Posted on 08/22/2005 8:23:17 AM PDT by radar101
Scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells -- without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has always been required in the past, a Harvard research team announced yesterday.
The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells -- such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers -- to "reprogram" the genes in a person's skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
haha me too, i wasnt making a statement against nukes, just a correlation.
your statement is correct, but my point is, we didnt begin developing nuclear technology to benefit society until after we realized its power militarily.
I'm sure that's right for NARAL. But for researchers it means research money. For doctors it means another tool in their arsenal. For the sick, it means health.
place mark
The first reactors of course pre-dated the bomb, since they were used to make plutonium for it. We didn't generate electricity from nuclear energy until the early 50s, not commercially until the late 50s.
Bump!
The possibility of transforming adult stem cells into pluripotent stem cells was one of my arguments against Frist's position on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, which I mentioned in my open letter to Frist: http://auh2orepublican.blogspot.com/2005/08/open-letter-to-senator-bill-frist.html
They aren't cured yet, but there's a huge amount of progress on two of the biggest killers.
Aids: new therapies have turned it from a fatal disease to a chronic condition for those with enough money. Most of the developing world can't afford those treatments yet, but they're working on making treatments cheaper and on finding a cure.
Cancer: it isn't cured, but I think you'll agree it's a lot more surviveable now than it was 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.
My granddaughter was born unable to make enough white blood cells and her bone marrow failed over the next 15 months, despite daily injections of factors to increase red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells. She had bone marrow biopsies almost every week of her life.
At 15 months, she went to Cook's Childrens Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas where she had a bone marrow transplant from the cord blood of a little boy. Now, she sure looks "cured."
Here, she's showing how her little finger looks after the cast was removed (a little boy closed a door on it about 4 weeks ago -the bone was exposed and she lost the tip. But that cord blood is what her body used to heal the bone and the skin!):
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/hocndoc/detail?.dir=/f87f&.dnm=54bc.jpg&.src=ph
Regardless of other factors, there is no justification in abandoning the ethical principle of nonmaleficence.
There is no way that the disaggregation of a human embryo could be in any way therapeutic for him or her. It goes against the basics of humane science and medicine to destroy one life for another, unless the first is a threat to the second. No matter how much we love the second, no matter how little we care about the first.
Here's more on the history of embryonic stem cells:
http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2005/08/embryonic-stem-cell-timeline-myth.html
What you say is false. There are the following types of Stem Cell Research going on:
Adult or mature stem cells
umbilical cord stem cells
amniotic fluid stem cells
placenta stem cells
and embryonic stem cells
Adult and umbilical cord have provided the greatest successes to date. Embryonic the greatest failures.
placenta and amniotic fluid are more recent research avenues.
The only cells that can produce cancer are stem cells -- so stem cell research has been going on for quite some time -- with the adult stem cells.
For decades, bone marrow and other stem cells in the body have been studied and used before much was done about embryonic.
With the failures of embryonic AND the controversies, other areas such as umbilical cord, placenta, and amniotic fluid have been studied.
So if there have been 5 different types of stem cell research, with adult stem cell the oldest, then embryonic is not very significant -- except for its failures.
Much greater strides have been provided by the other four than have been the embryonic stem cells.
Actually, science has gone backwards with the abortion-breast cancer link until recently. There are so many studies proving this link that science is no longer in denial.
In the early 1990's, the pro-life movement was the only ones warning of the abortion-breast cancer link. A very good woman doctor who did breast cancer surgeries initially thought that the pro-lifers were wacko until she set up questionaires for her breast cancer patients. Then she was floored with the results.
But what was really surprising to her was the 20 something year old kids coming down with breast cancer, and abortion seemed to be the key link to breast cancer occurring so early in a woman's life.
But it is politically incorrect at the Run for Breast Cancer to mention abortion or these links to Breast Cancer. Other parts of Science and Academics are still in denial. And Planned Parenthood is a major sponser of this event and backer (but, of course, they are helping these women get breast cancer).
For the record, two things:
1. I do not advocate embryonic stem cell use, neither in the beginning or in any continuance. But wasting the sacrifice somehow seems wrong.
2. I did ask "Or am I wrong?" with the idea being I might be ignorant. I certainly didn't want to be "false". I'm glad to be wrong, and I want the non-embryonic means to obliterate the programs using embryonics. I truly thank you for the knowledge, and frankly, good news.
And what does "the pentagon issued a statement today - it looks like the documents have been scrubbed." mean? was that a cut and paste from a different thread? Able Danger, perhaps?
I seem to recall that lots of work and success has been done with "regular" stem cells (from "regular" parts of the body?) But nothing has come from the embyronic stem cells - yet. I imagine part of this is due to the reluctance to work on them?
Anyway - the way I read it is: WE ARE doing lots of good stem cell research and it is leading us places. The embryonic stem cells are (as of yet) unproven. (?)
hocndoc....Seeing as I work WITH stem cells and conduct SSNTs pretty much daily, there's very little you can educate me on the subject other than your opinions, which you are, of course, an expert on. Your opinion is noted.
geo...you hear what you read. If you don't read outside the box you don't get the full picture. Those that have no convictions with destroying a fertilized egg publish papers that THEIR method is promising, which it is, albeit unethical. Those that consider a fertilized egg a "life" will publish papers saying that THEIR method works and the other does not. I believe that unethical work on fertilized eggs would be the most informative and promising....but that it's unethical and should not be done. NO stem-cell has yet to cure anything, but they're all promising and the more us frankenscientists study the mechanisms of stem-cell differentiation, the more we have the ability to actually apply that knowledge to a cure. The only hurdle is the ethical one.
If I take an UNfertilized egg and remove its haploid nucleus, replace it with the complete nucleus of another cell.....I have neither destroyed "life" nor created an embryo capable of forming anything other than what the nucleus I replaced the original with was differentiated to be. In no way could that ever be an embryo that could create a life, even if implanted into a womb. I've destroyed a single non-viable cell and created a single semi-differentiated somatic cell. I have not destroyed a life in any manner and have not created a life in any manner. SOME people still have a problem with this. I know better.
There's the crux. Most don't consider a small lump of cells to be a life. Others feel that we should make some use of them if they're going to be destroyed anyway, as is common practice.
The first stem cell experiments and research was carried out through bone marrow transplants (from other adults) not embryonic research.
I apologize the most for using the term false.
And I am sorry I have offended you.
The able danger was a Microsoft bug. When I do cut's and paste's, it will sometimes not paste the last cut but a previous one.
It was a significant omission on my part not to proof read closer.
I think the media has confused people into believing embryonic stem cell is the only way to go.
I have done research on my own to not be as ignorant in this area. If you wish, I can post these links. These refer back to threads on Freerepublic, which has been my major source of info. These mostly include the developments on the non-embryonic stem cell -- which has no moral or ethical controversy.
Sorry again...
Hey, no biggie. I knew when I wrote my first post to the thread that it might be taken a little differently than I meant. And I wasn't offended, just concerned that you (and probably others) had thought I was advocating embryonic research. I'd rather just set the record straight.
As for the cut-n-paste, I figured as much. It happens to me once in a while with the clipboard.
Good day!
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