The Embryo's New Clothes

Catholic Exchange ^ | 6-24-04 | Steve Kellmeyer

[Salvation]

Excellent article!

[r9etb]

Sorry -- missed this post earlier.

You used the phrase, "mass of undifferentiated cells." That is a false assertion on the face of it.

Sure it is. Hell, we both know it's a human child at a single cell. But whether the euphemism is "mass of undifferentiated cells" or something else, the fact is that there will be some label to "make it sound not human" that we're going to be forced to deal with. The other side will present the choice I stated above, whatever the euphemism happens to be.

The only way we answer their question successfully, is to have already won the moral battle. If we can't win that, then the war is lost.

Please understand: my purpose here is to try to identify the actual grounds of the debate in which we're engaged.

As we've already seen with the pro-aborts, they work very hard to get people to use their euphemism, as a means of hiding the true nature of what they're doing.

[supercat]

When you reduce it to a matter of pragmatic "it will work" or "it won't work" arguments, our position collapses. All they have to do is wave the "life-saving treatment" flag, and we're left trying to say "but it won't work." We always lose those arguments.

When there are many arguments in favor of one's position, I don't think one should eschew the pragmatic arguments merely because principled ones also exist. Indeed, I think one should put forth the pragmatic arguments as a means of exposing the fact that much of the support for ESC research is driven by a pro-abortion agenda rather than any bona fide desire to [non-fatally] treat diseases.

I suspect that it would probably be possible to produce a motor vehicle fuel from pine sawdust. If I spent enough money on such a project, I could probably succeed at such a venture. That does not mean that such an expenditure would be wise. Other uses of the money would make far more sense.

I have seen nothing to suggest that ESC research would have any more promise than ASC research, given the same level of funding. Even if the embryos destroyed in such research were considered to have no value beyond their production cost, I still see nothing to suggest that ESC research is an economically-sensible means for developing the types of treatments researchers are claiming to seek.

Of course, if the researchers really have other goals, ESC research may make a lot of sense...

[supercat]

The only way we answer their question successfully, is to have already won the moral battle. If we can't win that, then the war is lost.

Suppose you're trying to convince someone who hates rich people that he shouldn't rob them. Which is apt to be the more effective argument:

1. Robbing people is morally wrong.
2. Thanks to the new CCW law, if he tries to rob someone he may get shot.

While argument #1 may be the morally superior argument, it will likely fall on deaf ears. Argument #2 would be more likely to get the person's attention.

[Coleus]

Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's

Adult stem cells work there is NO need to harvest babies for their body parts.

Adult Stem Cell Research More Effective Than Embryonic Cells

Embryo Vivisection and Elusive Promises Act--California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative

Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's

The Stem Cell Cover-Up By Michael Fumento

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

Alzheimer's gene therapy trial shows early promise Alzheimer's disease, MedlinePlus

Drug slows advanced Alzheimer's disease

*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.

“‘This [isolating stem cells from fat] could take the air right out of the debate about embryonic stem cells,’ said Dr. Mark Hedrick of UCLA, the lead author. The newly identified cells have so many different potential applications, he added, that ‘it makes it hard to argue that we should use embryonic cells.’” -- Thomas H. Maugh II, “Fat may be answer to many illnesses,” Los Angeles Times, 4/10/01

“With the newest evidence that even cells in fat are capable of being transformed into tissue through the alchemy of biotechnology, some scientists said they are beginning to conclude they’ll be able to grow with relative ease all sorts of replacement tissues without resorting to embryo or fetal cells…‘It’s highly provocative work, and they’re probably right,’ said Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas…Like many biologists, Olson believes that adult, fetal and embryonic stem cell research all merit support…it’s heartening, he said, that almost “every other week there’s another interesting finding of adult stem cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells. Apparently our traditional views need to be reevaluated.’” --Rick Weiss, “Human Fat May Provide Stem Cells,” The Washington Post, 4/10/01

“In a finding that could offer an entirely new way to treat heart disease within the next few years, scientists working with mice and rats have found that key cells from adult bone marrow can rebuild a damaged heart—actually creating new heart muscle and blood vessels…Until now researchers thought that stem cells from embryos offer the best hope for rebuilding damaged organs, but this latest research shows that the embryos, which are politically controversial, may not be necessary. ‘We are currently finding that these adult stem cells can function as well, perhaps even better than, embryonic stem cells,’ [Dr. Donald] Orlic [of the National Human Genome Research Institute] said.” --Robert Bazell, “Approach may repair heart damage,” NBC Nightly News, 3/30/01.

“[Dr. Donald] Orlic said fetal and embryonic stem cell researchers have not been able to show the regeneration of heart cells, even in animals. ‘This study alone gives us tremendous hope that adult stem cells can do more than what embryonic stem cells can do,’ he said.” --Kristen Philipkoski, “Adult Stem Cells Growing Strong,” Wired Magazine, 3/30/01

“Like several other recent studies, the new work with hearts suggests that stem cells retrieved from adults have unexpected and perhaps equal flexibility of their own, perhaps precluding the need for the more ethically contentious [embryonic] cells.” --Rick Weiss, “Studies Raise Hopes of Cardiac Rejuvenation,” The Washington Post, 3/31/01

“Umbilical cords discarded after birth may offer a vast new source of repair material for fixing brains damaged by strokes and other ills, free of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of fetal tissue, researchers said Sunday.” --“Umbilical cords could repair brains,” Associated Press, 2/20/01.

"PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, has succeeded in ‘reprogramming' a cell -- a move that could lead to the development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Scotland-based group will today announce that it has turned a cow's skin cell into a beating heart cell and is close to starting research on humans... The PPL announcement...will be seen as an important step towards producing stem cells without using human embryos." --"PPL follows Dolly with cell breakthrough," Financial Times, 2/23/01

“Because they have traveled further on a pathway of differentiation than an embryo’s cells have, such tissue specific [adult] stem cells are believed by many to have more limited potential than E[mbryonic] S[tem] cells or those that PPL hopes to create. Some researchers, however, are beginning to argue that these limitations would actually make tissue-specific stem cells safer than their pluripotent counterparts. University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Glenn McGee is one of the most vocal critics on this point: ‘The emerging truth in the lab is that pluripotent stem cells are hard to reign in. The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after a stem cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora’s box of stem cell research.’” --Erika Jonietz, “Biotech: Could new research end the embryo debate?” Technology Review, January/February, 2001

[MHGinTN]

The war is not over the moral position of the 'other side', it is over the ignorant middle ... those ignorant of the truth and not already amoral.

[r9etb]

When there are many arguments in favor of one's position, I don't think one should eschew the pragmatic arguments merely because principled ones also exist.

That's an excellent point -- you're certainly correct in saying that the failures, and (over time) a continued lack of success argue against further funding. But note that this does not do two things: it does not address the moral aspect (indeed, it tends to push it aside by tacitly accepting the general idea of ESC research); and it also does not prevent private companies from performing ESC research using alternate funds.

The real reason we're against ESC research is not that it won't work, but because it's morally repugnant. That's got to remain front and center, because I think we have to expect that there will eventually be some treatment developed from ESCs.

Indeed, I think one should put forth the pragmatic arguments as a means of exposing the fact that much of the support for ESC research is driven by a pro-abortion agenda rather than any bona fide desire to [non-fatally] treat diseases.

While I think this is probably true in some cases, I think it's a lot harder to prove, because it's probably not true in general. One way to show a connection would be to demonstrate financial links between, say, Planned Parenthood and some ESC research facility. Another way would be to show links between particularly loud ESC supporters, and abortion providers. But it's a pretty difficult case to make, given that the media tend to be in favor of both abortion and ESC research.

[r9etb]

While argument #1 may be the morally superior argument, it will likely fall on deaf ears. Argument #2 would be more likely to get the person's attention.

Yes -- but that's not the case with abortion, which is the closest thing to the issue we're discussing. In a sane world, abortionists would be poor, on the run, and frequently imprisoned for murder. As it is, they're very well paid, protected by laws and guards, and have a very powerful cheering section in the media, powerful politicians, and the Democrat party in general. Why? Because we've lost the moral battle over abortion.

[r9etb]

We agree.

[Mr. Silverback]

Once upon a time in the land of fat research grants...

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[Vic3O3]

stem cell truths ping

[NYer]

Bookmarked!

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[supercat]

Yes -- but that's not the case with abortion, which is the closest thing to the issue we're discussing.

Suppose your car gets a flat with nobody around except you and a couple passengers. You then discover that you don't have a usable lug wrench, but there is a shed nearby. In front of the shed is a lug wrench. One of the passengers suggests breaking into the shed to look for a wrench, and tries to convince the other passenger to go along.

Which would be a better argument:

1. Breaking into someone else's shed would be wrong.
2. There is no need to break into the shed.

It seems to me that the thing to do would be focus on #2 while watching how the first passenger reacts. If he continues to insist upon breaking into the shed, suggest to the other passenger that perhaps the guy isn't interested in the lug wrench.