Posted on 06/14/2004 11:27:57 AM PDT by areafiftyone
WHITE HOUSE -- The White House is rejecting calls by former President Reagan's family to change its policy on stem cell research.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan says flatly, "The policy remains the same." He adds, "We are looking at other ways to combat disease."
Reagan's widow Nancy and his daughter Patti Davis have been outspoken advocates of expanding medical research using embryonic stem cells. Biologists think these could help create treatments for diseases ranging from diabetes to Alzheimer's, which afflicted Reagan for a decade.
In 2001, Bush signed an executive order limiting federally funded research to 78 lines of embryonic stem cells then in existence. However, researchers say the number of lines actually available is now 19 -- and contamination may make those unusable.
McClellan says Bush believes his policy still provides enough lines to continue research.
The reason for not enshrining your approach in law is that it is a religion-derived belief that a huge percentage of Americans do not share. To you, the big issue is that an entity is "human". To the extreme animal rights activists, the big issue is if it is conscious in any way. They can make just as good an argument as you can, for all the laws they want to enact against animals for food, animal ownership, animal testing, etc. The Hindus accord a special exalted status to entities that happen to be cows. But their arguments are dependent on their belief system and values, which many people don't share, and their preferred legal system would seriously infringe on the rights of people with different belief systems. I'd rather see a million early human embryos destroyed than see a single dog or cat tortured. To me, actual suffering is what matters -- not philosophical ruminations about the significance of being "human". Everyone but a handful of sociopaths wants to reduce the suffering of sentient creatures; further legal protections for various classes of life are based on very specific belief systems, and thus need to be left to individuals to apply in their own lives, but not force on others.
Fact is, in the natural course of things, most human embryos are naturally flushed out of the uterus without developing very far. I'm not going to stand in the way of medical research in order to accord special protections to early embryos which happen to have been created in a lab instead of in a uterus, nor will I buy for a minute MHGinTN's assertion that it is better to discard embryos than to use them for the noble purpose of learning to cure and prevent serious diseases. Treating early embryos as if they were full fledged people is as impractical as giving full legal rights to mice, as the animal rights extremists want to do.
From conception (whether in a lab dish or a fallopian tube) onward, at least one individual human life is expressing his or her own life through growth and development. Within the span of mere hours--less than 24--the newly conceived human life has already begun the stem cell differentiation process to build his or her own placental organ to achieve life support. The ORGANISM is building the organ, his or her first organ, that is essential to continued survival. The same design driving that earliest expression of your individual life is still present in your blood to this day, as adult progenitor stem cells circulating to replenish and restore cellular tissues. Your life is in your blood. It is the same life expression that directed your development from conceptus to this day of your survival.
I'm glad you chose to ask or assert regarding IUDs. I was once a Searle pharmaceutical salesman, and had to stop selling IUDs and contraceptive pills (in the early eighties) when I learned the truth, that these are early abortifacient devices. Abortifacients purposely end an individual lifetime already begun. Contraceptive pills have only a secondary effect of ending an implantation or chemically altering the uterine endometrial lining such that a conceptus cannot obtain life support. IUDs are designed to create an irritant effect that prevents successful implantation of the already alive individual, and secondarily the irritant effect may reduce sperm motility to prevent successful union of sperm and ovum.
Now to your oddly stated question. Do our laws recognize differing degrees of homicide, from manslaughter to first degree murder? We know they do. Use the same reasoning to answer your own question to me. BUT know this: ending the already up and running lifetime of an innocent unborn individual human being is morally wrong, and the only exception our Republic ought to be making is in cases of self defense (though I would personally wish to have any means taken to save the life of both the unborn and the woman, but that is based on my religious convictions and the desire for my nation to have a higher moral plane). If a pregnancy threatens to kill a pregnant woman, she must have the right based in our legal traditions of acting to defend her life. If a woman or girl is raped (a criminal act of violence), and she becomes pregnant from that rape, her mortality risk rises and she must have the right under our legal traditions to defend her life by ending the pregnancy. If a minor girl becomes pregnant by a close relative (incest), her parents must have the right to end the increased risk to her survival. Are there other very rare but relevant instances when the right to terminate a pregnancy should convey? I'm sure you can think of one or two, but also take note that in any case which is not self defense, defense of one's survival, the right to terminate a pregnancy should not be an automatic right to a dead other human being. I'm sure you can figure out the ramifications of such a notion.
The one important issue is the taking of innocent life. I will submit to you and all those reading this thread that the conceptus, as soon as cell division is evidenced, is expressing his or her own individual life, thus such an individual human life should have a right to not be killed, except in cases where the life of another is threatened by the life of the newly conceived. With embryonic stem cell exploitation, an individual human life is terminated to harvest the body parts (the stem cells) of that alive individual human ORGANISM. That is, to this old boy, wrong in all cases. I characterize that as cannibalism as surely as if the stem cells from 'sacrificed embryos' or the whole embryo were placed on tea cakes for consumption to treat a medical condition.
If we can no longer discern that human beings are not to be defined by age or race or religious affiliation in order to kill and harvest their body parts or enslave them, then our species is digressing horribly.
If you will ponder the notion that your life is in your blood, and that LIFE is the exact same life first expressed when you in zygote age began the 'mitosis march' to build the necessary organs for your life support and survival (the first being your placenta), you will come to a few interesting conclusions, without arguments from some faceless old man responding to your loaded questions. But I thank you for the opportunity to unfold these notions at FR ... thousands may actually be following this discussion and will glean something from it.
They are now fighting an uphill battle and I predict that whether W likes it or not the policy will change, hopefully with certain caveats. I am trying to bring myself up to speed on the whole issue.
A recent Business Week had a long article and I am also researching other places.
It look as though that Adult Stem cells and umbilical cord blood are very promising.
ping, if your interested in the topic
What about using prisoners. Or kids on ventilators. Or orphans with birth certificates who are "left overs" because their parents can't or won't care for them properly.
Or actors on ventilators?
We do not use other human beings as means to an end. The age old medical ethics of "First, do no harm" has worked very well to protect patients and to encourage the goodness in the medical professions. Those who go against this ethic have been justly vilified: Mengele, the "doctors" who participated in the Tuskegee experiments, those who attempted genocide and eugenics by sterilization of the uninformed and unconsented.
These embryos are living human beings who could have a chance at life if implanted in a woman's uterus. Many couples are begging for the chance to adopt them.
There was a movement to decrease the embryos produced and to change the process toward freezing oocytes instead of embryos. But that pressure is lessened due to the embryonic stem cell policies of the Clinton administration, and the artificial reproduction industry has resumed its "wasteful" ways.
Thanks I will print this out and read it.
There are so many treatments using adult and umbilical cord cells already. Cellular cardioplasty for heart failure and heart attacks. Pancreas cells for diabetes. There's a line of stem cells that form neural tissue. It doesn't take any more imagination to imagine that adult cells from the patient can be de-differentiated and induced to form the cells needed than it does to imagine that cloned embryonic cells can be induced to turn into the cell needed and no more or others, and that the immune rejection problem can be overturned. With adult cells, we're learning how to induce cells in the area to be treated to heal - by recruiting stem cells already in the patient's body.
Someone mentioned "Soylent Green" today on another thread. Human protein might be more easily digested than animal protein from chicken, etc. But, do we really want to find out? Or need to?
You're right that this is your personal opinion. The scientific fact is that the embryos are human beings.
Adult stem cells have shown the ability to double and live in culture to the same extent as the embryonic, with fewer genetic and chromosomal abnormalities.
http://www.csu.edu.au/learning/ncgr/gpi/odyssey/dolly-cloning/nuclear_transfer_technology.html
http://www.csu.edu.au/learning/ncgr/gpi/odyssey/dolly-cloning/nuclear_transfer_technology.html
A couple of points: Sperm injection is a rare form of IVF, requiring more technology and is more premeditated than the usual process of just bringing the gametes together in the dish. Also, in order for use, the embryos are at least 5 days old. In animal models, the only way embryonic cells have proven useful is in cloned cells (SCNT) which are implanted and harvested before birth. The results aren't any more promising than adult stem cells in analogous tests.
Ping to #65, if you're interested in further exposition on the subject we discussed on another thread.
Adult Stem Cell Research More Effective Than Embryonic Cells
Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's
Lies About Fetal Stem Cell Research [Free Republic]
Stem cells without benefit of embryos
Michael Fumento Interview [DDT, Global Warming, Fuel Cells, Stem Cells, AIDS, Biotech, AD/HD, Etc.]
SELLING LIES (Stem Cell Myths exposed by Michael Fumento)
FREE Book on Stem Cells and Cloning in understandable language
*In 2000, Israeli scientists implanted Melissa Holley's white blood cells into her spinal cord to treat the paraplegia caused when her spinal cord was severed in an auto accident. Melissa, who is 18, has since regained control over her bladder and recovered significant motor function in her limbs - she can now move her legs and toes, although she cannot yet walk.
This is exactly the kind of therapy that embryonic-stem-cell proponents promise - years down the road. Yet Melissa's breakthrough was met with collective yawns in the press with the exception of Canada's The Globe and Mail. Non-embryonic stem cells may be as common as beach sand.
They have been successfully extracted from umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat, cadaver brains, bone marrow, and tissues of the spleen, pancreas, and other organs. Even more astounding, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep successfully created cow heart tissue using stem cells from cow skin. And just this week, Singapore scientists announced that they have transformed bone-marrow cells into heart muscle.
Research with these cells also has a distinct moral advantage: It doesn't require the destruction of a human embryo. You don't have to be pro-life to be more comfortable with that.
*In another Parkinson's case, a patient treated with his own brain stem cells appears to have experienced a substantial remission with no adverse side effects. Dennis Turner was expected by this time to require a wheelchair and extensive medication. Instead, he has substantially reduced his medication and rarely reports any noticeable symptoms of his Parkinson's. Human trials in this technique are due to begin soon.
*Bone marrow stem cells, blood stem cells, and immature thigh muscle cells have been used to grow new heart tissue in both animal subjects and human patients. Indeed, while it was once scientific dogma that damaged heart muscle could not regenerate, it now appears that cells taken from a patient's own body may be able to restore cardiac function. Human trials using adult stem cells have commenced in Europe and other nations. (The FDA is requiring American researchers to stick with animal studies for now to test the safety of the adult stem cell approach.)
*Harvard Medical School researchers reversed juvenile onset diabetes (type-1) in mice using "precursor cells" taken from spleens of healthy mice and injecting them into diabetic animals. The cells transformed into pancreatic islet cells. The technique will begin human trials as soon as sufficient funding is made available.
*In the United States and Canada, more than 250 human patients with type-1 diabetes were treated with pancreatic tissue (islet) transplantations taken from human cadavers. Eighty percent of those who completed the treatment protocol have achieved insulin independence for over a year. (Good results have been previously achieved with pancreas transplantation, but the new approach may be much safer than a whole organ transplant.)
*Blindness is one symptom of diabetes. Now, human umbilical cord blood stem cells have been injected into the eyes of mice and led to the growth of new human blood vessels. Researchers hope that the technique will eventually provide an efficacious treatment for diabetes-related blindness. Scientists also are experimenting with using cord blood stem cells to inhibit the growth of blood vessels in cancer, which could potentially lead to a viable treatment.
*Bone marrow stem cells have partially helped regenerate muscle tissue in mice with muscular dystrophy. Much more research is needed before final conclusions can be drawn and human studies commenced. But it now appears that adult stem cells may well provide future treatments for neuromuscular diseases.
*Severed spinal cords in rats were regenerated using gene therapy to prevent the growth of scar tissue that inhibits nerve regeneration. The rats recovered the ability to walk within weeks of receiving the treatments. The next step will be to try the technique with monkeys. If that succeeds, human trials would follow.
*In one case reported from Japan, an advanced pancreatic cancer patient injected with bone marrow stem cells experienced an 80 percent reduction in tumor size.
* In separate experiments, scientists researched the ability of embryonic and adult mouse pancreatic stem cells to regenerate the body's ability to make insulin. Both types of cells boosted insulin production in diabetic mice. The embryonic success made a big splash with prominent coverage in all major media outlets. Yet the same media organs were strangely silent about the research involving adult cells.
Stranger still, the adult-cell experiment was far more successful - it raised insulin levels much more. Indeed, those diabetic mice lived, while the mice treated with embryonic cells all died. Why did the media celebrate the less successful experiment and ignore the more successful one?
* Another barely reported story is that alternative-source stem cells are already healing human illnesses.
*In Los Angeles, the transplantation of stem cells harvested from umbilical-cord blood has saved the lives of three young boys born with defective immune systems.
ping to #65, if you're interested.
Thanks for the ping.
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The human embryo is a human being at any given stage of development or level of function. You can't say that we value this set of functions more than the human being. Inalienable rights are inseparable, no one may alienate or remove the rights from a person. And all humans are created with these rights.
A person has inalienable rights. If you reduce personhood to a certain set of functions, then you negate the very idea of inalienable rights, because you have set a value on those functions and because those functions may vary across the life span - even after birth.
By setting up which humans you whose rights you will recognize, you actually threaten your own. You may become unable to feel hunger or thirst while asleep. You certainly don't have the imagination that I do to understand another's pain.
You also open the door to those who have different values from yours, i.e., those who only count a certain IQ or race or religion or skin color - or even those who would allow mom and dad 30 days after birth.
The fact that there may be twinning tomorrow does not change the fact that the embryo is "a" human today.
The very idea of aquired personhood was laughed at in Descartes' time. It is still a ridiculous idea.
This is about Federal dollars, not about what is or is not permitted by law. If grim reapered unborn babies is so wonderful a cure, it won't need the Federal dollars to prove it.
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