What the fuck does Laura Bush know about stem cells?

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@MrTuffPaws

Then she must be against war and the death penalty. Talk about a double standard.

Now why would you go and build such an easily destroyed strawman like this one? I mean, come on. The thing that concerns me is that you might actually believe this, so I’ll elaborate.

1. There are cases when war is a necessary evil. I don’t care to get into a huge debate about when and where, but I will just say that World War II is a good example of the necessity of war. Of course, you may be the pacifist type that reject war under any precepts, but that’s frankly rather unrealistic if you ask me.

2. The difference between the death penalty and abortion for the sake of stem-cell research (or abortion in general) is that the murdered child had absolutely zero chance to make any decisions, either good or bad, whereas the person on death row has made a decision that was so reprehensible that society has determined that he has forfeited his right to live any longer. First he/she commits the crime, then he/she is judged by 12 men/women with strict evidentiary procedures and deliberation amongst the jury pool, and then he goes through a lengthy sentencing phase where the jury has no obligation to sentence him to death. Then he goes through all the appeals, and then he is executed. What defense does a baby get? Bupkis. None at all. A unilateral decision, a few minutes in a hospital, and just like that a baby is murdered. No due process, no trial, nothing. That’s the difference.

[Marley23]

@Bricker

Indeed, there’s a case to be made for doing that. And at this remove, years after the horrors of Mengele are over, I might even agree. But if you had come along during the time that Mengele was perpetrating his horrors and suggested that we may as well use his research, since “[he] is not going away until something better comes along…” I would have opposed it.

I admit there is a practical argument to be made, and you’re making it.

But I can’t stomach the thought of benefitting from what amounts to a horrendous act.

You know that this actually did happen, right? At least some German scientists went to work for the US after the war, and I vaguely remember hearing that ‘work’ they’d done involving the effects of pressure on humans proved helpful to NASA, for example.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Well, this may be more appropriate for MPSIMS, but I’ll tell you why this is a crucially important issue for me, and why I beg you all to strongly encourage, in whatever way you are able, greater flexibililty in stem cell research.

When my oldest son was 3 years old, he developed diabetes. One of the worst things that I did was to visit the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation web page, which features all the risks for complications associated with living with diabetes as well as my son’s potential risk for death before he’s 20.

During our training in how to treat his diabetes on a daily basis, one of the amusing things was that anytime there was discussion about new technologies (such as a blood monitoring watch or other non-puncturing blood glucose testers) we were told that these things would be available in 3 to 5 years. Yeah, okay, sure. We’ll just wait and see.

However, when I first heard the reports about stem cells on the radio on the way home from work, I wept. Then it seemed like there was a new story every three months or so, new advances and new promise. All my son needs are new pancreatic islet cells. They have developed a way to inject new donor islet cells, but these also require a host of medications to prevent rejection and failure. They also suffer from the same limitations within the donor pool that a pancreatic transplant would. Stem cells provide the promise of a source for islet cells, perhaps ones that would be infallable to issues of rejection.

Bush has severely hindered this progress, and this new promise. Please do whatever you can to change things and help move research forward.

By the way, my son is now 9, heading into fourth grade, and able to test his own blood and give himself his own injections. I have great hope for him.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

OK, beyond all the rhetoric, tell me more about this, Hentor. Is it a necessity for them to be derived from stem cells? Can you get them from any ordinary Joe without requiring the sacrifice of their own pancreas? I ask because I would be willing to get tested if it wouldn’t kill me to do so. Do elaborate, please.

[Shayna]

@Bricker

Since you reject my attempt to construct an argument for you - for which I apologize, seeing as how it was evidently not the argument you intended - I am unable to discern what your argument actually is. “You are arrogant,” is not exactly an argument…

Ding, Ding, Ding – and we have a winner! I wasn’t making an “argument,” and why you tried to turn it into one, with a false premise and a wrong conclusion, completely fabricated by yourself, I have no idea. I was making a statement – an observation of what I think of your opinion. I find it arrogant.

Right. Because, as I previously pointed out, the issue of the amount of suffering endured by the small group of cells (the embryos) and the large group of cells (the adult human victims) was not part of the analogy.

Backpedal much?

@Bricker

As an analogy, consider a hypothetical in which Nazi experiments on unwilling Jews were found to have produced some sort of tangible benefit. You might say, “Look, the experiments are going to continue; there’s nothing we can do about that. The Jews will continue to be tortured and killed. So why not use the scientific data from these experiments to do some good?”

You can’t set up your analogy by trying to appeal to our sense of horror at the torture suffered by real, live, feeling human beings, and then claim that torture wasn’t even a part of your analogy, let alone a relevant part. It’s right there in black and white.

The analogy goes to the issue of profiting, even as a unintended side effect, from the fruits of immorality and evil.

No it doesn’t, no matter how much you try to backpedal it to be. How you can draw any analogy between supposed potential “profit” from torturing real, living, feeling humans vs the absolute benefits (creating life!) of not torturing microscopic cells that “hav[e] no developed nervous system [and] cannot be said to really suffer at all on a physical level,” I will never begin to understand. They aren’t even remotely the same on any level. You may think they’re both immoral and evil, but doesn’t mean they are comparatively so. I think bearing false witness against your neighbor is immoral and evil. And I think murdering your neighbor is immoral and evil, yet it would be ridiculous to try to draw any kind of analogy between those two acts.

[Muad_Dib]

@Evil Captor

If it were possible to clone embryonic stem cells (and there’s ample reason to suppose it may be someday soon) would THAT be OK? And would it work? Would it sidestep the objections that the right-to-lifers have, leaving them with no grounds whatsoever to oppose it?

The morality might be a little fuzzy (depending on the nature of such cells), but if it was not from, and did not result in the death of a viable embryo, then I would give tentative approval for it.

[Barbarian]

@Airman Doors

OK, beyond all the rhetoric, tell me more about this, Hentor. Is it a necessity for them to be derived from stem cells? Can you get them from any ordinary Joe without requiring the sacrifice of their own pancreas? I ask because I would be willing to get tested if it wouldn’t kill me to do so. Do elaborate, please.

I’ll sub for the other Barbarian on this one.
From the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse:

The goal of islet transplantation is to infuse enough islets to control the blood glucose level without insulin injections. For an average-size person (70 kg), a typical transplant requires about 1 million islets, extracted from two donor pancreases

That being said, in the Bizarro world inhabited by the New York Post, there’s an opinion column today (Wednesday) by Robert Goldberg from the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress claiming that Kerry’s plan to allow stem cell research will actually result in less scientific research…

[calm_kiwi]

@manhattan

To that point, the use of organs taken from a person put to death by the State is illegal in every U.S. jurisdiction that I’m aware of – despite, according to a quick Google search, occasional attempts to change things (including a proposal in Georgia to use the guillotine to facilitate exactly that :eek: ). And human rights observers have no small amount of criticism of China’s policy of using the organs of the executed.

The guillotine? :eek: Is america going forward or merrily marching back to the dark ages? Will the public be invited to veiw? It might make a nifty reality show, humiliation is old hat now. Executions could be the new IN thing.

How can abortion and the use or the aborted be an issue if the death penalty isn’t ? Yes fetuses may be alive but they are not “someone” yet. Those getting the death penalty are actually real live people… as are those who may benefit from stem cell research.

As someone who has had an abortion, I would be more then happy if it had led to something useful to the world in general.

[Bricker]

@Shayna

Ding, Ding, Ding – and we have a winner! I wasn’t making an “argument,” and why you tried to turn it into one, with a false premise and a wrong conclusion, completely fabricated by yourself, I have no idea. I was making a statement – an observation of what I think of your opinion. I find it arrogant.

OK.

You can’t set up your analogy by trying to appeal to our sense of horror at the torture suffered by real, live, feeling human beings, and then claim that torture wasn’t even a part of your analogy, let alone a relevant part. It’s right there in black and white.

Very well. Since it appears impossible to view that analogy without myopic focus on the torture, I withdraw it, and offer a substitute in which unwilling people are used for medical experiments and then painlessly put to death, or painlessly die as a consequence of the medical experiments.

I can’t see that it changes anything: the horror I’d feel at a suggestion that we use that data would remain.

You may think they’re both immoral and evil, but doesn’t mean they are comparatively so. I think bearing false witness against your neighbor is immoral and evil. And I think murdering your neighbor is immoral and evil, yet it would be ridiculous to try to draw any kind of analogy between those two acts.

Under some circumstances, depending on what you wished to prove, it would be perfectly valid to draw an analogy between those two acts. In fact, you just did.

• Rick

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Airman Doors

OK, beyond all the rhetoric, tell me more about this, Hentor. Is it a necessity for them to be derived from stem cells? Can you get them from any ordinary Joe without requiring the sacrifice of their own pancreas? I ask because I would be willing to get tested if it wouldn’t kill me to do so. Do elaborate, please.

Although Barbarian, who probably rues the day I inadvertently stole his name, has answered, I would just like to say that you are a better man than I am, Airman. If you are ever in Pittsburgh, I hope I can buy you a beer.

Right now, as I understand it, the only way to get the islet cells is from a donor pancreas, so your very generous offer wouldn’t work. I do hope that anyone who is able to be an organ donor, however, has done whatever they need to do to make that happen.

What we need to be doing, however, is all the research that we can to figure out how to turn stem cells into other cells, such as pancreatic islet cells. Hopefully, eventually, we will find a way to do this with adult stem cells, but since these are more specified by their function (i.e. blood stem cells develop into types of blood cells, skin stem cells into types of skin cells, etc), the job of figuring out how to generate a specific type of cell is that much more difficult. I just hate to have our researchers swimming with jeans on in this matter, and I feel a huge clock ticking.

[Mr.Moto]

Sure.

You do realize, though, that there are other sources for embryonic stem cells, including umbilical cord blood. Perhaps setting up a system where people could donate their umbilical cords could solve this problem.

Adult stem cell research is also showing a lot of promise, without any moral issues.

I really think stepping back and thinking creatively, as scientists are supposed to do, might really help us around some of these issues.

[calm_kiwi]

Surely all those fetuses who are being and will continue to be aborted should be out to good use though?

They are already dead, no matter if you agree or not. Why not use a viable source?

[Bricker]

@calm kiwi

Surely all those fetuses who are being and will continue to be aborted should be out to good use though?

They are already dead, no matter if you agree or not. Why not use a viable source?

I believe the esteemed manhattan addressed this point above thusly:

@manhattan

To that point, the use of organs taken from a person put to death by the State is illegal in every U.S. jurisdiction that I’m aware of – despite, according to a quick Google search, occasional attempts to change things (including a proposal in Georgia to use the guillotine to facilitate exactly that ). And human rights observers have no small amount of criticism of China’s policy of using the organs of the executed.

[Rune]

@calm kiwi

Surely all those fetuses who are being and will continue to be aborted should be out to good use though?

They are already dead, no matter if you agree or not. Why not use a viable source?

Because it’s a degradation of life. The actual cause of death is immaterial, human life cannot without consent be reduced to raw input into an industry production. Besides “good use” is entirely dependent on perspective.
Good use to you is not necessarily “good use” for the human life that was foetus.

[BobLibDem]

Back to Laura- obviously she has the right to speak her mind. The quarrel I have with her is that she appears to merely parrot what her husband stands for. I have more respect for wives that speak their own minds whether hubby agrees or not (like Teresa and Hillary) than those that never publicly disagree with their husband (like Nancy before Ron got Alzheimer’s or Laura today). If Laura Bush would just give us one instance of where she has an independent thought from George, I’d have a lot more affection for her.

On stem cells, the notion of aborting just to farm stem cells is evil. However, if abortion is legal why throw the cells away? I think the real reason for opposing embryonic stem cell research is that it might work. If it cured diabetes for example, there would be a huge demand for these cells and that would put a hurdle in front of future attempts to ban abortion. If we started to cure some of our most dreaded diseases with embryonic stem cells, then public resistance to banning abortion would be overwhelming.

[light_strand]

Airman, since Islet Cell Transplants are what I do for a living, I suppose you could call me an expert on this particular question.

For a bit of background: the Islets of Langerhans are clumps of insulin producing cells that are found in your pancreas. It is these cells which are not behaving properly in Diabetics.

A group of Scientist in Edmonton Ontario found a way to successfully transplant cells which had been isolated from a cadaver pancreas into a living person’s liver, allowing them to be insulin free. This is the procedure which we use at my facility with modifications, it called “The Edmonton Protocol”.

The drawbacks of the procedure are many.

We use cadaver pancreata and are low on the priority list. Our pancreata can not be suitable for whole organ transplant. Whole organs have priority, so we tend to get a lot of fatty pancreata which are not good for isolation.

Only one of three (although this number is rising) isolations will yield enough Islets for transplant. The procedure for isolating Islets is a bit of an art form, as is the procurement of the organ. This is made even more difficult as the number three doctor in the country for procurement and isolations had his Visa renewal denied for no apparent reason so he had to move back to Israel for two years after which he will be allowed to return to the US (obviously a sore spot with me).

Currently, we are planning to give most recipients two transplants, but this too is getting better as we learn more about the process and the handling and culture of the cells.

The recipients are only insulin free for about two years. Although the transplants do seem to stabilize their insulin requirements, so they can live a whole lot more normal lives.

But the biggest problem we’re having right now is with the immunosuppressant drugs. They are killing off about 50% of our cells, and they are extremely costly and uncomfortable. One program is having a hell of a time because some of the patients are find the drugs worse than the disease and are dropping out of the study.

Stem Cells are really promising for Islet transplant. The Diabetes Research Institute in Miami is doing most of research on them, and they are predicting five years before they can start clinical trials.

Islets derived from Stem Cells would alleviate almost all of the above problems, and I can wait to get my hands on some.

Hentor, your son has a very promising future.

Bricker, I noticed you didn’t address my last post.

[Bricker]

@BobLibDem

Back to Laura- obviously she has the right to speak her mind. The quarrel I have with her is that she appears to merely parrot what her husband stands for. I have more respect for wives that speak their own minds whether hubby agrees or not (like Teresa and Hillary) than those that never publicly disagree with their husband (like Nancy before Ron got Alzheimer’s or Laura today). If Laura Bush would just give us one instance of where she has an independent thought from George, I’d have a lot more affection for her.

But why do you assume she is parrotting? It seems equally plausible that she independently agrees with the point of view. Others in this thread - me, for example - have also expressed support for the view Mrs. Bush espoused, but I assume you understand that I’m not parrotting either her or her husband – that I have independent and (I believe) adequate grounds upon which to base my opinion. (You may, of course, disagree about the adequacy of my grounds, but surely not the independence).

• Rick

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Please, we are not talking about aborting fetuses for stem cells!

Stem cells are derived from a blastocyst: a fertilized egg at about five days development. If you believe that life begins at conception, I respect that, but let’s not conflate stem cell research with abortion and harvesting fetuses. THESE ARE NOT FETUSES.

Mr. Moto, certainly correct me if I am wrong, but the umbilical cord blood would yield multipotent stem cells, not the pluripotent cells that a blastocyst would yield, correct?

You may feel that you have the luxury of having researchers step back to scratch their noggins. I don’t.

[Bricker]

@light strand

Bricker, I noticed you didn’t address my last post.

I thought I had, by implication. But…

@light strand

Bricker, I understand the argument you are making (in least tactful way possible) and on some level I agree with you, however, I maintain my stance. If we go with the Mengele analogy, would you say that organs harvested by those killed by Mengele should not be used for transplant?

Yes. I would say the organs killed by Mengele should NOT be used for transplant.

You agree that murder victims organs are fair game (which they are, by the way, if the family agrees) the should not those victims be used for the greater good?

No. Because there is a huge difference between your random, run-of-the-mill murders, and the systematic slaying of Mengele.

There is currently a problem with embryo abandonment, where the parents of the embryos no longer pay storage fees, and the facilities simply thaw, and destroy the embryos, to make space. I suggest we use these for furthering research.

Call me cold hearted, but until there is better regulation of fertility clinics, I see no better options.

Your argument is eminently practical. But it seems to me equally practical to use the organs of executed criminals… right?

Yet there is something in me that recoils from such a practice. And I’m not the only one.

• Rick

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Bless you, light strand! I knew I liked you for more than your thoughtful message board contributions!