Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

Embryos, cancers, and any number of processes operate on set paths. The modern world is built on the assumption that paths can be changed. Also, these embryos aren't growing into humans; they're already frozen and soon to be discarded as medical waste.

Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

The limits around benefiting humankind are that you can't violate individuals' rights in order to do so. No one seems to be having their rights violated here.

I want the best for everybody; my prediction that I hope can be avoided is that 30 or 50 years from now opponents of biotech are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history. The US and even Canada and Europe could conceivably ban some valuable biotech advances, but China certainly won't.

We can't stay in the 20th century forever.

>>
One of the doctors on the council astutely points out that the Nazi's used the same exact logic to experiment on Jewish prisoners. To put it bluntly, they were going to die anyway so at least they might contribute to science in some way before they did.
Again though, it all goes back to defining at what point a human being is (or ceases to be) a human being. The President's Council has pretty much stated that biology can't answer the question. It'll be up to philosophers, ethicists, lawmakers, and the citizens themselves to come up with an answer.


False premise I'd think, SDGundamX, and one that tries to play on emotion but doesn't hold up well under examination. First of all you're comparing a group of cells to a living breathing person, if we were to apply that logic in any sense other than simply where convenient the worlds hospitals would be full of brain dead or organ failed people we couldn't pull the tubes from because we can still keep the meat alive, and so on. On the face of it I'd see it as a dishonest comparison we don't apply anywhere else in medicine or law and one which is only used here as an argument of convenience and emotion. When we start to see serious arguments that you or others would like to apply it evenly and across the spectrum I'd be more convinced.

Second you're trying to compare people being killed who otherwise wouldn't have died with cell groups which are already being destroyed daily as excess from fertility treatments. Are you suggesting that we ban fertility treatments? That we don't allow them to harvest extras for second tries which sometimes go unused but force them to implant every one they harvest? Exactly what solution for the situation do you or the right to life movement suggest? I haven't heard the option.

Ok, with that settled I'd hope, since we're already incinerating them in large numbers the only question which seems to remain is the one I posed in the first place. If we can get all we need from there and not have to deal with the rest we're left with a simple question of why not. As far as I've seen the so called "right to life" movement hasn't made a move against the regular destruction of those embryos and I really don't think they plan to, it puts them in a situation they've yet to learn how to deal with, encouraging family vs how to avoid the embryo destruction.

It's not Nazis, it's not a choice of if we don't they WOULD live which was the case with the Nazis, and it's not in any other way related as far as I can tell except on an emotional level and if left unexamined. Once examined you have to start figuring out why the right to life crowd hasn't said a word about current practice but only minds if they could save another's life. The choice we face with current practices is more akin to organ transplant, trash the tissue or save a life with it?

>> ^chilaxe:
Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)
Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.


The key phrase in what you said is "given the right conditions." The embryos are already in fact growing into humans, whereas the skin cells on the end of your finger after picking your nose are not. Saying potentially, under the right conditions, those skin cells could become a human needlessly confuses the argument. In the embryos the process of new life has already begun. In the skin cells on your fingernail it has yet to begin. Like I said before, it's apples and oranges. It reminds me of the old Biblical argument against male masturbation: the idea was that you were killing off thousands of potential children every time you "spilled your seed upon the ground." But of course that view is entirely wrong since sperm in and of themselves cannot sprout new children (nevermind the fact that biologically the testes are constantly replacing old sperm all by themselves).

Your statement that cloned humans are just twins separated by time is interesting. Isn't an embryo then a fully formed human being just separated by time? That's really the big argument that's going on here.

Finally, I'm a bit chilled by how casually you threw out your last statement about "bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind." Certainly there must be limits to this. Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

>> ^drattus:
The best argument for stem cell research I can think of is that we're already destroying more than we'd ever need as medical waste from fertility treatment. The choice to me is more one of do we make use of what's already being incinerated as waste or do we try to save some lives with it instead? No need to get into the rest of it, it's a distraction.


You should read the President's Council on Bioethical Research Transcripts from 2002: http://bioethics.gov/topics/stemcells_index.html

and in particular, this transcript where a similar argument is made by Dr. Outka: http://bioethics.gov/transcripts/apr02/apr25session3.html

One of the doctors on the council astutely points out that the Nazi's used the same exact logic to experiment on Jewish prisoners. To put it bluntly, they were going to die anyway so at least they might contribute to science in some way before they did.

Again though, it all goes back to defining at what point a human being is (or ceases to be) a human being. The President's Council has pretty much stated that biology can't answer the question. It'll be up to philosophers, ethicists, lawmakers, and the citizens themselves to come up with an answer.

His best argument is the one he spends the least amount of time on: that the embryos in question still have the potential to become multiples and then a single person again. If one believes that a soul is unique to an individual, then this would destroy his/her argument.

None of it should matter. As far as the government is concerned, you're a person once you've been born. Unless they want to start giving tax breaks every time a woman misses a period, stem cell research should be federally funded.

His statements might require some unpacking.

Flies vs. embryos? The point is that 150-cell embryos are incapable of desiring, fearing, remembering, or any degree of sentience --unlike flies, unlike anybody who's not in a brain-dead coma.

Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)

Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.

The entire debate diffuses if embryos weren't perceived as anything more than what they measurably are.

Hmmm. I'm an atheist, but the arguments he's making here are kind of illogical. First, he makes it sound like we don't know when conception occurs. Actually, from a biological standpoint it seems pretty clear--as soon as the egg and sperm nuclei fuse you get a human zygote with unique DNA. From that point on it's going to develop (barring interruptions) into a unique human being. There doesn't seem to be any vagueness about that at all.

Next, he tries to justify stem cell research by saying a fly would feel more pain than an embryo. This is kind of a strange argument. The logical conclusion here seems to be that it's ethically okay to kill humans if they don't feel any pain. So, suddenly it becomes okay to kill people who are in comas or who are heavily sedated since they won't feel a thing. After all, we might need to harvest their organs for research.

Finally, he makes an argument about potentiality that doesn't make any sense to me. He basically compares dead skin cells scraped from your nose to a developing embryo. The argument rests on the idea that those nose cells could be developed into a human clone. This seems like a vast overstatement of our scientific abilities at the moment. But leaving that aside, those nose cells have no innate potential to develop into a unique human being, unlike the embryo which would naturally develop without any help into a unique person. It's comparing apples and oranges.

I can understand him being frustrated by religious nut jobs who try to shove their beliefs down other people's throats, but there's a very real ethical debate here about what constitutes a human being and I don't think he contributed anything helpful to it.

This is why I believe so much in scientific progress, and I think things look good for the future.

Stem cell treatments harness the body's natural repair network, and every year we make concrete progress toward being able to grow any bones, tissues, and organs on demand. In time, the field won't have any need of controversial methods involving excess embryos from in vitro fertilization.

>> ^rottenseed:
^Yea, I don't like when kids try to talk and act like real people. They're not. They're social embryos mimicking how to make shitty small talk. I prefer the candid rigmarole of a socially unconscious child.


Word ;-)

^Yea, I don't like when kids try to talk and act like real people. They're not. They're social embryos mimicking how to make shitty small talk and a facial facade. I prefer the candid rigmarole of a socially unconscious child.

In biology, gender is ultimately a spectrum rather than a dichotomy, which makes someone having a male brain in a female body less surprising.

One of the theories is that a spike in testosterone can occur in the pregnancy at a point that is more formative for the brain than for the rest of the body, resulting in an otherwise female embryo with a masculinized brain.

Mormonism does not tolerate gays and lesbians. Any Mormon member that confesses homosexuality is automatically forced to appear in front of Church Courts. These Courts then decide whether the homosexual transgressions merit either excommunication or dis-fellowshipping. Mormons who have practiced homosexual intercourse with the same sex are automatically excommunicated. Mormonism may claim they love homosexuals and their "problems", but the truth is that there are no homosexual Mormons, only homosexuals pretending to be Mormons.

The leaders of the Mormon Church teach that a man is a God-Embryo and therefore cannot be born gay. Mormon leaders teach that homosexuals choose their lifestyles. They teach that this choice came about from sinful parents, masturbation, or willful disobedience of the commandments of God. All blame for the sin of homosexuality is placed on the person causing depression, hopelessness and often - suicide.

Mormon Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley stated on Larry King Live (December 2004), "We know they have a problem [homosexuals]. We want to help them solve that problem. ...[sic]... The fact is, they have a problem."

During the 1970's the practice of electro-shock therapy was used at the LDS Church owned Brigham Young University. There, homosexuals were electrocuted in an attempt to stop homosexual tendencies.

There are no homosexual Mormons who are in "good standing" with the LDS Church. Homosexuals that are excommunicated are no longer able to participate in any Mormon Church function, including praying, teaching or holding any office. The Mormon priesthood is taken away and all "blessings", rights and Temple privileges are taken away. Excommunicated members are further ostracized in Mormon Sacrament Meetings where they are forbidden to take the Sacramental offerings - or even speak vocally.

read more here
http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_homosexuality.html
or here
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_lds.htm

Take THAT poultry embryo!

Fear-mongering is an unnecessarily harsh word to use. It was exaggeration in order to make the point that what I said was legal, yet reprehensible.

You have yet to hear an explaination that makes sense to you because you are not trying to empathize with those whose beliefs differ from your own. Some cultures think cannibalism is AOK. Most don't.

You argue that science should be exploring both ESCs and adult-derived research. That's fine if you have no moral or ethical problem with both. The arguement over whether we should be using ESCs is not scientific debate. It is an ethical debate. Every university has a bio-ethics committee to consider what science is ethical what science is unethical. Just like improper use of animals is always considered, here we need to consider what we think about ESCs and embryo cloning and destruction.

Basically if you have no moral objection and no religious or philosophical aversion to it, you will never "hear any substantial reason why this research should not be allowed."

Religion aside, we still haven't decided when a person is a "person," meaning at what point does it fall under the protection of the state and rights of a citizen. The number of cells is a moot point since you start as one and eventually are billions. What's your magic number for being a person then? Make sure you don't leave out Gary Coleman.

Also, use of completely non-controversial adult-derived (and cord-derived) stem cells for treatment of adult conditions is making enormous strides. People who tell you otherwise don't know what they are talking about or have political agenda (and I happen to be a geneticist so I'm not Joe Q. on this topic. I hate to brag that cause it makes me sound like a prick, but otherwise people will just assume I'm another ...how'd you put it? "ignorant religious nutcase"). I'm all for stem-cell research. But it's unwise to rush into morally controversial territory when there is a completely non-controversial alternative that is getting more and more effective. The fact that there are destroyed embryos that could be instead used for science is another debate entirely, unfortunately. As for cloning babies? Well, I don't even have a problem with that really, a person is a person. But since the law currently allows late-term abortion in many places in the world, you could potentially clone yourself and kill the fetus late to harvest the tissue you need. I think anyone alive would find that detestable, but without the anti-cloning law, it would be legal... maybe not doable at the moment, but I give that one 3-4 years. Most of the methods needed are already worked out.

The public is only getting sound-bytes from uninformed politicians and fuming anti-theists about all this. They're being told that we need to ignore our ethics and do this NOW because PEOPLE ARE DYING!! Well, every kid in this world has 2 kidneys and that could save 2 lives for the price of one...what a deal! I mean, "people are dying" so we must act NOW!

I predict that Michael J. will be around to see adult-derived stem cell treatments for his condition.

In short, we're inches away from being able to reset certain cell types to recover most of their pluripotency. It shouldn't be long before we can take a bit of your bone marrow or (if you have it stored) cord-blood, reset the cells to a near embryonic progenitor, then tell them to become neurons or such. A few more years and we're there. Patience.