Posted on 06/08/2004 5:43:06 PM PDT by MadIvan
RONALD REAGAN’S decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease could help to persuade President Bush to change his mind about stem cell research, senators from both parties hope.
Fifty-eight senators, including 14 Republicans, have written to Mr Bush suggesting that he is standing in the way of a potential cure by limiting stem cell research.
Nancy Reagan, the former First Lady, is expected to take a more public role backing research after she has bid farewell to her husband of 52 years on Friday.
Mr Bush set strict limits for stem cell research in 2001. Under pressure from the Religious Right he confined the use of federal money to existing research to discourage the production of human embryos purely for scientific research.
Stem cells are typically taken from human embryos and grown in a laboratory. They can multiply into almost any type of tissue when transplanted into the body. But because the embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted, the process is opposed by some conservatives, who link it to abortion. Scientists say that the cells hold the key to discovering treatments for degenerative neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson ’s disease.
White House officials played down the chances that Mr Bush will change his mind. But Republican supporters are hopeful that, as more becomes known of Mr Reagan’s final years, the suffering of an American icon will change the debate.
Mrs Reagan fiercely protected her husband from the spotlight for the last decade of his life. But she surprised many last month by saying that Alzheimer’s “has taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him. I just don’t see how we can turn our backs on this.”
Orrin Hatch, Republican senator from Utah and a supporter of extended research, said: “Maybe one of the small blessings that will come from [Mr Reagan’s] passing will be a greater opportunity for Nancy to work on this issue. I believe that it’s going to be pretty tough for anybody not to have empathy for her feelings.”
What some thoughtful people are asking, is that these tissues be utilized and not destroyed.
I am also aware that this line of research has really been a failure up to now. But, I cannot equate this stage of development with a child.
I understand the other side of this argument however and I believe it to be dead end. That is why I do not see the benefit of bringing this up at this time.
Proponents are using this opportunity of Reagan's death as a political lever and that is wrong.
We can argue the science and the morality in the coming years without the emotionalism. This would be the correct course of debate.
The "cannibal" comments are not worthy of debate.
HEadline is a bit misleading.
No indication that Congress will start debating legislation etc...
so the debate is not opened just from a few comments
Well, despite your assertion, you were once an embryo and at that time you were already you, already the individual human ORGANISM you are now, just more developed now than then. and that development process is characteristic of your first several years of life. But you were once an embryonic individual ORGANISM surviving, building your own placenta, umbilicus, and blood, then body for survival in the air world.
yeah, and even from the moment of conception I had the potential to develop a cerebral cortex, thus become a coscious being, thus becoming a person.
quit counterarguing from unrelated premeses and address the statement:
IF the engineered ersatz embryo has neither a cerebral cortex nor the potential to develop one, it is not a person and never will be.
If you cannot discuss this issue without them, then you will find yourself talking to yourself.
I thought I might repeat what you said for the sake of accuracy.
As to your statement, I could reply that I was once a gleam in my fathers eye, but I won't.
My point and my belief is that there is one hell of a lot more to a human life than a cluster of cells undergoing mitosis.
I respect all life, both animal and human, but I put human life on a road all it's own.
The organism, as you call it, is not correct.
A organism is a functioning and viable form of life. I do not consider a fertilized egg an organism. It is the beginnings of one, but it is not one any more than a chicken egg. No organs are functioning, and no life exists at this stage of development, hence no soul. I believe that to view it any other way is too extreme.
I do not need to take things to that extreme to be pro-life. In fact, I find many pro-life people to be somewhat disingenuous in their stance as they are still pro death penalty.
I cannot understand how one could regard life in one aspect and destroy it in another.
But, I am not at all confused about my own regard for life, nor how I express that regard.
These are not universal, however. Many organisms are incapable of independent movement, and do not respond directly to their environment. microorganisms such as bacteria may not conduct respiration, using alternate chemical pathways instead. And many organisms are incapable of reproduction.
"The organism, as you call it, is not correct." (It is scientifically exactly accurate.)
"A organism is a functioning and viable form of life. I do not consider a fertilized egg an organism." ( And an embryo is precisely viable for the age and environment in which he or she exists, but if this individual human organism lives long enough, he or she will develop beyond the necessities that can be fulfilled in the lab dish or fallopian tube, hence in vitro fertilization clinics freeze these beings before they reach that age in their lifetime. A fertilized egg is an avian or reptilian notion and we are discussing human beings. 'Egg', when discussing human beings is a gamete CELL of the female in the species. Once fertilization happens, a new and completely different ORGANISM exists that is much more than the sub-unit ovum which entered into the fertilization/fecundation event.)
"I do not need to take things to that extreme to be pro-life." (What you characterize as 'taking to the extreme' is actually the most fundamental age of the individual lifetime even you lived through in order to now make these assertions. And at the same time, the zygote age you enjoyed long ago was the most complete as an organism that you would ever be in your body because your unique directions for your construction and the construction of your life support placenta and umbilicus were not yet 'played' in the symphony that is your lifetime being lived.)
"I cannot understand how one could regard life in one aspect and destroy it in another." (Then you have trouble with the concepts of guilt and innocence, not with the nature of the sanctity of individual life.)
"But, I am not at all confused about my own regard for life, nor how I express that regard." ( There is something self-satisfying for ignorance in the face of facts that contradict your preconceived notions, don'tcha know!)
Thank you for your honesty.
BTTT!!!!!!
Well, one result which proved to be much worse came to my mind just now. The group of Parkinson's patients that were treated with embryonic stem cells, a few years back.
And it f@#%ed those poor Parkinson's patients up but good.
If it were the other way around and Nancy was the one with Alzheimer’s. I could assure you, Ronald Reagan would be for using Stem Cells.
Regards, Ivan
Thank you for reminding me.
But would RWR have insisted all his fellow tax-paying citizens foot the bill for embryonic stem cell research they find repugnant?
Or would he have chosen a different approach?... Perhaps he would have made a private contribution to ESCR or maybe he would have become a spokesperson for private embryonic stem cell research.
I think Reagan respected the consciences of others.
In science, the embryo is an organism, no ifs, ands, or buts. The embryonic stage of development is just that - a stage in the life of an individual member of the species.
We all have limited environments in which we can live. If I were suddenly ripped from an air environment and sent into space without life support, I wouldn't function long and would not be viable.
These embryos were and are deliberately created in a condition that makes them extremely vulnerable. The very fact that they are intentionally created in a state that endangers them increases the responsibility of their parents and the lab techs/doctors, etc. who proposely harm them in this way.
Remember the Bible law concerning "If a man digs a hole"? The responsibility is very high to protect these lives.
The best bet is adult and umbilical stem cells, not embryonic and not cloning. The former types are more stable in the lab, are less likely to form tumors, and we are learning more and more each day about how to induce the sort of development we want *in these types of cells.*
Spend the money in the ethical methods, the benefit is that the adult cells are proving more useful, safer, and cheaper - with absolutely no risk of incompatibility, since the cells will come from the patient!
Another good point.
IMHO...
Radicals approve of using lies and ridicule to to wreck their opponents' reputations, too. (After all, it's for the good of the cause. As an example, think of Kerry's willingness to smear the reputations of Americans fighting in Vietnam)
Most of the lies and distortions about abortion and ESCR seem to be coming from the radical, closed-minded pro-choicers
Here's a very quick listing of a few radical pro-choice lies..
According to my guidelines, people who are accepting of reality are moderates.
A sample of scientific finding (reality)
Your destiny, from day one { Embryos differentiate early, aren't blobs} ********Nature******* ^ | 8 July 2002 | Helen Pearson
Our body plan is being defined in the first few hours of life.Your world was shaped in the first 24 hours after conception. Where your head and feet would sprout, and which side would form your back and which your belly, were being defined in the minutes and hours after sperm and egg united.
Just five years ago, this statement would have been heresy. Mammalian embryos were thought to spend their first few days as a featureless orb of cells. Only later, at about the time of implantation into the wall of the uterus, were cells thought to acquire distinct 'fates' determining their positions in the future body. But by tagging specific points on mammalian eggs shortly after fertilization, researchers have now shown that they come to lie at predictable points in the embryo. Rather than being a naive sphere, it seems that a newly fertilized egg has a defined top-bottom axis that sets up the equivalent axis in the future embryo
I meant to reply to you, also, not only wita, in post 59.
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