Stem Cell Research helps paralyzed woman walk.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041128/1/3ovex.html

 

It apparently works,,,,rather well.......and was done with blood from the umbilical cord so there's no ethical concern.

 

See.......We can have our cake and eat it too.

 

[CubKilla]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041128/1/3ovex.html

 

It apparently works,,,,rather well.......and was done with blood from the umbilical cord so there's no ethical concern.

 

See.......We can have our cake and eat it too.

 

Stem Cell Research was such a hot-button for so many lefties this past election (not THE hot-button, but one of the top 5 nonetheless) that some I knew were actually shocked when I told them Stem Cell Research is going on everyday in this country through private funding.

 

Some of Christopher Reeves' bomb-throwing, leftist, Hollywood-elitist friends like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn should think about putting their money where their mouth is.

[Steff]

Stem Cell Research was such a hot-button for so many lefties this past election (not THE hot-button, but one of the top 5 nonetheless) that some I knew were actually shocked when I told them Stem Cell Research is going on everyday in this country through private funding.

 

Some of Christopher Reeves' bomb-throwing, leftist, Hollywood-elitist friends like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn should think about putting their money where their mouth is.

Isn't that what they did as thanks to them and Reeve they gathered millions over the past 4 years alone, which IIRC results in the research via "private funding"...?

[CubKilla]

Isn't that what they did as thanks to them and Reeve they gathered millions over the past 4 years alone, which IIRC results in the research via "private funding"...?

Yeah. They got other people to fund it through celebrity auctions and autograph signings etc. Christopher Reeve actually set-up an Organization dedicated to funding Stem Cell Research.

 

God forbid the money come out of their pockets.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Stem Cell Research was such a hot-button for so many lefties this past election (not THE hot-button, but one of the top 5 nonetheless) that some I knew were actually shocked when I told them Stem Cell Research is going on everyday in this country through private funding.

 

Some of Christopher Reeves' bomb-throwing, leftist, Hollywood-elitist friends like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn should think about putting their money where their mouth is.

Yeah cuz a guy who went to private high school in Andover and then to Yale and Harvard and whose family is worth billions isn't elite by any means.

[CubKilla]

Yeah cuz a guy who went to private high school in Andover and then to Yale and Harvard and whose family is worth billions isn't elite by any means.

Why should Bush donate money to a cause he obviously has issues with due to his pro-life beliefs?

 

I guess it's just anything goes when the opportunity presents itself to take a stab at Bush.

[Steff]

Yeah. They got other people to fund it through celebrity auctions and autograph signings etc. Christopher Reeve actually set-up an Organization dedicated to funding Stem Cell Research.

 

God forbid the money come out of their pockets.

I'm sure they donated money from their own pockets. No proof of it.. but I'm sure they did.

[Steff]

Why should Bush donate money to a cause he obviously has issues with due to his pro-life beliefs?

 

I guess it's just anything goes when the opportunity presents itself to take a stab at Bush.

I don't care who donates. But if the $ for research is there.. then the government should do the testing. Bush isn't God.. therefor he shouldn't pretend to be. Not a shot at him personally. I just think the testing is worth the risks.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Why should Bush donate money to a cause he obviously has issues with due to his pro-life beliefs?

 

I guess it's just anything goes when the opportunity presents itself to take a stab at Bush.

No -- your comment about Sarandon, Depp etc. was a cheap slam at the "liberal elites" because obviously only liberals are rich elites. I was just pointing out that Bush and his administration (and most prominent Republicans) are not good old down home blue collar boys.

[jasonxctf]

all I know is that if our tax money is going to pay for BS projects (see an earlier topic post by me http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26464 ) then our tax money should go to helping develop this awesome scientific technology.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Stem cell research does occur using cord blood and from the blood of adults as well. But the stem cells harvested via these means do not approach the level of totipotency (the ability to differentiate into any other type of cell with addition of appropriate external stimuli), so any applications developed in this way can be expected to pale compared to what could be derived using embryonic lines.

 

Yes, private and non-federal funding is available, and currently California is instrumental in driving, incubating, and funding the research. But NIH and NSF funding should be available for these research efforts, and as long as it is not the research will move unnecessarily slow.

 

The UberChristians against embryonic stem cell research have yet to make a compelling case against the reasonable suggestion that never-to-be-implanted human embryos frozen in a fertility clinic be used to derive new stem cell lines. Ironic that it is a subset of the same group of folks that feels no guilt or moral qualms about adding to that embryo-popsicle limbo. These "obey God's will" people are the first ones to decry stem cell research as immoral because 'life' as a frozen embryo is apparently not so bad. Yet they're also the ones who undergo ovarian sonication to induce superovulation of 7 or 8 eggs at a time, to be artificially fertilized and then replanted en masse in the uterus in the hope that one or more of them take (And of course all too often a larger number prove viable and the "God's will" mother to be generally decides it's better to put the health of ALL the fetuses at risk than perform selective reduction - leading to retardation, deafness, blindness, lifelong developmental problems.... that's God's will??) . None of these people see the hypocrisy in never considering that, maybe, God's will was for them NOT TO BEAR CHILDREN. Amazingly, the extraordinary means taken to get these functionally infertile women to bear children is somehow successfully dressed up in their minds as also being part of God's will.

 

But, I digress. If I started listing the hypocrasies of the American UberChristians I'd be at it all day.

[FlaSoxxJim]

all I know is that if our tax money is going to pay for BS projects (see an earlier topic post by me http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26464 ) then our tax money should go to helping develop this awesome scientific technology.

 

See, it's not so hard a concept to get.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

If I started listing the hypocrasies of the American UberChristians I'd be at it all day.

Only a day?!

[CubKilla]

No -- your comment about Sarandon, Depp etc. was a cheap slam at the "liberal elites" because obviously only liberals are rich elites.  I was just pointing out that Bush and his administration (and most prominent Republicans) are not good old down home blue collar boys.

Fair enough. I just didn't get all that from the comment.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Wow. Something good happens that should please both sides ( I even smiled! ) and we start a flame war anyway.

 

We got game!

[FlaSoxxJim]

Wow.  Something good happens that should please both sides ( I even smiled! ) and we start a flame war anyway.

 

We got game!

Per the success of the limited stem cell work going on today, no flame war is intended. The only intent was to suggest what is happening now is just the tip of the iceberg if we throw the appropriate federal resources behind quasi-totipotent (=embryonic) stem cell work.

 

Oh yeah, and taking a jab at the "Values" voters too...

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Fair enough. I just didn't get all that from the comment.

I should have been more clear.

 

Note: Don't write a 20+ page history research paper while trying to debate on Soxtalk.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I should have been more clear.

 

Note: Don't write a 20+ page history research paper while trying to debate on Soxtalk. 

20 pages?!?

 

Better use big type.

[Texsox]

Part of the concern from some people is the slippery slope of allowing research from the frozen embryos leads to buying aborted fetus and pregnancy for profit. I will admit to a bias against some of the research that is going on, especially in the area of cloning. I do not like the vision of a human embryo "farm" that could be harvested for replacement parts. That we could be creating an embryo knowing that it will be used for a replacement eye, not a human life. There is something in there that bothers me and I'm not so certain we should be moving down that path.

 

BTW, I heard on the Davis Rankin show this morning that there has not been any independent verification that the woman walked. And one report mentioned it was in some sort of a frame device.

 

This could also be mind over matter, or a spontaneous healing, kind of like cancers that just seem to disappear.

Edited November 29, 2004 by Texsox

[FlaSoxxJim]

Damn I hate the slippery slope argument against conscienscous (sp?) progress in peasful scientific research.

 

...Let's not entertain the possibility of securely engineering GMO crops that are truly and irreversably infertile to feed teh world because early results have not been altogether successful. ...Let's not leverage the knowledge from the Human Genome Project to develop comprehensive prenatal screens for dread diseases because it may usher in a new era of eugenics thinking.

 

[Curiously, nobody bothered to mention the slippery slope when Celera and Genera and Diversa started patenting critical portions of the human genome for profit potential. Now a scientist cannot legally work on finding cures to certain gene-based diseases because they're not allowed to work on certain genes. Never mind that we all have billions of copies of those very genes in our own cells. The patterns are now corporate patented property, and they may or may not have the expertise or inclination to do anything with that property, and you or your loved ones will likely die of something in the meantime because nobody else is allowed to look for a cure for your condition.]

 

We can apply the slippery slope principal to any potential progress if we cared to. Let's not make faster vehicles because eventually we'll make them too fast and we'll all crash and kill ourselves.

 

The fact is that scientific discovery has always outpaced our ability to easily deal with the ethical ramifications of the discoveries. It doesn't mean we can't deal with those ethical questions, it just means that it isn't always easy.

 

The public mindset is to make biotech scientists out to be Joe Mengelas because it's easy for that kind of comic book caricature to be set aside, mistrusted, and legislated against.

 

Now, there are some places where a slippery slope prudence would have been a good idea. We probably should have considered nuclear weapons research a bit of a slippery slope before we opened that can of worms. Come to think of it, the whol Second Ammendment universal right to bear arms seems like it could have used some slippery slope caution. The Bush Doctrine should have met with a litlle more slippery slope resistence from Congress...

 

Instead, fear of out-of-control Mad Scientists (complete with crazy hair and bad German accents) right out of 1940s Saturday mitinees, developing dysutopian baby farms and clone banks and offspring-optimization home eugenics kits, continues to keep sound, ethical science from advancing.

[southsider2k5]

Wow, quality stereotyping...

[FlaSoxxJim]

Wow, quality stereotyping...

We try harder.

[Texsox]

continues to keep sound, ethical science from advancing.

Medical ethics is constantly evolving. Who could have imagined a generation ago what is possible with modern science. And who should decide the limits and what is ethical and unethical? Allowing the scientists themselves to determine for society, or allow society to determine for the scientists?

[jasonxctf]

on a side note...

 

Swiss Voters OK Stem Cell Research Law

 

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer

 

GENEVA - Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a law allowing stem cell research Sunday, rejecting a hard-line campaign that compared researchers to the Nazis' "angel of death," Dr. Josef Mengele.

 

Some 66.4 percent of those polled — or 1.1 million voters — approved the law passed by the government last December. The law will take effect in March.

 

Opponents had called the referendum to try to overturn the legislation, even though it sets stricter limitations on research than exist elsewhere in Europe. The Swiss bill only allows the use of embryonic stem cells left over from in-vitro fertilization.

 

Embryonic stem cells form in the days after fertilization and can turn into any tissue of the body. Many researchers believe stem cells harvested from embryos could be used to regenerate nerve tissue or cure diseases, including Alzheimer's. But extracting stem cells from an embryo kills the embryo, which opponents say is tantamount to taking a life.

 

In the United States, President Bush (news - web sites) has approved federal funding of embryonic stem cell research for only the 78 stem cell lines in existence on Aug. 9, 2001. At last count, less than two dozen of those lines are still available.

 

The government said the law will permit Switzerland — which has major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies — to take part in vital research.

 

The opposition alliance, which included Roman Catholics and Protestants as well as left-wing and green groups, said the defeat was a setback for scientific ethics.

 

"In a few years, we will be voting on therapeutic cloning," said Pascale Steck of the referendum committee.

 

One opponent organization, Familiaplus, distributed a petition titled "No to Dr. Nazi Mengele," a reference to the doctor who conducted infamous human experiments at the Auschwitz death camp during World War II.

 

The government said the law strictly prohibits human cloning or the creation of embryos for stem-cell research and stressed the restrictions on the research, which include a requirement for the written consent of the parents, the approval of an ethics committee and the Swiss Health Ministry for each research project.

 

European nations that permit stem cell research include Sweden, Finland, Greece and the Netherlands. Britain allows the creation of human embryos for stem cell procurement.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Medical ethics is constantly evolving. Who could have imagined a generation ago what is possible with modern science. And who should decide the limits and what is ethical and unethical? Allowing the scientists themselves to determine for society, or allow society to determine for the scientists?

That's just it - the science and the scientists don't exist in a vaccuum. There are no findings that are going to leapfrog the regulatory agencies on their way to commercialization. 1 drug out of 5,000 makes it through the development pipeline, and all the rest are abandoned because they are unsafe or don't work. Despite the urban legends, there is no black market organ industry, and we aren't going to all wake up in an icewater bath with our date and one of our kidneys mysteriously missing - even though organ transplants are widespread and established procedures.

 

Why would it be different if science leveraged the capacities of embryonic stem cells or even cloning technology? Not to clone people, of course, but to figure out how to actually grow replacement liver tissue in a nutrient bath in a lab. Doctors know you're right there walking around with a 'spare' kidney, but they're not trying to rip it out of you.

 

Nobody is suggesting medical ethics be abandoned. Quite the contrary in some cases. What is suggested is that people are closing the door on new medical horizons without even having intelligent dialog about the issues first.