US Finalizes Stem Cell Research Guidelines 249
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Cosmos Magazine, to wit: "The US government unveiled final rules for embryonic stem cell research, laying out ground rules for 'ethically responsible, scientifically worthy' studies eligible for federal funds. The new rules, which go into effect today, follow President Barack Obama's March 9 executive order lifting a ban on embryonic stem cell research, an order that went into effect under his predecessor, George W. Bush. ... The US National Institutes of Health's (NIH) guidelines are slightly less restrictive than those outlined in a draft document released in April in that they allow the use of existing stem cell lines, in addition to new ones derived from IVF procedures. ... The NIH received some 49,000 comments from patient advocacy groups, scientists, medical groups, and other interested parties before issuing the guidelines."
Existing lines (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming there is a moral problem with destroying embryos, the damage is done. At this point you're pretty much saying "don't eat that cow" when the cow is already dead. Once it's dead you can either eat the cow and have a delicious steak or waste the cow and let it rot.
Same thing with a stem cell. Once the embryo is destroyed you can either waste it...or maybe find ways to cure a zillion diseases. Either way the embryo is still dead.
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that if the bans were there, then the embryos wouldn't be destroyed in the first place.
This, of course, ignores comepletely that most embryos held by fertility clinics (and other sources) are ultimately destroyed anyway.
My view is simple: Why not recycle? If another use can be found for them, great. If not, that's fine too.
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The fear, rational or not, that seems prevalent in those with a 'conservative' mindset is not that the embryos are going to waste, but that if the discarded embryos are going to be used for stem cells it may encourage doctors to create many more than they need. That IVF happens may be something that individuals agree or disagree with, but there is a general disagreement with encouraging doctors to create even more extras.
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, with IVF, many embryos are normally grown simultaniously, with only the best two or three candidates considered for implantation.
Given the inherant dangers of the egg harvesting procedures, it is unlikely that any ethical doctor would purposefully subject a woman to that, just for the purpose of additional stem cell lines.
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Right, I wasn't suggesting that only 2 or 3 embryos were grown. Just that there is the fear that, instead of growing 20* and picking 2 or 3, the doctors start with 100* or 200* and save the rest for research.
As for how dangerous it would be for the woman, that's why I was suggesting the fear is pretty irrational to begin with. That, however, is not going to stop anyone who wants to believe that a doctor would do so.
*: numbers are just used for scale. I don't have a clue how many embryos are started, I just
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I'm all for stem cell research but the "human DNA is only slightly different from animal DNA so why not treat them the same" argument leads to HumanMcNuggets and HumanBurgers
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Given the inherant dangers of the egg harvesting procedures, it is unlikely that any ethical doctor would purposefully subject a woman to that, just for the purpose of additional stem cell lines.
I'm not taking either side here, but I think that you chose to point out that an ethical doctor would not do this may be worth noting.
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but that if the discarded embryos are going to be used for stem cells it may encourage doctors to create many more than they need
No, it is because the very existence of discarded embryos is the consequence of a sin, and thus tainted, any use of those embryos furthers the sin.
The anti-stem cell research, anti-abortion, and anti-sex education positions of conservatives is primarily motivated by sin.
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Interesting)
The anti-stem cell research, anti-abortion, and anti-sex education positions of conservatives is primarily motivated by sin.
Is there a fallacy of stereotyping? Doesn't matter. Let me give you some advice: If you don't know what you are talking about, shut up. As a conservative, allow me to correct you and alleviate your ignorance.
Some of us conservatives are against embryonic stem cell research because it is killing human life for research purposes. I know, it's only a few cells, so it doesn't count right? So, tell me then, when do human beings earn the right to not be destroyed and experimented on? Is it at birth? Is it after the first trimester? How about voting age? Don't have an answer? Me neither. That's why I'm "conservative" in my answer and simply say, "NO RESEARCH ON HUMANS WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT, PERIOD!"
Is the right to not be experimented on so unimportant that you guess when people get this right?
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a few possible candidate thresholds but, when it comes to destruction, the ones that make the most sense are:
Experimentation is a much broader issue with many more possible scenarios and lots of grey areas. That said, I can't see a significant ethical problem with experimentation if you're dealing with individual cells for therapeutic purposes.
As someone else pointed out, there may be significant ethical issues in how you obtained the embryos or eggs due to the risk it poses to the donor. I think some totalitarian state having "farms" with captive unwilling donor women to produce embryos for export to Western hospitals is definitely a scenario we would want to prevent through legislation, and the source tracking as with the current legislation should address that.
To use your example, experimenting with cells from low-division embryos is not significantly different from experimenting with skin or bone marrow cells. You don't have a problem with donating a few skin cells because, with a local anaesthetic, you wouldn't even feel it. On the other hand, if someone endangered your life by ripping 50% or more of your skin off for stem cell material, I expect you would be pretty upset. Conversely, an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything.
Certainly, if successful embryonic stem cell therapies actually get developed, then there will be an issue with supply vs. demand and access criteria. That said even if we don't find an ethically satisfactory technical solution for solving the supply scarcity problem, we've already got a similar issue with a limited supply in the case of organ transplants. Yet there doesn't seem to be a credible broad movement arguing for the cessation of organ transplants.
Re:Existing lines (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you for a well thought out, fair minded response. However, there are some points I have issue with:
"self-sustaining" viability outside the womb (currently around 22 weeks gestation) or
A newborn is not "self-sustaining". Hell, I know a few 30-year olds that are not "self-sustaining". What about premature babies that require incubation? They are not "self-sustaining". Are they available for experimentation?
Also, embryos in a petri dish can survive outside the womb about as long as newborn.
significant nervous system complexity (somewhere between 9 to 20 weeks).
9 to 20 weeks is a big range. I'm guessing you are setting it so broad because you don't know. I don't either. Let's just say it's 14 weeks, 3.5 days. What about the baby that is 14 weeks, 2 days? Some babies mature at different rates than others. How do you know which babies have a nervous system? What happens in 20 years if we find out that embryos can feel pain without a nervous system? My point is that too many times, we've thought "things" couldn't feel pain or were labeled as not or less-than human with horrific results. We should have learned by now that man is not perfect enough to decide who deserves basic rights or what is human.
To use your example, experimenting with cells from low-division embryos is not significantly different from experimenting with skin or bone marrow cells.
Right. Under a microscope, they are pretty much the same thing. The difference is the donor and what damage it does to the donor. You mentioned skin and bone marrow. I have both. If I want to donate tissue or take part in a scientific experiment, I am free to do so (and I have). If you can find an embryo that will consent to experimentation, then I guess that's OK too. But even with parental consent, I don't feel that parents have the right to give permission to anyone to kill a child for the purpose of experimentation. And would it even be legal for me to volunteer for an experiment when the end result is certain death? It certainly wouldn't be legal to hold such an experiment.
The other point is that donating a few cells won't kill me. Embryos are destroyed in the process of harvesting cells. If you could harvest stem cells while not killing the embryo, then I wouldn't really have a problem with it, provided you have the parent's permission.
Certainly, if successful embryonic stem cell therapies actually get developed, then there will be an issue with supply vs. demand and access criteria.
So far, all the therapies that have been developed have come from adult derived stem cells. There will be no shortage of those as they can be taken directly from the patient.
And, it's nothing like an organ donor. Even as you mentioned before, it's no big deal giving a cheek swab or skin sample. Giving up a liver is nothing like giving a blood, marrow, or skin sample. Something about organs make them a requirement to life. Skin samples? Not so much.
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Insightful)
Jumping in here...
A bit of background, I am an atheist, and I am against abortion (except in the cases where the mother could die). I am not against stem-cell research though, because the cells were already extracted, and would be destroyed if otherwise not used. If every cluster was brought to term (an absurdity), then I would be against stem-cell research as well.
The reason I stated I am an atheist is to make it perfectly clear that I don't have an idea of sin, or "ensoulment" involved here, basically this is ethical and not a moral judgment. I bring up my opposition to abortion, because these are related issues, and I am for stem-cell research for the same reasons I am against abortion, and have the same caveats to my support as I do my opposition.
I also agree with the person above you; the "humanity" of an embryo is determined by its neurological properties. Without a brain, or a nervous system above a certain threshold of complexity, you cannot be considered to be human, much less sencient. The caveat here is potential, an embryo may be a person someday, and this must be weighed as well. In the case of abortion, the odds of fulfilling this potential is rather high left to its own devices, wherein the case of stem-cells the odds of reaching the point of being human is completely nill. The cells that we use for research will NEVER turn into people left to their own devices, and thus their potential is much much lower than an organic (in utero) cell mass.
We must weigh the potential here. Being a human is obviously the most important, but we must also balance this with the utility to science, and the well-being of humanity as a whole.
The caveat here is that I will not inflict these opinions on anyone, this should be the choice of the parent or donor. I say this because I am pretty sure I don't know any better than any other person, much less the people effected by these decisions. While being against abortion, I still am pro-choice, as I am towards stem-cells.
If you have a brain-dead dependent, you, granted power of eternity, can pull the plug. This should be no different for undeveloped cell masses in deep freeze. The donor should choose the fate. Not a bunch of self-righteous asses such as me and you (or really anyone else).
Re:Existing lines (Score:5, Informative)
A few things:
A newborn is not "self-sustaining". Hell, I know a few 30-year olds that are not "self-sustaining". What about premature babies that require incubation? They are not "self-sustaining". Are they available for experimentation?
Also, embryos in a petri dish can survive outside the womb about as long as newborn.
I suspect that the GPP was saying "self-sustaining" as in "able to survive without being directly attached to the mother's life support". A newborn can obtain oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide and other metabolic waste without having to be connected via an umbilical to the mother. One's take on that kind of alters the scape of your other questions. A premature birth can survive, grow, and develop without being directly attached to the mother's life-support. An embryo in a petri dish cannot, as we do not have the technology or knowledge to artificially replicate a womb.
significant nervous system complexity (somewhere between 9 to 20 weeks).
9 to 20 weeks is a big range. I'm guessing you are setting it so broad because you don't know.
Again I am assuming the GPP used such a big range for a number of reasons: different individuals will develop at different rates, different people will disagree what constitutes "significant nervous system complexity", etc. Therefore your example using an exact time measurement is inapplicable.
What happens in 20 years if we find out that embryos can feel pain without a nervous system? My point is that too many times, we've thought "things" couldn't feel pain or were labeled as not or less-than human with horrific results. We should have learned by now that man is not perfect enough to decide who deserves basic rights or what is human.
This is a nonsense question. To "feel pain" you need three things: 1.) a sensor to detect damage, 2.) a transmission system to send that information to 3.) a processor to interpret that data. In mammals, this requires a nervous system. It is part of our biology. No nervous system, no pain.
May I ask a question: are you against In Vitro Fertilization? In such situations, as has been mentioned numerous times, several eggs are fertilized, a select few most viable embryos are selected for implantation, while all others which may or may not be viable are destroyed. Is this murder in your eyes? I'm not trying to jump on your case, I'm just trying to gauge your consistency.
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You basically got it all right. I deliberately put "self-sustaining" in quotes as an acknowledgement that premature babies, while developing independently of maternal placental support, may still need significant technological support (usually due to poorly developed lungs). I left the time range for nervous system complexity open for both reasons: an uncertainty in the actual appropriate level of nervous system complexity (insufficient data - we'll have a better idea after we develop Artificial Consciousne
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Unless you photosynthesize - and it wouldn't surprise me - neither are you.
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So, tell me then, when do human beings earn the right to not be destroyed and experimented on? Is it at birth? Is it after the first trimester? How about voting age? Don't have an answer? Me neither.
I don't have an answer to your question, but I can rephrase it slightly.
"When embryos definitely don't have any rights of a human being?"
The answer to that is crystal clear: they do not have any such rights until they develop a brain. No brain -> no conscience. No conscience -> no personality. No personality -> no rights. It's obvious that a bunch of cells doesn't have any of the above. It cannot even think, feel, or suffer.
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The fear, rational or not, that seems prevalent in those with a 'conservative' mindset is not that the embryos are going to waste, but that if the discarded embryos are going to be used for stem cells it may encourage doctors to create many more than they need
I was of the understanding that the number of zygotes fertilized was limited by how many eggs they could collect from the donors. I thought (though I am not familiar with the process) that they give the egg donor drugs to produce more mature eggs at one time, then surgically collect the eggs and mix them with sperm, fertilizing in vitro. The sperm cells would obviously be in excess as always, so that all the competent eggs they scraped off of the ovaries will get fertilized.
So if a woman's ovaries produce
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If that's the case, then it's not so much like the GP's suggestion that we eat a cow that's already been killed; it's more like... "Well, this guy died in an accident, let's eat him so we don'
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Aren't a large chunk of the embryos taken from fertitlity clinics etc., basically stuff that's scheduled to be destroyed anyway? If it's going to get shitcanned it may as well do some good.
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I take it you are unfamiliar with embryo adoption [google.com]. It doesn't have to be that way--people killing these human organisms rather than letting them implant & continue
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"If another use can be found for them, great."
Says someone called NecroPuppy! :o
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Take it a step further:
A zillion diseases ARE cured by stem cells.
Now we have hundreds of millions of people looking for stem cells.
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With induced pluripotent stem cells [wikipedia.org], they wouldn't need to look very far. Or take immunosupressants either. And then we can save hESC for research purposes.
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A researcher out of Japan named Yamanaka is performing what can only be termed as medical miracles. Something to read [time.com]
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Induced pluripotent stem cells do currently look like they're better than embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells for theraputic uses. But for more basic biology, no. If you want to study how cells turn from stem cells into their mature fates, you don't want to study these things, because they're unnatural. You want to study the real things, embryonic stem cells.
A good example are the induced pluripotent stem cells themselves. You know how Yamanaka and James Thompson (they both were publishing at abou
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It doesn't seem to stop the Texas School Board.
Then again, Arizona is no better. http://www.youtube.com/v/PtzJhTfQiMA [youtube.com]
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I've never understood the opposition to using existing stem cell lines for research.
Assuming there is a moral problem with destroying embryos, the damage is done. At this point you're pretty much saying "don't eat that cow" when the cow is already dead. Once it's dead you can either eat the cow and have a delicious steak or waste the cow and let it rot.
Same thing with a stem cell. Once the embryo is destroyed you can either waste it...or maybe find ways to cure a zillion diseases. Either way the embryo is still dead.
The problem many have is that in order to extract stem cells from an embryo, you have to coax it into starting to grow and mature. At this point, it no longer becomes a single cell fertilized egg, but a developing embryo, zygote, baby or whatever you want to call it, that you have to destroy to "harvest" stem cells from it.
IMHO, there are way too many other methods to get new stem cell lines that are more useful and do not involve the destruction of any human life at all to even consider extracting new emb
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Perhaps because you haven't thought of the consequences of the deep bioethical debates behind it. I preface this by stating that I am a fan of regenerative technologies and think a great deal of good can and will come out of them in time.
Eugenics is a sinister topic that deserves a great pause. There are several key issues and parallels at play:
1) Treatments that increase the quality of life effect the population as a whole in mortality rates, and what established medical industries will it harm?
2) Possibil
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I guess in some cases Flamebait = uncomfortable truth ?
No, maybe it's because he's wrong. He's trying to paint those that disagree with him as "radicals". I'm against stem cell research because I don't believe in experimenting on humans without their permission. I don't care to guess as to what age a human gets human rights. No one should. Since when does believing in human rights make me some sort of radical?
Does that mean that jacking off is killing babies? Does that make me want to burn witches and torture heretics? Fact is, I don't give a shit what
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Oh and your sig is 100% pure bullshit. It should read: "If embryonic stem cell research makes you uncomfortable, you're an unthinking hopelessly ignorant idiot."
Wow! This AC just called the pioneer of embryonic stem cell research a "hopelessly ignorant idiot." WOW! The irony is too thick to cut!
Here's the whole quote:
"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough"
-- Dr. James Thomson, pioneer of embryonic stem cells
Don't take my word for it. Google the quote.
Let me reiterate that this AC just called Dr. James Thomson, THE pioneer of embryonic stem cell research, "an unthinking hopelessly ignorant idiot."
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I guess you shortened it because of the /. sig limit?
It's not like those little words - "at least a little bit" change the meaning much, is it?
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Fine, run after your society that has no morals; 25 years down the road your country will be on the brink of disaster as corporate greed-without-restraint and political spending-without-discretion leave your country in a heap of political constituent-pandering and a financial wreck that's only half done* when you think it's nearly over...
Oh, wait...
Also, before you mention that the guys who deregulated the banks, and dropped our rates to bubble-creating-levels-- that these people were those who claimed to b
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olives should be eaten off the vine
Oh no, no. No no no no no no. Olives need a long process of acid removal before they're edible at all.
Although if you made a good meal of them (and perhaps mixed with a good selection of raw cashews and uncooked tapioca) you would provide good fertiliser for a tree somewhere, which would be a nice thing to do for it.
And I like a good Cabernet, thank you.
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Man, I hope this doesn't erupt in a flame-fest in this otherwise uncontroversial thread.
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You take a shot at aged meat, and then proclaim yourself to enjoy cheese, a product which is often aged? Hmm.
BTW, simply declaring the mozzarella is preferable to cheddar opens up some questions. What kind of mozzarella? Cow's milk mozzarella tastes different than mozzarella di bufala, and there is a very wide variety of cheddars out there, with taste varying based on ingredients, geography, and aging. There's a cheese shop on my way home (I think I'll stop by tonight, in fact) that sells a marvelous 24
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Indeed. The former has no taste, because it doesn't exist.
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It wasn't just the Germans, the US did unethical "research" on blacks and soldiers.
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Despite what many think, that's not even the slightest bit apples to apples. It is definitively known that a bundle of cells cannot feel what we know as pain, the portions of the nervous system that can don't develop until much later. And it's still later that those impulses can be properly decoded.
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I think a lot of people in this thread believe that the Bush administration banned stem cell research. They didn't; they didn't even ban creating new lines. They simply didn't FUND it. That's not unreasonable, when a significant portion of the population has ethical problems with it.
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It's completely unreasonable if such people are not the majority and/or are not affected by it.
How many lives have been lost? (Score:5, Insightful)
During the 6 years that this has been banned how much research into life saving treatments has been delayed? How many living, breathing, people have been denied these treatments? How many more will die over the next 10 years that could have been saved?
And all to placate the extreme pro-life fringe, who count fertilized embryos (that would be destroyed anyway) as sacred, and the ignorant who continually refer to "aborted fetuses" whenever the subject comes up.
For shame.
Re:How many lives have been lost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably none at all. It's not like the "ban" prevented research, it just prevented Federal funding for research. And it didn't even really prevent that, as long as you were willing to abide by Federal rules.
BLOCKQUOTE>How many living, breathing, people have been denied these treatments?
Zero. Latest guesstimates I've seen say it'll be 20 years minimum before any of these treatments get all the way through clinical trials to general use. So none of them would be ready for use today, even if we'd started six years back.
Zero. See above. If we'd started six years ago, best guess says we'd have no usable treatments for another 14 years.
Again, note that President Bush's "ban" wasn't actually a ban. It wasn't even a ban on Federal funding (for that, we have to drop back to Clinton's Presidency, when no Federal funding for stem cell research was available at all).
Was Bush's "ban" a good thing? I doubt it, myself, but it's arguable.
Would we be better off if it had not been done? No, since absent his "ban", we'd have been operating under the old rules (which WAS a ban).
Would we have these miracle cures available now? No. Clinical trials take much longer, especially when we're dealing with "treatments" that might give us novel new cancers.
Would they be available soon? It'll be a bloody miracle if I live that long, but then I'm an old guy with cancer.
Would they be available SOONER? Probably. Probably not soon enough to do anything for me, even assuming they'd fix what I have.
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Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_controversy#Origins [wikipedia.org]
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I don't like abortions personally, but I like government interference in ones bedroom less, and most of the time it's not a matter of people not caring enough to
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If stem cell research had been banned - those would be valid questions. But stem cell research was never banned - rather, the uses to which Federal funds could be applied were limited.
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During the 6 years that this has been banned how much research into life saving treatments has been delayed?
That's a good question; one that may have a terrible answer.
An equally good, but probably unanswerable, question is, "How much good did Bush do--in the long run--for embryonic stem cell research by making the decision he did?" Like it or not, six years ago, a sizable percentage of the US population had strong reservations about embryonic stem cell research. Would pushing the law so far ahead of public opinion have done any good, in the long term?
For example, look at Roe v Wade. It can be argued that public
Liar (Score:2)
try again.
http://www.medra.com/ [medra.com]
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Ya, I don't disagree with your sentiment. However, what Bush blocked was specifically the immediate and direct clinical trials of therapeutic stem cells. The trial that was supposed to start before the ban has already been started now that the ban has been lifted. If it is a success we will be able to directly measure the people who died as a result of the ban.
Bad Summary (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Which, for more than a few labs or research centers, was effectively a ban.
While some locations were able to get private funding (and thus get around the relatively useless lines approved by the Bush govt), this sort of blue sky health research has generally seen a lot more money from the government.
Because of that ban, for example, DARPA couldn't effectively spend money on research into experimental treatments for spinal cord injuries involving stem cells. Now they can. And, quite likely, will.
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By that logic... the federal government is banning me from owning a poney.
Damn it man... I want my (government paid for) poney!
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If you can't spell it, you can't have it.
That's the law... that I just made up. (Thanks to Eddie Izzard for the line.)
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You assume I am looking for a run of the mill pony... oh no! I want one of those genetically engineered super pony's... unfortunately 'Super Pony' just doesn't have a good enough ring to it so we call them "Poneys" given the amount of money required to create them ;)
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Mod this puppy up.
Much basic research is funded publicly, but when it comes to medical research, fogetabatit. Check out the federal budget for science research, and see the proportion for NIH. DARPA, NASA, etc. can't hold a candle.
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I call complete Bullshit on that.
If the cures were so certain, so promising, so inevitable as you state, then private research dollars would have been forthcoming. But see, venture capitalists don't rely on vague handwaving and (honestly) politically-motivated criticism to invest their $$, they rely on facts.
Let's be clear - academia hated GW Bush, and this was just another way that they could pile on.
Moreover, you're asserting, then, that without US GOVERNMENT FUNDING no other country in the WORLD is capa
Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
It was effectively a ban, since if you ran any privately funded stem cell research in the same labs as any work (even with nothing to do with stem cells), the federal funding would be withdrawn for that research.
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There was no ban on embryonic stem cell research. There was a ban on the federal government using tax dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research.
Sounds nice when you put it like that, but in practice it's extremely difficult to make sure you're not spending federal grants on your HESC research projects. And, you know, there's just not enough red tape and bureaucracy with medical research. The ban on federal funds didn't ban research, sure, but it was definitely an obstacle designed to hinder the research as much as possible.
http://today.ucsf.edu/stories/ucsfs-kriegstein-says-bush-veto-disappointing-but-field-advancing/ [ucsf.edu]
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There was never a ban on research (Score:2, Informative)
Why do people refuse to get this right? There was never a ban on embryonic stem cell research, just a ban on federal funding of such research... Geesh. Personally, I wish there was a ban on a lot more federal funding of a lot more things. If our politicians would actually READ the Constitution and abide by it, maybe we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
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No kidding. All them negroes would still be working in the cotton and tobacco fields like they were meant to, and any finding their way to the free st
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There, fixed that for you.
(Yes, I know you were applying sarcasm, couldn't resist ;)
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After the Confederacy had been beaten into the ground. That's rather like saying "Germany legally surrendered on May 7, 1945". Well yes, it did, but only because the Allies occupied the entire bloody country, having beaten it nearly to a pulp. You'll still get the Ron Paulites saying that Lincoln was the biggest enemy the Constitution ever had.
Let's be accurate here. (Score:4, Informative)
In the interest of accuracy, I wish people would stop calling it a "ban on embryonic stem cell research".
While calling it a all out "ban on embryonic stem cell research" makes a great sound bite, it's horribly inaccurate. It was only a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research for stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001. If you were willing to fund it yourself, you were free to do so. Bush's executive order didn't change that part at all which the misleading sound bite alludes to.
Now, with that interjected, back our regularly scheduled flame wars on this topic.
Re:Let's be accurate here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take abstinence only sex-education for example. I'm not sure what the current situation is, but for a long time schools either taught abstinence only sex ed (no instruction about condom use. No mention of birth control at all, unless it paints the users as morally bankrupt) or they had to stop taking certain funds from the state and federal government. There aren't too many school boards that will vote to turn down money... Even if it hurts the kids.
If you control the purse strings, you control the outcome. Are you surprised people see this as a ban?
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...nor did Bush's executive order have any impact on funding for such research in any other country, yet THEY haven't produced any of the purported and inevitable 'miracle' cures in the meanwhile....
So either:
- the assertion that embryonic stem cells were critical to medical breakthroughs and that the lack of Federal funding has caused people to die from otherwise treatable conditions was just politically-motivated hyperbolic bullshit, or
- every other country in the world is incompetent in the field of stem
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Understand this, any institution that took federal funding for any research was banned from doing stem cell research.. so basically what you're saying is that they should have started a completely new lab, separated themselves from the rest of their scientific community, to do underfunded research. Well obviously they're just whiners.
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it's called research rather than developement because when you do research, you don't know if your research is going to be useful or not.
That is why private money prefers surer bets, of which there is usually enough to justify investment in preference to actual research.
Re:Let's be accurate here. (Score:4, Informative)
Corporations set up separate legal entities all the time to mitigate liability.
If we were talking about a paper issue that would be great, assuming researchers could afford the cadre of lawyers that corporations use (which they can't). But we're actually talking about physical labs, not imaginary companies.
What exactly was stopping them from using the existing stem cell lines? I don't believe I've ever received a satisfactory answer for this other then "They just couldn't!"
Some labs may have been heavily invested in a line of stem cells created after that date. For example, switching to another cell line is incredibly wastefull if you've already spent millions on microarray analysis of a new stem cell line that happened to have been made after the magic date.
Some necessary stem cell lines have not yet been created. If you want to study an inherited disease, say one that causes brains to be malformed, you might want to study how neurons differentiate. Generating a stem cell line from an embryo that would have that disorder would be more convinient, not to mention more humane, than having carriers of the disease continually reproduce and harvesting the fetuses after they've started growing brains.
There's no guarantee that the existing stem cell lines are good for all things that ESC could be used for.
And it's an artificial distinction that pointlessly limits research in a developing field. If you have an ethical problem with ESC, using existing lines is still problematic. If not, there's no reason for the ban.
Not an exhaustive list, and I think if you searched there are plenty of people who have better answered questions like yours.
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QuantumG spent his entire "conversation" trolling me rather than answer my questions. I don't understand why some people have to get so hostile just because they're hiding behind a handle.
Asking questions that have been answered elsewhere is a favorite tactic of certain trolls. Creationist trolls for example often say things like "Let me ask this: do we have any proof that macroevolution happened and made humans" and if you actually answer they'll launch into their standard arguments... I kind of thought you were doing that as well and mostly wanted to see what the arguments against the above points were going to be.
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None of which answer the questions I was actually asking. I know what stem cell research is (embryonic and otherwise), thank you.
Thankfully, interkin3tic posted below some well reasoned [slashdot.org] arguments to answer what I had been asking from the beginning. Suggestion: Take a look at that kind of reply, it's actually useful! I know I will, since I'm nearly as guilty as you are about making pointless replies. :-p
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Yeah, so they find some private funding and start working on those stem cells... and then all of their buddies doing work on, say, wind turbines, or new battery technology, or any other scientific research of any discipline in any field would have their federal funding removed because there was private funding of stem cells going on in the same institution.
I'm sure that wouldn't have upset anyone, eh?
NEVER WAS BANNED! (Score:2, Informative)
President Bush DID NOT ban embryonic stem cell research. He did limit Federal money to only the existing lines of embryos that had already been created at the time. No new money was to be spent on creating new embryo lines.
The fact remains President Bush was the first President to ever Federally fund embryonic research.
BTW: Far bette
Re:NEVER WAS BANNED! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post is misleading. President Bush was the first President who had to make a decision regarding stem cells. He limited federal funds to existing adult stem cells because of misplaced moral considerations. The embryos would have been destroyed by the fertility labs anyway, but when signing the bill, Bush was flanked by children conceived from embryos. There was no scientific reason to limit the federal funding. It's not even clear the moral justification was that great, either.
After Bush crippled competing research, it's no wonder that adult stem cells are ahead in the race. Imagine what would have happened if stem cell research was not limited out of political considerations.
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FALSE.
Adult stem cells are useful, but ultimately nowhere near as effective as embryonic lines. The science of this is well understood. The site you linked to there is a shill site that isn't really science, and is just designed to muddy the waters and try to convince people without a science background that what they say is "fact" when really it's just cloaking the agenda it's trying to push (that killing embryos is wrong).
Bush *effectively* banned stem cell research by attaching some really petty, nasty l
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Ha, was that you that called me on that before? I replied that I did indeed mix up and added an extra power onto both figures all the way through my post without realising it. I blamed it on the TV as I remember, due to some story about a billion pound company bailout on the news so I had the B on the brain. I don't mind admitting to mistakes though.
That's the price you pay for not posting AC I guess.
Or is your post essentially saying that people who make mistakes have no credibility?
Or that a single post w
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Oh there we go, I said /, instead of /.
I guess that makes it a habit.
There goes my credibility.
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Far better research is being done with adult stem cells and there are actual cures and treatments in testing or completed.
You wonder then why so many researchers at premier institutions are trying to study ESC when such credible sources as stemcellresearchfacts.com could tell them they're dead ends. I mean, it has FACTS right in the title!
I bet they the research will never lead anywhere so they can keep the gravy-train of state grants coming.
Sarcasm aside, no, the above statment is as wrong as you'd expect from such a biased source. hESCs are being used as research models in labs currently. If you want to study cell differe
if only (Score:2)
The NIH received some 49,000 comments from patient advocacy groups, scientists, medical groups, and other interested parties before issuing the guidelines."
if they would have eliminated "advocacy groups" and "other interested parties" we would have got a sane plan.
Discrimination against human-animal hybrids (Score:5, Funny)
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Answers to a couple of questions (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone asked why on earth anyone would object to embryos being used for research - since they would be destroyed anyway.
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The best way I can answer this is to ask why we don't take organs when people on death row are executed. The people are going to die anyway, so why not take their organs and use them for someone else's benefit.
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I think the answer to this question is that are afraid that juries might be more likely to pass the death penalty if they are aware that there is a potential benefit to other peo
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So... you're saying that we SHOULDN'T advance medical technology so that people die off faster?
Good luck getting other people on board with that one.
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Not die off faster, but die off natural, and with perhaps a little dignity.
You know, I was wondering what that smell was; watching someone with late-stage Alzheimer's sitting in a shit filled diaper and staring vacantly into space. It was "dignity".
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Once they use stem cell research to figure out how to make G the new standard cup size for women in particular, I will enthusiastically offer my support.
Interesting idea... (Score:2)
Reminds me of a cartoonist's suggestion for managing flu vaccine shortages: Deny it to those who don't accept the evolution of a virus, the cartoon picturing a bedridden Falwell, Robertson & co.
People want the benefits but don't want to pony up the costs, you see that anywhere and for anything. [The following is a special case of that concept]
So you can probably bet there would be a shitstorm if anyone (especially anyone famous) who railed against stem cell research is denied treatment derived from ste