anything to do with the new h.264 API access.
Darth Snowshoe's post did, which is what I replied to. Did you read the quote block at the beginning of my post? It's called context.
Second, notice what's buried in that blog? That it took until 10.1 to rewrite Flash in Cocoa (thus opening up to them a whole world of APIs that Flash could have been using)--and it still falls back to Carbon in most usage scenarios.
Thanks -- Adobe is no saint. The main point of my post is that Apple needs its own fair share of the blame as to why there isn't good hardware accelerated video in Flash or Silverlight. Apple has been very lazy, and they're trying to paint themselves as free, open, fair-minded, and never lazy -- when the actual situation is a lot muddier than that. This is slanted Apple whitewashing propaganda, and as a Mac user, I find it distasteful. Don't get me wrong -- my wife and I have only owned Macs for several years now -- we love the operating system and the hardware. But intellectual integrity demands that I cannot accept Steve's letter as gospel truth -- there is quite a bit he has left out, and it's only half the picture.
You say h.264 acceleration was to blame.
No. If you read my post, you would see that I was addressing Darth's accusation that everyone was failing to address Flash's lack of hardware acceleration. I was merely trying to set the record straight that -- up until this month -- nobody did because there was no operating system support. That was the point of my post. You need to read the context of posts that you're replying to before you accuse them of saying things that they aren't.
How was Microsoft able to deliver a better product without whining? Why is Silverlight's performance, lacking any hardware acceleration, still better than the hardware-accelerated Flash beta?
Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration on OS/X. Regarding your accusation -- I'm not saying Silverlight's software renderer isn't better than Adobe's -- it very well may be. But I've not yet found any data to back up your claim that Silverlight's software renderer is superior to the Apple beta. So I'll end this post by reiterating my earlier [citation needed].
Because I would like to have a more open web experience, that lets me view web content at my discretion.
I want an operating system that does what I tell it to do -- not a nanny that slaps me on the hand and refuses to do what I say because they somehow know better than me.
Keep in mind that Apple only recently provided API support for hardware acceleration, and even then -- Apple only provides an API to accelerate video under certain conditions, for only their most recent hardware. For whatever other ways you want to blame Adobe for the "slowness", Apple needs to own up to a fair share of this one.
If the frame rates are higher when both are going full-tilt, then that means that Flash can be dialed back to spend fewer cycles for equivalent framerate performance. I.E., better battery life for the same experience.
The HTML5 audio support isn't even close to Flash.
Anyone with a "basic clue" wouldn't spend their time seriously writing apps in HTML5 if something more reasonable like Flash were available. Write your game's audio synthesizer / mixer in HTML5, and then do it in Flash, and lemme' know how much HTML5 has "going for it".
In HTML5, you can't even play two copies of the same sound at the same time. It's a joke for any reasonable game development. If you think that HTML5 is a serious competitor to Flash, then that tells me that one or both of the following are true: 1) You haven't seriously developed in both HTML5 and Flash, and/or 2) You've completely bought into Steve Job's reality distortion field where HTML5 is somehow a drop-in replacement for Flash.
Likewise, what about the HW vs SW argument? It's easy for code developers, some of whom I'm guessing have invested a fair about of time and training in becoming adept at flash, to just wave their arms and say "battery life is somebody else's problem". Well, yes, the hardware manufacturer's, for one. Here is a hardware manufacturer's response. Etc.
Okay, let's talk about the HW vs SW argument. Adobe needed API support from Apple before they could add hardware video decoding to their Flash Player. This API was only added in OSX 10.6.3, and even then, won't even run on my Macbook Pro, because it's older than a year and a half old, and Apple is not (yet?) providing API support for older hardware. You can rest assured, that now that Apple has finally provided an API for developers to use, Adobe has jumped on it, but due to Apple's half-way job of it, much of Apple hardware is not supported.
Oh right, I forgot -- I'm supposed to believe Adobe has been the sole lazy company here. Adobe recognizes they have more resources available that they're not yet utilizing -- but these were only recently made available by Apple.
Somehow Steve forgot to mention this in his tirade, didn't he? Convenient.
I don't use Yahoo IM anymore (though I imagine I still have a Yahoo acct), though you are welcome to e-mail me (my address is provided at the top of this post).
Troll? I'm not the one comparing people who legitimate reasons against ESC with those who bomb abortion clinics. Who's flame-baiting here?
The first article you gave me showcased using IVF leftovers (which I addressed in my post). Using stem cells harvested in this way has the major problem that they are only suited to academic research where tissue rejection is not a problem, because their genetic material cannot match the patient. I covered this in my post already.
The second article you sent me showcases a modified form of standard SCNT, where they add the twist of crippling the embryo, because they think that people will object less to destroying a crippled human embryo rather than one that is created with normal SCNT.
Do you want to see how the public ethic responds to stuff like this? Imagine the KFC headless chicken scenario, only with humans instead of chickens. Yeah, that'll fly like a lead balloon.
But even on a practical level, the technique listed in the second article suffers from the issue that there are simply not enough IVF leftovers to fuel widespread ESC-based treatments. There just aren't enough eggs.
Neither of the articles you quoted address the criticisms referenced in my original post, and all of the arguments remain untouched.
ESC-based treatments remain as unviable as the Whitehead Institute's crippled embryos, and there are no answers on the horizon that solve both the issues of tissue rejection and human egg supply.
If I've read the literature right, embryonic stem cells are, in general, readily available and easily manufactured. Also, they are the best at forming to any cell type we would want.
False. ESCs have trouble in that they differentiate _too_ much -- they are too unstable, and multiply without regulation (cancer). One of the markers used in detecting if ESCs "took" in rats is to measure tumor rates. While they theoretically have the most potential for forming different tissue types, they have the worst track record for actually behaving how we want them to.
That is to say that adult stem cells have been immensely helpful, but we think that embryonic stem cells may be better.
If that's true, then it's interesting that James Thomson, the father of modern ESC research has moved onto ASCs with IPSC. While some people may think that ESCs are "better", many of our top researchers (Thomson being of note) have changed direction to the more promising ASC line.
There are many research programs on embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, and now induced pluripotent stem cells. All of these have many promising futures in science, yet only adult stem cells and IPSC are promising in the ever-so-influential and variable field of ethics/morality, especially those of fundamentalist origin.
ASCs are also the only ones that have any fruit, with IPSC being in the news most often, despite it being the youngest of the three fields that you listed.
You are correct about the easy manufacture of embryonic stem cells. Growing stem cells is actually not hard at all and you can make relatively infinite numbers from one discarded embryo.
I would like to note that there is a big difference between "stem cells" and "useful stem cells". Sure, you can take any discarded IVF leftover or abortion remains and get stem cells, but if you inject those into a patient, you will have severe tissue rejection issues. To obtain ESCs usable for treatment in a patient, the only avenue available for that is SCNT, which necessitates the destruction of one or many embryos.
For most adults, we don't have embryonic stem cells with our own DNA in it at all.
That's what SCNT solves, and why so many were anxious for the recent reversal of the Bush order to deny funding to SCNT ESC research.
Ultimately, I think it is way too soon to start determining which of these methods will serve best, though we can acknowledge the power of ethical values and the objection of many people to embryonic stem cells. You might find it interesting that many popular religions actually support embryonic stem cell research, though most interpretations of Christianity do not.
Of course the book is never closed. But there currently exist over a hundred treatments using ASC and IPSC, and (despite it being the oldest), zero treatments involving ESCs. There is no viable avenue for ESC treatments now, nor there is there any on the horizon that anyone can name. If you're the budget director for a large amount of scientific funding, at what point will you cull the fat and move on (as James Thomson has done) to things that have actually produced?
That first year textbook will also tell you that embryonic stem cells are now harvested just fine without causing any harm to viable embryos
Citation please. Maybe it's because IANA cell biologist, but I am not aware of any mechanism outside of SCNT that provides an avenue for ESC treatment that wouldn't result in severe tissue rejection by the patient.
Are you hinging the weight of your statement here on "viable"? If so, how is a SCNT embryo not "viable"? If so, those embryos are quite viable, and the usefulness of the stem cells largely depends on their viability. Who wants to take stem cells to cure a disease if the stem cell has bigger problems? I mean, seriously -- whole companies are founded based on cloning dead pets through SCNT. Your statement is false, and you're spreading mis-information. Citation, please.
and are otherwise acquired from ALREADY DISCARDED and nonviable embryos
You word this as if it's such a slam dunk. If it's a point not worth debating, then would any reasonable person object to the non-consentual harvesting of organs from death-row criminals? I mean, they're already discarded anyways.
So no, it doesn't require the destruction of an embryo any more than recycling newspaper's people have already thrown out requires the destruction of trees.
So what happens if you run out of newspapers? You give a faulty analogy, because newspapers are fairly common -- IVF leftovers, while they do have a surplus supply of tens of thousands, is a supply that has built up over the last thirty years. And as we have gotten better at IVF, we create and save fewer and fewer embryos with every treatment. If ESC with SCNT reaches the point of actually having a viable treatment available, we would burn through our IVF reserves incredibly quickly. A simple look at the numbers will show you that the demand for embryos will far outstrip the supply, and we will have to start farming human eggs.
All that to say, I'll call your bluff. Citations, please.
For the "ESCs are good worth it for the sake of research" argument, it's helpful to remember that just about all functional ESC research can be done with non-human life, and that many of our pioneering ESC researchers have abandoned ESCs in favor of IPSC.
Sorry, "Even if we solve the problems of tissue rejection" should be "Unless we solve the problems of tissue rejection" -- it was meant as a somewhat ridiculous thing to imagine in the near-term.
Uhm, citation please? How in the world can someone use aborted fetuses for stem cell treatment without extremely severe tissue rejection issues? Last I heard, that sort of stuff hadn't been done since the 90's, and hasn't been repeated since.
All of the arguments that you gave supporting ESCs in the name of research are satisfied by using animal life, rather than human life.
Is there really a use now for embryonic stem cells now that we can do just about everything with adult stem cells?
There are. Basic research on cell biology for one. One of the best ways to study how a cell commits to whatever fate it's going to take, and maybe find ways of correcting that when it goes wrong, is to study the actual cells. Another is studying how to turn one cell into another, again by studying how cells do it normally.
I think by "use", he was talking about treatment uses, not just biological study.
One of the successes of ESC research is induced pluripotent stem cells. They were first made based off work done in embryonic stem cells.
Definitely -- but let the record show that this pioneering IPSC research was done with mice, not with humans. I think we're really in a great place right now -- for human treatment, we can use IPSC, and for destructive research, we can use non-human life.
It looks like IPSC is going to be the technology that will allow us to replace tissues as needed, not ESC, but that might turn out not to be the case. With no cell technology having proven itself capable of replacing every tissue in patients without causing cancer or other problems, the race isn't over, and we should avoid the temptation to call it too early.
Now you're talking about treatment, rather than research? Even if we solve the problems of tissue rejection through a foreign ESC donor, where is one supposed to get enough donated human eggs to make this a viable avenue of treatment? If anyone is still holding onto the idea of ESC providing widespread treatment, I don't think that they're opening their eyes to the reality of the oncoming brick wall that there simply would never be enough donor embryos. Some of our greatest minds and heroes of pioneering ESC research (James Thomson being one such example) have left ESC for the more promising fields of IPSC.
I'll say my thesis succinctly. Destructive human embryonic stem cell research (as practiced today) is barbaric and unnecessary, and should not be given safe harbor in the scientific community of a civilized society.
The only reason we are tied to Uranium-235 is because of restrictions that make it illegal to recycle (reprocess) nuclear fuel in this country, hence we have a surplus of "waste" (that can still be used in a breeder reactor -- we're just legally prevented from doing so) that we either bury (stupid) or sell to France (who isn't so ignorant when it comes to nukes).
In short, there is plenty of nuclear fuel -- we're just not allowed to use it because Carter thought that recycling nuclear fuel could lead to proliferation of arms-grade plutonium -- we of course have long since now known that it doesn't, but that hasn't done anything to remove these laws outlawing nuclear fuel recycling.
Right, which is one reason why IPSC is more promising.
FWIW, I fully support IPSC. There already exist over a hundred treatments using them, and I see every reason to concentrate effort on expanding this research line.
When you implied that IVF would not supply enough ESC for -therapy- I should have pointed out that ESC probably aren't going to be used for therapy, they're used for research.
But you said, "These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient." -- by saying "patient", we were continuing on the line of "treatment", not "research". If ESCs are to be used on patients, and we don't intend to keep them on immunosuppressants, then SCNT requires that we don't just create and sacrifice one human embryo per patient -- SCNT requires tens (if not hundreds) of embryos to be created per patient. So in the context of ESCs being used on patients, I disagree with you in that useful ESCs are _not_ self-reproducing, and must be individually cloned from unfertilized eggs (traditionally, left over from IVF treatment).
but again, ESC are still essential for basic research.
And again, must they be human? And if ESCs have no viable treatment avenues, and we're aiming to move SC treatments into the practical realm, then it seems that we should be focusing on researching things that have more potential. More "potency" if you will.
Ethically, there are serious concerns for using ESCs, sure. But even pragmatically, ESCs just have so many barriers to overcome, that things like cord blood and IPSC seem to actually be able to go somewhere (such as this news article). If we know that there's in all likelyhood a dead-end at the end of the ESC road, wouldn't it be wiser to focus on IPSC? You seem reluctant to give up ESCs because of research -- fine. Why not continue with simian ESCs, or if you insist on human, existing stem cell lines? As you said, they're self-reproducing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but many of our seminal ESC researchers have already moved onto the more promising IPSC research. ESCs may have academic value, and you want to dedicate another 40 years of research to them. Given the power of IPSCs, and the significant scientific barriers to the usability of ESCs, combined with the serious ethical implications, I don't think that you have provided compelling evidence for why public funding is a reasonable thing to expect for ESC research.
Again you're only thinking in terms of treatments. ESC has more value in basic research.
But if it looks like a dead-end road, why spend our time messing with it?
Give ESC 40 years at least before you say they have no theraputic value.
I don't say that cloning has no therapeutic value. It's just that we've moved on. IPSC has proven to be so valuable so quickly, it's a veritable gold mine promising near-immediate returns. Given our extremely limited resources for scientific research, wouldn't you want to focus on things that have potential? Unless we seriously compromise human ethics, there will never be enough embryos to go around for everyone who would want ESC treatment. It's just not there.
The scientific community has moved on. Heck, even James Thomson -- the father of modern ESC research has moved on to IPSC. It's like you're asking for another 40 years to research some outdated and debunked theory because there may be value in it, when we'd rather all get on with something that's proven to be effective.
I've never had any frustration with people who feel it's unethical. I myself have questions about the morality of ESC. I think it should be funded
It never wasn't funded. It wasn't banned or unfunded under Bush, it wasn't banned or unfunded under Clinton. The only thing that those executive orders did was ban federal fund
If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment
Citation needed. These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient.
True -- in some previous treatments, each patient may be implanted with brain tissue from as many as seven aborted donors. Granted, that was before isolated stem cells were in use, but for ESCs to move from the laboratory into the doctor's office, unless we plan on keeping all of our patients on immunosuppressants, I was under the impression that SCNT or some other form of "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to obtain ESCs that are usable cells that won't cause rejection. Ultimately you're right -- it's hard to say what would be like in the future, but unless I'm missing some important fact of cell biology, this is one of the serious bottlenecks on the horizon.
So that's a real gap in my knowledge -- IVF embryos are perfectly usable for research, but does another method exist for taking a pre-existing ESC and making a rejection-free compatible cell line from it? All of what I've read has pointed to either pointed to SCNT or induced pluri-potency in ASCs as the "best ideas running" for obtaining usable stem cells for treatment. Am I correct in thinking that, or what are some of the other ideas being floated?
You slipped "people" in there. You realize of course that's a not exactly a clear cut issue. It's a major difference between the execution and ESC.
Perhaps I should have used the word "human"?
If one (such as James Thomson) says that there are 400,000 frozen human embryos that are going to be incinerated anyways, and we should at least put that life to good use before it is destroyed, that's one thing -- but I don't think we can simply ram past this issue and ignore the fact that such human treatment makes anyone who thinks about it at least a little uncomfortable.
I don't think enough people would be willing to spend their tax money on defense to actually support an army.
Are placing the government's role in scientific research on parallel with the government's role in national defense?
The idea that you should get to decide where your taxes go has been thoroughly rejected in our government, because when it comes down to it, no one actually WANTS to be paying taxes at all, and few if any people realize the actual value of all government programs.
While you and I may both not fully understand the value of government-run programs, it seems that you and I may disagree on the actual value of personal liberty in a society. Everyone agrees that totalitarian governments are the best at getting things done, and forced labor has always been the most efficient means of production. But just because something is effective doesn't mean that it is morally or ethically sound.
However, you and I may be at a disconnect here, since I'm basing my case on ethics that you don't seem to share. Impasse?
There isn't enough cash to go around, but you should be trying to cut the waste as opposed to promising but not yet mature technology.
Def. agree w/ you re: cutting waste.
Promising technology? Relative to ASC treatments, the numbers would seem to show that ESC isn't as promising (unless you feel there is no true distinction?).
You also seem to feel that there is no moral component to any of this, and you seem frustrated that anyone would balk at the idea of ESC research and treatment.
I don't think people should get a say on highly tecnhnical issues when they remain stubbornly uninformed on those issues.
Well to remove this from the realm of abstract third-parties
Slashdot Mirror
...at least we know we can blame Adobe.
This is not just about the H.264 decoder.
Yes, thanks, I'm aware. Darth asked why noone was addressing the hardware acceleration issue. I addressed it. Read the context -- I never said it was the only reason Flash sucks.
Apple says that Adobe is dog-lazy. All I'm saying is that Apple is dog-lazy too, and Steve's letter painted an inaccurate picture by only telling half of the story.
Hardware-accelerate h.264 wasn't and isn't the reason Flash sucks.
Darth Snowshoe said "what about the HW vs SW argument?" I answered his question, and never extended my reply to claim that hardware acceleration was the sole reason why Flash sucks. I merely said that this letter from Steve was less than up front about the reasons why nobody had hardware accelerated video before April of this year. While Adobe may be "lazy" in their own rights, Apple is "lazy" too. If Apple is getting blamed for Flash's crashes, then Adobe is getting blamed for Apple's lack of hardware acceleration. Tit for tat and all that, but Apple only told one side of this story in Steve's "letter". Apple has been dragging their feet on this for much of the last decade, and I think it's unfair for Adobe to have to take all the fall on this.
Silverlight plays h.264 video without this magical cure-all API...
It's hardly a magical cure-all. Both of my Macbook Pros are dual-core with 2 gigs of RAM running the latest Apple OS/X, but neither of them are supported by Apple's new hardware acceleration API because they're 2 years old, and not supported by Apple's API. That gives me warm fuzzies, lemme' tell ya'.
...at a fraction of the CPU usage of Flash player. In fact, Silverlight still bests the 10.1 beta (Flash uses the newly publicized API; Silverlight does not).
Citations please -- I'm not finding these benchmarks, and your statement smacks strongly of hyperbole.
Besides, Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration, and does use this new API, so I'm not sure where you're getting your (mis)information. You're obviously out of date, and I'm starting to distrust the authority of your words.
Two things. First, that blog entry doesn't have anything to do with the new h.264 API access.
Darth Snowshoe's post did, which is what I replied to. Did you read the quote block at the beginning of my post? It's called context.
Second, notice what's buried in that blog? That it took until 10.1 to rewrite Flash in Cocoa (thus opening up to them a whole world of APIs that Flash could have been using)--and it still falls back to Carbon in most usage scenarios.
Thanks -- Adobe is no saint. The main point of my post is that Apple needs its own fair share of the blame as to why there isn't good hardware accelerated video in Flash or Silverlight. Apple has been very lazy, and they're trying to paint themselves as free, open, fair-minded, and never lazy -- when the actual situation is a lot muddier than that. This is slanted Apple whitewashing propaganda, and as a Mac user, I find it distasteful. Don't get me wrong -- my wife and I have only owned Macs for several years now -- we love the operating system and the hardware. But intellectual integrity demands that I cannot accept Steve's letter as gospel truth -- there is quite a bit he has left out, and it's only half the picture.
You say h.264 acceleration was to blame.
No. If you read my post, you would see that I was addressing Darth's accusation that everyone was failing to address Flash's lack of hardware acceleration. I was merely trying to set the record straight that -- up until this month -- nobody did because there was no operating system support. That was the point of my post. You need to read the context of posts that you're replying to before you accuse them of saying things that they aren't.
How was Microsoft able to deliver a better product without whining? Why is Silverlight's performance, lacking any hardware acceleration, still better than the hardware-accelerated Flash beta?
Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration on OS/X. Regarding your accusation -- I'm not saying Silverlight's software renderer isn't better than Adobe's -- it very well may be. But I've not yet found any data to back up your claim that Silverlight's software renderer is superior to the Apple beta. So I'll end this post by reiterating my earlier [citation needed].
Because I would like to have a more open web experience, that lets me view web content at my discretion.
I want an operating system that does what I tell it to do -- not a nanny that slaps me on the hand and refuses to do what I say because they somehow know better than me.
Keep in mind that Apple only recently provided API support for hardware acceleration, and even then -- Apple only provides an API to accelerate video under certain conditions, for only their most recent hardware. For whatever other ways you want to blame Adobe for the "slowness", Apple needs to own up to a fair share of this one.
If the frame rates are higher when both are going full-tilt, then that means that Flash can be dialed back to spend fewer cycles for equivalent framerate performance. I.E., better battery life for the same experience.
The HTML5 audio support isn't even close to Flash.
Anyone with a "basic clue" wouldn't spend their time seriously writing apps in HTML5 if something more reasonable like Flash were available. Write your game's audio synthesizer / mixer in HTML5, and then do it in Flash, and lemme' know how much HTML5 has "going for it".
In HTML5, you can't even play two copies of the same sound at the same time. It's a joke for any reasonable game development. If you think that HTML5 is a serious competitor to Flash, then that tells me that one or both of the following are true: 1) You haven't seriously developed in both HTML5 and Flash, and/or 2) You've completely bought into Steve Job's reality distortion field where HTML5 is somehow a drop-in replacement for Flash.
Likewise, what about the HW vs SW argument? It's easy for code developers, some of whom I'm guessing have invested a fair about of time and training in becoming adept at flash, to just wave their arms and say "battery life is somebody else's problem". Well, yes, the hardware manufacturer's, for one. Here is a hardware manufacturer's response. Etc.
Okay, let's talk about the HW vs SW argument. Adobe needed API support from Apple before they could add hardware video decoding to their Flash Player. This API was only added in OSX 10.6.3, and even then, won't even run on my Macbook Pro, because it's older than a year and a half old, and Apple is not (yet?) providing API support for older hardware. You can rest assured, that now that Apple has finally provided an API for developers to use, Adobe has jumped on it, but due to Apple's half-way job of it, much of Apple hardware is not supported.
Oh right, I forgot -- I'm supposed to believe Adobe has been the sole lazy company here. Adobe recognizes they have more resources available that they're not yet utilizing -- but these were only recently made available by Apple.
Somehow Steve forgot to mention this in his tirade, didn't he? Convenient.
Though it might apply more to chessboxing.
I don't use Yahoo IM anymore (though I imagine I still have a Yahoo acct), though you are welcome to e-mail me (my address is provided at the top of this post).
Troll? I'm not the one comparing people who legitimate reasons against ESC with those who bomb abortion clinics. Who's flame-baiting here?
The first article you gave me showcased using IVF leftovers (which I addressed in my post). Using stem cells harvested in this way has the major problem that they are only suited to academic research where tissue rejection is not a problem, because their genetic material cannot match the patient. I covered this in my post already.
The second article you sent me showcases a modified form of standard SCNT, where they add the twist of crippling the embryo, because they think that people will object less to destroying a crippled human embryo rather than one that is created with normal SCNT.
Do you want to see how the public ethic responds to stuff like this? Imagine the KFC headless chicken scenario, only with humans instead of chickens. Yeah, that'll fly like a lead balloon.
But even on a practical level, the technique listed in the second article suffers from the issue that there are simply not enough IVF leftovers to fuel widespread ESC-based treatments. There just aren't enough eggs.
Neither of the articles you quoted address the criticisms referenced in my original post, and all of the arguments remain untouched.
ESC-based treatments remain as unviable as the Whitehead Institute's crippled embryos, and there are no answers on the horizon that solve both the issues of tissue rejection and human egg supply.
If I've read the literature right, embryonic stem cells are, in general, readily available and easily manufactured. Also, they are the best at forming to any cell type we would want.
False. ESCs have trouble in that they differentiate _too_ much -- they are too unstable, and multiply without regulation (cancer). One of the markers used in detecting if ESCs "took" in rats is to measure tumor rates. While they theoretically have the most potential for forming different tissue types, they have the worst track record for actually behaving how we want them to.
That is to say that adult stem cells have been immensely helpful, but we think that embryonic stem cells may be better.
If that's true, then it's interesting that James Thomson, the father of modern ESC research has moved onto ASCs with IPSC. While some people may think that ESCs are "better", many of our top researchers (Thomson being of note) have changed direction to the more promising ASC line.
There are many research programs on embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, and now induced pluripotent stem cells. All of these have many promising futures in science, yet only adult stem cells and IPSC are promising in the ever-so-influential and variable field of ethics/morality, especially those of fundamentalist origin.
ASCs are also the only ones that have any fruit, with IPSC being in the news most often, despite it being the youngest of the three fields that you listed.
You are correct about the easy manufacture of embryonic stem cells. Growing stem cells is actually not hard at all and you can make relatively infinite numbers from one discarded embryo.
I would like to note that there is a big difference between "stem cells" and "useful stem cells". Sure, you can take any discarded IVF leftover or abortion remains and get stem cells, but if you inject those into a patient, you will have severe tissue rejection issues. To obtain ESCs usable for treatment in a patient, the only avenue available for that is SCNT, which necessitates the destruction of one or many embryos.
For most adults, we don't have embryonic stem cells with our own DNA in it at all.
That's what SCNT solves, and why so many were anxious for the recent reversal of the Bush order to deny funding to SCNT ESC research.
Ultimately, I think it is way too soon to start determining which of these methods will serve best, though we can acknowledge the power of ethical values and the objection of many people to embryonic stem cells. You might find it interesting that many popular religions actually support embryonic stem cell research, though most interpretations of Christianity do not.
Of course the book is never closed. But there currently exist over a hundred treatments using ASC and IPSC, and (despite it being the oldest), zero treatments involving ESCs. There is no viable avenue for ESC treatments now, nor there is there any on the horizon that anyone can name. If you're the budget director for a large amount of scientific funding, at what point will you cull the fat and move on (as James Thomson has done) to things that have actually produced?
surplus supply of tens of thousands
Sorry, that should be "hundreds of thousands". An order of magnitude doesn't solve the problem, and the point still stands.
Okay, I'll bite.
That first year textbook will also tell you that embryonic stem cells are now harvested just fine without causing any harm to viable embryos
Citation please. Maybe it's because IANA cell biologist, but I am not aware of any mechanism outside of SCNT that provides an avenue for ESC treatment that wouldn't result in severe tissue rejection by the patient.
Are you hinging the weight of your statement here on "viable"? If so, how is a SCNT embryo not "viable"? If so, those embryos are quite viable, and the usefulness of the stem cells largely depends on their viability. Who wants to take stem cells to cure a disease if the stem cell has bigger problems? I mean, seriously -- whole companies are founded based on cloning dead pets through SCNT. Your statement is false, and you're spreading mis-information. Citation, please.
and are otherwise acquired from ALREADY DISCARDED and nonviable embryos
You word this as if it's such a slam dunk. If it's a point not worth debating, then would any reasonable person object to the non-consentual harvesting of organs from death-row criminals? I mean, they're already discarded anyways.
So no, it doesn't require the destruction of an embryo any more than recycling newspaper's people have already thrown out requires the destruction of trees.
So what happens if you run out of newspapers? You give a faulty analogy, because newspapers are fairly common -- IVF leftovers, while they do have a surplus supply of tens of thousands, is a supply that has built up over the last thirty years. And as we have gotten better at IVF, we create and save fewer and fewer embryos with every treatment. If ESC with SCNT reaches the point of actually having a viable treatment available, we would burn through our IVF reserves incredibly quickly. A simple look at the numbers will show you that the demand for embryos will far outstrip the supply, and we will have to start farming human eggs.
All that to say, I'll call your bluff. Citations, please.
Phalanges is the plural of phalanx. [1]
For the "ESCs are good worth it for the sake of research" argument, it's helpful to remember that just about all functional ESC research can be done with non-human life, and that many of our pioneering ESC researchers have abandoned ESCs in favor of IPSC.
Sorry, "Even if we solve the problems of tissue rejection" should be "Unless we solve the problems of tissue rejection" -- it was meant as a somewhat ridiculous thing to imagine in the near-term.
Uhm, citation please? How in the world can someone use aborted fetuses for stem cell treatment without extremely severe tissue rejection issues? Last I heard, that sort of stuff hadn't been done since the 90's, and hasn't been repeated since.
All of the arguments that you gave supporting ESCs in the name of research are satisfied by using animal life, rather than human life.
Is there really a use now for embryonic stem cells now that we can do just about everything with adult stem cells?
There are. Basic research on cell biology for one. One of the best ways to study how a cell commits to whatever fate it's going to take, and maybe find ways of correcting that when it goes wrong, is to study the actual cells. Another is studying how to turn one cell into another, again by studying how cells do it normally.
I think by "use", he was talking about treatment uses, not just biological study.
One of the successes of ESC research is induced pluripotent stem cells. They were first made based off work done in embryonic stem cells.
Definitely -- but let the record show that this pioneering IPSC research was done with mice, not with humans. I think we're really in a great place right now -- for human treatment, we can use IPSC, and for destructive research, we can use non-human life.
It looks like IPSC is going to be the technology that will allow us to replace tissues as needed, not ESC, but that might turn out not to be the case. With no cell technology having proven itself capable of replacing every tissue in patients without causing cancer or other problems, the race isn't over, and we should avoid the temptation to call it too early.
Now you're talking about treatment, rather than research? Even if we solve the problems of tissue rejection through a foreign ESC donor, where is one supposed to get enough donated human eggs to make this a viable avenue of treatment? If anyone is still holding onto the idea of ESC providing widespread treatment, I don't think that they're opening their eyes to the reality of the oncoming brick wall that there simply would never be enough donor embryos. Some of our greatest minds and heroes of pioneering ESC research (James Thomson being one such example) have left ESC for the more promising fields of IPSC.
I'll say my thesis succinctly. Destructive human embryonic stem cell research (as practiced today) is barbaric and unnecessary, and should not be given safe harbor in the scientific community of a civilized society.
...make bad laws.
Yes, you are wrong.
The only reason we are tied to Uranium-235 is because of restrictions that make it illegal to recycle (reprocess) nuclear fuel in this country, hence we have a surplus of "waste" (that can still be used in a breeder reactor -- we're just legally prevented from doing so) that we either bury (stupid) or sell to France (who isn't so ignorant when it comes to nukes).
In short, there is plenty of nuclear fuel -- we're just not allowed to use it because Carter thought that recycling nuclear fuel could lead to proliferation of arms-grade plutonium -- we of course have long since now known that it doesn't, but that hasn't done anything to remove these laws outlawing nuclear fuel recycling.
Here is a link for further reading.
Great post -- wish I had mod points.
No need to wear shoes?
I'm guessing you've never walked around in Africa -- particularly shoeless.
Your analogy breaks down, sir.
Right, which is one reason why IPSC is more promising.
FWIW, I fully support IPSC. There already exist over a hundred treatments using them, and I see every reason to concentrate effort on expanding this research line.
When you implied that IVF would not supply enough ESC for -therapy- I should have pointed out that ESC probably aren't going to be used for therapy, they're used for research.
But you said, "These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient." -- by saying "patient", we were continuing on the line of "treatment", not "research". If ESCs are to be used on patients, and we don't intend to keep them on immunosuppressants, then SCNT requires that we don't just create and sacrifice one human embryo per patient -- SCNT requires tens (if not hundreds) of embryos to be created per patient. So in the context of ESCs being used on patients, I disagree with you in that useful ESCs are _not_ self-reproducing, and must be individually cloned from unfertilized eggs (traditionally, left over from IVF treatment).
but again, ESC are still essential for basic research.
And again, must they be human? And if ESCs have no viable treatment avenues, and we're aiming to move SC treatments into the practical realm, then it seems that we should be focusing on researching things that have more potential. More "potency" if you will.
Ethically, there are serious concerns for using ESCs, sure. But even pragmatically, ESCs just have so many barriers to overcome, that things like cord blood and IPSC seem to actually be able to go somewhere (such as this news article). If we know that there's in all likelyhood a dead-end at the end of the ESC road, wouldn't it be wiser to focus on IPSC? You seem reluctant to give up ESCs because of research -- fine. Why not continue with simian ESCs, or if you insist on human, existing stem cell lines? As you said, they're self-reproducing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but many of our seminal ESC researchers have already moved onto the more promising IPSC research. ESCs may have academic value, and you want to dedicate another 40 years of research to them. Given the power of IPSCs, and the significant scientific barriers to the usability of ESCs, combined with the serious ethical implications, I don't think that you have provided compelling evidence for why public funding is a reasonable thing to expect for ESC research.
Again you're only thinking in terms of treatments. ESC has more value in basic research.
But if it looks like a dead-end road, why spend our time messing with it?
Give ESC 40 years at least before you say they have no theraputic value.
I don't say that cloning has no therapeutic value. It's just that we've moved on. IPSC has proven to be so valuable so quickly, it's a veritable gold mine promising near-immediate returns. Given our extremely limited resources for scientific research, wouldn't you want to focus on things that have potential? Unless we seriously compromise human ethics, there will never be enough embryos to go around for everyone who would want ESC treatment. It's just not there.
The scientific community has moved on. Heck, even James Thomson -- the father of modern ESC research has moved on to IPSC. It's like you're asking for another 40 years to research some outdated and debunked theory because there may be value in it, when we'd rather all get on with something that's proven to be effective.
I've never had any frustration with people who feel it's unethical. I myself have questions about the morality of ESC. I think it should be funded
It never wasn't funded. It wasn't banned or unfunded under Bush, it wasn't banned or unfunded under Clinton. The only thing that those executive orders did was ban federal fund
If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment
Citation needed. These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient.
True -- in some previous treatments, each patient may be implanted with brain tissue from as many as seven aborted donors. Granted, that was before isolated stem cells were in use, but for ESCs to move from the laboratory into the doctor's office, unless we plan on keeping all of our patients on immunosuppressants, I was under the impression that SCNT or some other form of "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to obtain ESCs that are usable cells that won't cause rejection. Ultimately you're right -- it's hard to say what would be like in the future, but unless I'm missing some important fact of cell biology, this is one of the serious bottlenecks on the horizon.
So that's a real gap in my knowledge -- IVF embryos are perfectly usable for research, but does another method exist for taking a pre-existing ESC and making a rejection-free compatible cell line from it? All of what I've read has pointed to either pointed to SCNT or induced pluri-potency in ASCs as the "best ideas running" for obtaining usable stem cells for treatment. Am I correct in thinking that, or what are some of the other ideas being floated?
You slipped "people" in there. You realize of course that's a not exactly a clear cut issue. It's a major difference between the execution and ESC.
Perhaps I should have used the word "human"?
If one (such as James Thomson) says that there are 400,000 frozen human embryos that are going to be incinerated anyways, and we should at least put that life to good use before it is destroyed, that's one thing -- but I don't think we can simply ram past this issue and ignore the fact that such human treatment makes anyone who thinks about it at least a little uncomfortable.
I don't think enough people would be willing to spend their tax money on defense to actually support an army.
Are placing the government's role in scientific research on parallel with the government's role in national defense?
The idea that you should get to decide where your taxes go has been thoroughly rejected in our government, because when it comes down to it, no one actually WANTS to be paying taxes at all, and few if any people realize the actual value of all government programs.
While you and I may both not fully understand the value of government-run programs, it seems that you and I may disagree on the actual value of personal liberty in a society. Everyone agrees that totalitarian governments are the best at getting things done, and forced labor has always been the most efficient means of production. But just because something is effective doesn't mean that it is morally or ethically sound.
However, you and I may be at a disconnect here, since I'm basing my case on ethics that you don't seem to share. Impasse?
There isn't enough cash to go around, but you should be trying to cut the waste as opposed to promising but not yet mature technology.
Def. agree w/ you re: cutting waste.
Promising technology? Relative to ASC treatments, the numbers would seem to show that ESC isn't as promising (unless you feel there is no true distinction?).
You also seem to feel that there is no moral component to any of this, and you seem frustrated that anyone would balk at the idea of ESC research and treatment.
I don't think people should get a say on highly tecnhnical issues when they remain stubbornly uninformed on those issues.
Well to remove this from the realm of abstract third-parties