Beyond the embryo fight

A recent stem-cell breakthrough negates the need for research using human embryos.

The debate over cloning embryos for stem cell research has been one of the most divisive and unpleasant public controversies of the last decade. Partisans on both sides have sought to polarize the issue for political advantage rather than look for middle-ground positions that a majority of Americans would welcome.

In general, Republicans have equated medical research using single-celled clonal embryos with murder, while Democrats have promoted state ballot initiatives enshrining human embryo cloning as a constitutional right. They have committed billions of taxpayer dollars to a procedure that could open the door to socially pernicious applications, threaten women's health and exacerbate healthcare inequities.

Scientists in Japan and the United States announced Tuesday that they have successfully reprogrammed human skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells. The new techniques bypass the need to create and destroy human embryos. Research using these techniques would be fully fundable under current U.S. federal government policy. It can be supported by liberal, pro-choice Democrats and socially conservative, pro-life Republicans alike.

Response from all sides has been swift. President Bush's science advisors are enthusiastic about the new procedures. British scientist Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, is abandoning attempts to use cloning for medical research and will henceforth work with the new techniques. Human embryo cloning, he said, is both technically inefficient and socially less acceptable than the new methods.

Many have noted the immense technical hurdles that would have to be overcome before cloning could ever be used therapeutically. Others are concerned about access and affordability, given that cloning-based stem cell therapies would likely cost upward of $100,000 a treatment...

When a writer makes this lie so casually, knowing it is purposeful hyperbolic lie to the pro-life community, well, the fool needs to be ignored:

"In general, Republicans have equated medical research using single-celled clonal embryos with murder ..." The entire embryo controversy revolves around using embryonic beings who have many more than one cell and whom are already differentiating cells to be tasked with building the placental enclosure and the inner cell mass for building organs and tissues for life in the air world. These bastards get away with such lying because most voters/readers are clueless regarding what an embryo is and what the exploiters of embryos have in their sights. Makes me sick ... [a layman's guide to the issues and the science is linked at http://weneedtalk.blogspot.com ... it's free to anyone, in either PDF or html format, and less than 100 pages]

Indeed! But the spittle was his effort to diminish the pro-life position by mischaracterizing through diminuation of the targeted beings ... the scientists doing the cloning for stem cells are seeking a well differentiated embryo so they may have greater success of getting JUST inner cell mass stem cells and avoid the teratomas of placental cell growth seen when embryonic stem cells have been used to try and treat diesease like Parkinson's. I know you, Diamond, already know these things but for those in the dark, so to speak, here's why it is important to distinguish the process from other methodologies which are not pro-life.

In less complex terminology we would procede thusly: the first cell of your existence was called the zygote, and within your genetic blueprint were the signals/codes/on-off switches to build all of you, including the placental organ which was you first organ of survival that you made. With the zygote --a Totipotent cell which gives rise to all the cells of your survival, first in the water world of the womb, by building a placental encapsulation/ nourishment collecting organ/ amniotic sac-- at that age in your lifetime all the tissues and organs are yet to be built, but the information package is fully potentiated, ready for the signalling which results first in a few totipotent cells which can each give rise to all the organs for survival.

It is vital to realize that the embryonic new life builds all the tissues and organs for his or her survival, the mother's body builds none of them once she has contributed her 23 chromosomes to the conception and these 23 are matched to 23 from the father.

The zygote divides into two cells, each likely totipotent, and this is the reason twins may be identical. One of the two new cells divides and there are three cells to this newly conceived life now. From the next cell division onward --in a normal gestation-- differentiation of cells into tasks for survival is up and running. First the newly conceived life begins building --by differentiation of cells-- the tissue structure which will be the placenta, because it is this differentiated structure in earliest stage/age which will accomplish the manufacture of enzymes necessary for implantation into the uterine lining of the Mother.

Some embryonic stem cell exploitation advocates tried to claim the embryo was/is a mass of perhaps one-hundred or more undifferentiated cells. This is a lie because even before there are one-hundred cells in the newly conceived life, cells for the organ of survival while building the body for the air world must be tasked and activated for their work else the embryonic being will not make the implantation deadline for survival.

The zygote has all the information within it to make the placental organ, the amniotic sac, AND the cell mass to develop inside the protective spaceship of the placental encapsulation. It is that inner cell mass which is the target of the exploiters, their targeted source for stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, not totipotent stem cells. With each stage of development, 'switches' are turned off once a tissue line is started. This is a process called methylation, and it is the hallmark of progression from totipotent cells to pluripotent cells to multipotent cells, etcetera. The newest line of cell manipulation targets a living, well-differentiated cell (a somatic cell by characterization, meaning a cell of the body for life in the air world, literally) which contains all the signal of the pluripotent embryonic cell but in 'off position' of chemical signalling. The process of this new technique is meant to turn back to 'on' status the signals turned off in methylation, but do it in a specific way to back the cell process up into a specifically desired tissue line of differentiations which will build the desired tissues as the information once did in building your 'soma' for life in the air world. This process will not result in an embryonic being because not all the 'switches' for cell construction/differentiation will be reactivated.

Hope that helps those who find this stuff mysterious.

A recent stem-cell breakthrough negates the need for research
using human embryos.

Pretty amazing for The Los Angeles Times to publish this (admission).

Seeing how The LA Times was a frontline cheerleader/propagandist
for the passage of the cloning initiative putting California deeper
in debt for another $3 BILLION to $6 BILLION.
And ran a front-page story ripping cord-blood banks, including a
paragraph pimping for an attorney wailing about how he couldn't find
clients for a potential lawsuit against the cord-blood banks.

And the LA Times also BURIED the farewell address by the interim
director of the California cloning program in a midweek Business section.
As he left to go back to his academic post, he told the cloning
faithful that cures/therapies were probably a decade or so away.
Maybe. Hopefully.

Translated: "Thanks, Suckers!" to all the Californians duped into
a long-term obligation with low prospects of useful products.

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