Posted on 05/22/2005 6:08:44 PM PDT by Sun
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44381
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Embryonic stem-cell research: Science boondoggle
By Dr. Kelly Hollowell
Remember in June of 2001 when President Bush announced his plan for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research? He announced federal dollars could be used to fund research on existing stem-cell lines because the embryos were already destroyed. He drew the line in the sand by saying no additional embryos would be destroyed for stem-cell research using our tax dollars.
It was supposed to be an acceptable compromise between opponents and proponents of this ethically challenged research. Of course, neither side was very happy. The left was appalled by the limitations. The right was concerned about giving the left a proverbial toehold that would lead to an eventual foothold on federal money for human experimentation.
As predicted, proponents now claim the president's stem-cell policy is handcuffing our nation's top scientists, restricting medical research and holding back cures from our loved ones. They also claim that the stem-cell lines available for federal research dollars are inferior to the stem-cell lines created after August 2001.
This has led to H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005. This bill is intended to overturn the Bush policy restricting government funding of ESCR. It is expected to come up for a vote in the House in the next two weeks. And according to D.C. insiders, it is also expected to pass with bipartisan support.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
This type of research is part of the future of science. I wouldn't want to hamstring our scientists in the face of increasing competition from South Korea, China, and other nations.
China also kills prisoners to harvest their organs, and doesn't kill the prisoner until the very end, because they want the organs to be fresh. So the prisoner KNOWS what's going to happen, and is left frightened until the end.
China was first with killing prisoners for body parts.
Thanx, Coleus.
From the article:
"News Flash – After 20 years of research, embryonic stem cells haven't cured a single lab rat. They haven't been used to treat people because the cells are unproven and unsafe. They tend to produce tumors, cause transplant rejection and form the wrong kinds of cells.
By stark contrast, adult stem cells have treated over 58 diseases in human patients in published clinical studies. Some of the most startling advancements have come in treating Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. That's right Christopher Reeves fans, people treated with adult stem cells are regaining the use of their legs."
True, but I would distinguish the two situations. An uprooted acorn is not an oak tree.
Of all the types of stem cell research [ambilical cord, adult, and embryonic] -- only embryonic has been a total failure and is the only immoral one of the three.
I think God is sending a message there -- if the one that fails offends Him.
Ambilical uses the ambilical cord between the baby and the mother. At birth, the cord is discarded. It has the property that it must interact between the DNA of the mother and the DNA of the baby. It also must handle the blood type of both the baby and the mother.
I believe there is a lot of kickbacks on the embryonic stell cell because of the high failure rate and need for billions of dollars to be flushed down the toilet.
Adult stem cell has proven very inexpensive in terms of research trials -- which is bad news for research centers trying to find money to fund research [if that research is inexpensive and requires curtailing research moneys].
Nothing that Bush has done or will do (veto the bill) will prevent any scientist from doing whatever they want with embryonic stem cells.
All Bush is doing is preventing federal funding of embryonic stem cells.
Federal funding means your money & my money.
If embryonic stem cells are such a great scientific advance, why are there not dozens of biotech companies throwing billions of dollars at it?
If there are dozens of biotech companies already throwing billions of dollars at it, why do some insist that my money & your money also fund it?
Yeah, I can see where letting them kill more human babies then we do would be an impediment to our development./sarcasm. The truth is adult stem cells have actually produced benefits where as embryo stem cells have only accomplished the deaths of human babies. You do know that an human embryo is a baby right?
"True, but I would distinguish the two situations. An uprooted acorn is not an oak tree."
My point is: Why would we want to be ahead of China when it comes to EVIL - all evil.
Your statement is not true. An uprooted acorn is an oak tree albeit a small one. A human embryo will grow to a full size baby if left alone inside a human mother. Symantics will not change that fact. Once a females egg has been fertilized by male sperm and starts to grow it is human and will become a fully formed baby if left to grow just as a acorn will grow to a fully formed oak tree if left alone. In their beginning states they are still oak trees and humans with the full DNA map for their developmen embedded inside them.
Many obviously have a political agenda; otherwise, John Kerry would have supported ADULT stem cells which has helped so many.
But John Kerry never said a word about adult stem cell cures. Lie by omission.
Stem cells remind me of the Garden of Paradise. God gave everything to Adam and Eve that they could possibly want, but the devil told them if they ate from the forbidden apple tree, they would be like God. They disobeyed God and look what happened.
With ADULT stem cells God is already giving us all kinds of cures. But man wants to "play g-d" and destroy life and clone life.
FDR should have funnelled money to Mengele, then Joe wouldn't have been hamstrung in his research.
You are correct, and it reminds me of this snippet from Ann Coulter:
Ironically, the always market-oriented Ronald Reagan would probably have asked his wife, "Honey, if embryonic stem-cell therapy is such a treasure trove of medical advances, why isn't private research and development funding flocking to it?"
President Bush has never said that fetal stem cells cannot be used for research. He said "federal money" cannot be used to fund such research. If leading scientists believed fetal stem-cell research would prove to be so fruitful in curing Alzheimer's, why is the private money not pouring in hand over fist? Do you realize how many billions a cure for Alzheimer's would be worth, let alone all the other cures some are claiming fetal stem-cell research would lead to? Forget Alzheimer's – do you know how much middle-aged men would pay for a genuine baldness cure? Then again, Porsche sales would probably fall off quite a bit if we ever cured baldness.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1154820/posts
Bottom line: It is wrong to destroy one life for the benefit of another.
Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.
Adolf Hitler and many others said that the end justified the means. Okay. Do you side with them, or what.
This is a liberal bill created by a liberal Republican.
I strongly disagree. Blind people have been made to see, people have been able to be cured to walk with adult and ambilical stem cells.
You did not mention that embryonic stem cells cause tumors. THAT IS AN IMPORTANT OMISSION. Itty bitty babies are supposed to grow fast in the womb. Putting these cells in an adult triggers an imbalance of nature (tumors).a
Maybe you need to add more funding for chemotherapy as part of this funding...
It is no more possible for people to see eye to eye on this than it is to discuss abortion. so why even discuss it. Some think to stop this is equivalent to stopping the splitting of the atom, the discovery of properties of matter, the exploration of space. Others see this as murder.
So why bring it up at all? All it leads to is the dissolution of any ability to discuss anything on this board which is about at the breaking point.
Some think this is a good bill. Any room for reasonable disagreement here? NO, there is no room. So why bring it up as if everyone here is in agreement.
"This type of research is ..." Cannibalism. Stem cells ripped from embryo-aged human organisms for experiments and treatments is as surely cannibalism as it would be if the embryos were placed on crackers and serve for snacks. If the world wants to live by cannibalism, is that the best reason to embrace such wrong in America? If the world were seen to be committing suicide by bioengineering in search (only search mind you) of immortality, would that prompt America to follow suit?
It's like the euphemism of 'therapeutic cloning' being tossed about by the agenda driven BM (big media) trying to hide the truth that such cloning is destined to kill an alive human for their parts, but the purposed deception is that therapeutic cloning won't allow the alive human to be born ... cloning is cloning when you acknowledge the truth that embryo is an age you and everyone else went through during their lifetime. Don't allow the purpose of the cloning determine the efficacy of such evil.
You asserted, "An uprooted acorn is not an oak tree." You couldn't even frame your deception accurately! 'Uprooted'? Do a little experiemnt for your edification. Find a peanut in the shell. Carefully open the shell and remove the nut. Now, carefull separate the two sides of the nut and look to one end where there is a tiny peanut plant already forming from the very beginning of the 'fruiting' process. Embryo, the entire organism including the placental encapsulation being built for survival, is a human being at the earliest age in the lifetime already begun. The acorn seed is an oak species member, regardless of whether you 'uproot it' or not.
Let's take a read of your supposed addition to someone's understanding, and point out the absurdities in your assertions:
"I think you are missing the breakthrough of the Koreans. These stem cells are identical in DNA to those of the patients with a wide array of inflictions. No rejection risk.You don't know what mitochondrial DNA is, apparently, the DNA in the ovum from which the nucleus has been removed for this procedure; such DNA remains a snag in the 'holy grail' of avoiding tissue rejection. The only environment that DNA identical stem cells can be CREATED is in a hollowed out egg. If you were a bit more up on the current science, you would realize that adult stem cell research using MAPC's (multipotent progenitor cells) is transitioning undifferentiated stem cells taken from the patient, yielding stem cells identical--even in mitochondrial DNA--to the patient's tissues. It is not an embryo when it is 'destroyed.'You're not alive when your destroyed, either. When the DNA from a skin cell of one of the skin cell donors is placed into the hollowed out egg [The term you're searching for is enucleated or denucleated] and then stimulated to believe it has combined with sperm DNA, a kinda fake orgasm Somatic cell nuclear transfer and subsequent chemical or electrical stimulation of the cloned zygote has nothing to do with sex, not even the 'orgasm' of copulation, then the egg chemically changes and begins the embryonic process, i.e. create stem cells by division. The cloning process conceives a human embryo and the subsequent cell divisions (mitosis) differentiate cells groupings tasked with both the building of the placental encapsulation (first organ for the being's survival), and the inner cell mass that builds the body of organs for survival in the air world. The cloners rip out the inner cell mass that is the being's forming body of air-world organs and tissues, yet some of the placental cell grouping are also incorporated in the formation of the digestive system, etc. This makes the extraction process precarious because if any placental cells are included in a treatment for the patient, teratomas (tumors) can result. The solution to this problem currently suggested by those pushing this evil is to allow the embryonic aged being to live long enough for cells in the inner cell mass to develop far enough down the differentiation highway so that extracting non-placental cells is more reliable. The egg provides the environment chemically for this to happen. Almost correct; the denucleated ovum has the chemical bath necessary for embryo mitosis, and the ovum provides a zona pellucida that shelters the early embryonic being. In the near future, scientists will have succeeded in maintaining an artificial womb for raising these cloned embryo beings. No doubt folks like you will be sold the efficacy of such processes with the euphemism of 'therapeutic cloning', the type of cloning which kills the alive cloned being before it can reach birth age. But it's still cannibalism. In addition, the ability to create a successful stem cell growth environment was drastically increased." Efficient cannibalism is still cannibalism.
Meant to ping you ...
bookmark
Thank you for the laughs ...
I know what you are saying, and even if ESC did help people, I would be against killing innocent human life.
However, I see TWO immoral reasons to not pass this bill.
1) It is wrong to kill innocent human life.
2) Our tax dollars should go toward ADULT stem cells which has both success and the promise for more success.
Dittos to those reasons, Sun.
Replies like that can get you banned.
Don't make me come over there.....
I learned from each of your replies. Let's be more civil as we reveal the truth about stem cells.
I'm not being deceptive, I'm merely stepping into the minefield of 'where life begins.' Life does begin at conception. This is observable via microscope. But at the same time, it takes a microscope just to see it. In the first days after fertilization, there is very little materially different between a fertilized egg and the spermatazoa and the unfertilized egg that preceded it.
I guess what I'm saying is that even if we accept that life begins at conception, it's not the same type of life that develops later on. Not from the perspective of the living creature, either. Life is a continuum, from fertilization to realization to death.
I have a suspicion that a lot of future science - not just stem cell research, but fundamental research into the nature of life - will involve exploring the fertilization process. I don't think this is inherently wrong. If there is a dividing line, I think I'd place it at the point where the developing embryo can feel pain. Beyond that, experimentation is merely cruelty.
Read about some of the NUMEROUS cures for Adult stem cells at this link:
www.fumento.com/biotech/s...earch.html
So should our tax dollars go to make the mad scientists rich or to speed cures with something that actually works - ADULT stem cells, and more importantly, you don't have to kill an innocent life.
Probably the most striking contradiction to your assertion is that the embryo is an ORGANISM (even making its own sex cells) wheres the sperm and ova are subunits of sex organs of parent organisms.
Everyone you love was once a tiny embryo, and they would not be here if they were destroyed at that stage of their life.
Life must be respected from conception to death.
"If there is a dividing line, I think I'd place it at the point where the developing embryo can feel pain." Others would stated that it is the advent of a sensing brain that constitues 'being a human being'. But in fact, the human embryo-aged being is already a member of the human species. If I had to save an embryo or a toddler from a burning room, I'd save the toddler because the toddler would suffer more than the embryo in dying. However, I wouldn't kill embryos to treat a disease or even my own handicap ... it's cannibalism.
There are indeed chemical changes. But they take place at the microscopic, cellular level. At that point, there is no cognition. There is no sensory reception. There's no intention or awareness.
Once those things do begin to develop, then the right thing to do is to stop invasive or destructive experimentation.
But before then, I don't think it violates any moral or even Biblical precepts.
Well, even a kiss involves some measure of cannibalism. I personally don't feel that the funding proposed under H.R. 810 rises to cannibalism as we normally understand it.
Thanks for the info.
Do you have a degree in biology or any area in medicine, or are you just well read?
If I were knocked unconscious, I would not be cognitive. Would it be OK to kill me? Of course not.
"Well, even a kiss involves some measure of cannibalism." I'm sorry, you'll have to explain that one to me.
If you were knocked out, you presumably had cognition that was lost in the first place. That makes the situation different from that of a young embryo.
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