Posted on 12/01/2004 6:11:05 PM PST by aculeus
Millions of fertilized embryos waste away every day in the natural course of things, after landing in the uterus on a day when it isn't in a condition conducive to implantation. That's just how the human body works -- there are many more days in a woman's cycle that an egg can be fertilized, than there are days when an embryo can implant. I just can't get any more worked up about embryos wasting away in fertility clinic freezers or waste containers, than about embryos wasting away as they're soaked into a tampon and flushed away.
Good to know you equate natural disease conditions to a person willfully fertilizing eggs they know they won't keep.
My point is that once you create an embryo/blastocyst which is capable of continuing to develop into a baby, how do you assign a different status to it because of where it came from? Right now all viable human embryos are starting out as an egg and a sperm. But that's not likely to remain the case much longer. When we are able to take a stem cell from a sick adult, and turn it into a developing embryo, will you then object to that embryo being tweaked to develop only into the organs/cells needed for treatment?
I am against using ANY embryo for research.
there are some cells somewhere along the olfactory nerve-brain path that are the only nerve cells to regenerate on a regular basis, even in adults. So those adult stem cells would be worth looking at.
if the growth factors are what does the trick, isolate the the growth factors.
Some of these improvements happen with time and therapy. My cousin broke her neck in a car accident. Three months after the accident she could not even sit up. After therapy (months of it) she can sit well and has partial use of her arms.
Did you notice how the brave filming of the operation only includes the operation on the paralysis patient, and not the abortion of the baby and the later destruction of its head and face to obtain the precious cells?
Mrs VS
Then be careful about supporting adult stem cell research, because that's where it will lead.
Anything that comes from the Guardian is highly questionable; I just returned last week from two weeks in the UK and the Guardian is the most inflammatory of a lot of inflammatory publications in the UK. Facts? They interfere with our story line.
if the stem cells are not totipotent they do not have the potential to develop into a human being. if they are pluripotent, they are able to develop into different types of tissue, and perhaps with the proper scaffolding or signals, into working organs. Pluripotent cells don't pose an ethical challenge.
It would not surprise me if some day scientists answer the ethical challenge of harvesting organs from a cloned fetus, by figuring out how to make it grow anencephalically. That will certainly set those ethical questions to rest.
Mrs VS
You're missing the point. It's not a "disease condition" when the majority of embryos naturally created in a woman's body (including genetically normal ones) are flushed out without ever implanting. That is the normal, natural, healthy way a woman's body works. It is a widespread misconception that in the natural course of things, most fertilized eggs turn into babies. But this is simply not true.
I'm not sure I understand what position you're articulating in the second part of your post. But in your lifetime -- unless you're just about on your deathbed now -- you will see pluripotent cells turned into totipotent cells turned into viable embryos.
I think you should call it a clone. And that is yet another moral quagmire you've gotten us into.
Of course for some folks if you don't kill something, its not good science.
EVERYTHING is apparently legal in China...killing the unborn, killing the newly born, arresting , convicting and executing people whose body parts they need.....
I like the part where the Golden dtr talks about an aborted fetus being "bad" .....
the fetus had nothing to do with being aborted, honey....
stop the world, I want to get off...
I guess its' the Jackson dtr, not Golden...don't know where I got that.....
I was being sarcastic in the second part of my post. The thought is a nightmare.
Why on earth would you want to take a pluripotent cell and turn it into a totipotent cell? You would start with a totipotent cell if you wanted one. At least with a pluripotent cell you do not have the moral issue of destroying a human life, whether you consider that life to be actual or potential.
Mrs VS
It seems there are some problems with it.
And, no, compassion is not our problem and China is not going to beat us.
Drinking the blood of virgins reduces wrinkles
BTTT excellent post
Man, we have FReepers from EVERYWHERE.
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