I never looked much into the stem cell controversy; I have no problem with abortions, so the issue was clear cut to me. Go for it, if it might help people. I simply don’t feel an embryo has the rights of a human being. I also though I clearly understood why people are against it. If you feel destroying an embryo is murder, then harvesting stem cells is murder.
The July 9 Newsweek has several articles about the stem cell controversy, and I learned a few things.
There need not be any abortions to get stem cells. In vitro fertilization clinics make numerous embryos in their normal practices. These embryos are normally destoyed.
Preventing stem cell research will not force them to implant these embryos into women. It will simply send them to the incinerator.
So your choices are thus:
Allow stem cell research to continue, with possibly breathtaking cures for a great many ailments.
Block the research, probably sending many people to early graves, and not saving a single embryo.
You may be against the practices of IVF clinits, but being against stem cell research is not going to stop them. But being against stem cell research will, though, most likely prevent a great many humans from getting cures to horrible diseases like ALS, Alzheimers, and Parkinson’s disease.
Note: it is also noted in the article that stem cells found in adults may not be as useful an embryonic; so for the sake of this debate let’s assume they never will be.
From what I’ve heard, the cells must be harvested before they have even begun to differentiate. I fail to see how a ball of cells could be considered human. Sure, it has the potential to become human, but it’s still not human, and therefore not entitled to the right to live at the expense of terminally ill people.
However, I read an atricle in Popular Mechanics that talked about research into using bovine stem cells instead (The DNA thhat’s originally there is irrelevant since it would be replaced with the patient’s DNA), so it’s possible that we could cure all those nasty diseases without pushing anyone’s buttons.
Life saving organs are taken from dead people, right? A dead person doesn’t have the same rights as a living person, right? So what’s the fuss?
Step into the grey area with me for a moment, if you would.
There are questionable aspects of both practices. What if you are brain dead, but still breathing? [monty python] Can we have your liver, then? [/monty python] And what happens when somebody who is certain to die has his eyes & heart taken even though that last blip on the ECG hasn’t happened yet? That makes people uncomfortable, no matter how many doctors certifiy the donor’s eventual demise.
Re: stem cells. FTR I agree with you, but most objections I’ve heard follow the same slippery slope as the organ harvesting controversy. Stem cells come from the building blocks of life, nevermind that hundreds or thousands of non-viable embryos will be destroyed anyway. If we allow the harvesting from non-viable embryos, why not the viable ones too?
I saw Orrin Hatch being interviewed on CNN, stating his position of being for stem cell research while being against abortion.
I searched too. What I didn’t take into account was that someone would start a thread on the subject where the subject line doesn’t include the words “stem” or “cell”.
I fucking HATE when people start threads and the subject line doesn’t actually reference the subject of the fucking thread. That’s why it’s called a SUBJECT LINE!!!
This is the attitude that I would like people to defend (I understand this is not your view, Attrayant).
On one side you have undeniably human beings, suffering and dying.
On the other the mere possibility that this is a slide down a slippery slope that will result in the deaths of what only some consider human beings.
If you are for human life, in any form, I don’t see why this is even an issue.
When you stop stem cell research, you are killing the people who might be saved, and saving nobody. Not even embryos, since they will end up in the incinerator.
Grin, my subject wasn’t trying to slam you; it was a subtle reference about Silogate. I searched for posts with my login, because I thought I remembered posting in the thread, and I knew that Stoid started the thread. So, you’re off the hook.
I’ll have to read through some of the stuff in the other link before I can input once again. I seem to recall beagledave posting a link that said that embryonic stem cells aren’t as effective as adult stem cells, but that could just be some fact I anally extracted (or, for that matter, that the person in bd’s link anally extracted). It’s definitely a sticky issue. I do definitely remember something in that old thread that Scylla mentioned, something he took from a Larry Niven story, and I don’t recall his concern being ever addressed. I’ll borrow his idea and expand a bit (the “I” below refers to me, not Scylla):
What if embryonic stem cells could cure cancer? Reverse Alzheimer’s? Destroy AIDS? Good goals, I agree. Something with such power would certainly have value. As such, I’m not sure how effective positions saying, “The solution is simple, don’t pay people for stem cells, and you won’t have an abortion-for-profit scenario” would be. Black market embryos… now that’s a chilling thought.
Let’s go one step farther, however. Suppose stem cells can prevent baldness. Whiten your teeth and freshen your breath. Make your dick grow longer. Is stem cell research justified to address frivilous issues such as these?
Beats the shit out of me.
Quix
P.S. In light of Silogate, I think it would behoove me (and others) to ask a moderator: is “naughty language” acceptable only in The Pit? If so, I’ll try my dam… er, darndest to correct my behavior, and apologize for any offense I may have caused. Furthermore, if someone wants to edit the bad words out of my post, I will not take offense.
Sorry if it looked like I was yelling at you quixotic, but brainless subject lines is a peeve of mine. I might have even enjoyed taking part of the thread you referenced, but I never once opened it because of it’s subject line.
I’ve only glanced at the thread, and I doubt I will read it in it’s entirety. What little I saw of it didn’t address the fact that the stem cells will not be from abortions, but from embryos from IVF clinics that would otherwise be destroyed. There is zero chance it would make abortions more likely.
Hell, if the embryos are otherwise going into the trash, why not? Use ‘em to decorate the wall, for chrissakes. Feed them to the friggin’ dogs. Not using them only means they will be thrown out.
I would say that I am against abortion, but I don’t see much of an ethical problem here. Of course, I don’t consider human life to start at the moment of conception, since of course there is no “moment”. Personhood starts at some point between a ball of cells and a baby with a brain. There is no bright line. I’m fine with terminating the life of a ball of cells, as long as it clearly does not have a functioning nervous system.
So stem cell research, as long as the embryos are going to be destroyed anyway, and as long as none of the cells are ever allowed to develop into a fetus, seems fine to me.
Quixotic worried about what might happen if stem cells are found to be so valuable that we needed more of them than could be provided through current means. I’m not so worried about this. Stem cells are totipotent, which means that they could eventually be grown as cell cultures fairly easily. You wouldn’t have to harvest new embryos except infrequently, just culture new ones. Although we don’t seem to be doing this now, I imagine it wouldn’t be difficult.
That social movement which likes to style itself as “pro-life” is on its last legs, stumbling towards the dustbin of history. Thier most recent necrotic spasm was the whole “partial birth” abortion controversy. They were on very poor grounds on that one, but thier opposition to stem cell reseach is ludicrous, quite beyond the pale of reasoned debate.
There’s always a slippery slope, that’s what makes those decisions tough. A good case in point is “animal rights”. As to ending some of the utter cruelty inflicted on animals for trivial experimentation, they did wonders, and are a credit to thier species. As to the absurd lengths to which some “animal rights” loonies feel entitled, well, the less said the better.
As the pro-life movement shrivels, it comes down to the True Believers, the adamant and unyielding. And they are many, make no mistake. But they are less today than yesterday, and less again tomorrow. Take heart.
yea elucidator, it is not exactly that we have reached the situation where young girls are getting thirty or forty abortions with nary a blink of a eye about it.
Last legs? I seriously doubt it, not unless I missed the memo about homo sapiens turning into Vulcans in the near future.
Back to stem cells: in a decade or so I suspect the whole point of getting them from fetuses will be moot. There’s a few biotech companies that I’ve heard of that are gambling on trying to develop techniques to turn standard somatic cells back into pleni- and eventually totipotent stem cells. The information’s all there in the DNA, it’s a matter of finding the right triggers. More difficult in practice than in theory, of course, but there’s a lot of money to be had for being the first to do so, which is always a good motivator.
I read about this in the Newsweek article, and was heartened by it, at first. Orrin and others see a difference between embryos created in the lab, and those created in a woman.
Why is this? What difference is there? I wouldn’t want to dissuade them from their pro stem cell research stances, but I fail to see the difference between the two embryos.
I wonder if they feel test-tube babies are different from non-test-tube babies? And what about cloned humans?
Also, PLEASE, let’s not turn this into an abortion debate. My main point of bringing this subject up was that there are no abortions involved in harvesting stem cells.
My impression from the NY Times Week in Review article last Sunday is that federal support of stem cell research was prohibited by a law that Clinton signed. After signing it, he loooked for a way to evade that law and support the research. Can anyone confirm this background or correct it?
I wish that GWB would take a straight-forward approach and propose doing away with that law. I think Congress would support him.
It bothers me that an important decision should be made by one person. What ever happened to “checks and balances”?
GD has a somewhat less strict rule about obscentities than the other forums (saving only the Pit). Saying something like, “Why the fuck can’t I use these motherfucking italics?” in ATMB would be purely gratutious, but I don’t think an occaisional obscenity in a heated debate is the same sort of situation. There have been only two direct warnings that I know of regarding use of obscentities in GD, and they were way over the top–using “fuck” eleven times in a ten-word sentence or somesuch. Since the GDers have shown that they use a reasonable amount of restraint in their use of obscenitites, I haven’t seen any need to crack down on the practice.
