Posted on 11/28/2010 5:11:53 PM PST by raptor22
Science: Supporters of California's failed 2004 stem-cell law will ask strapped taxpayers to support another $3 billion bond initiative in 2014. Maybe it's time to restore fiscal sanity as well as science to its rightful place.
When it was passed in 2004, Proposition 71, with its $3 billion state fund and 10-year mandate for embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR), held out the promise of imminent miracle cures for everything from spinal disorders to Parkinson's.
One campaign ad showed actor Christopher Reeve, aka Superman, asking California voters to "stand up for those who can't."
Some six years later, with about $1.1 billion dispersed, there have been $270 million worth of impressive new labs built, research papers published, and respected scientists hired at exorbitant salaries, but no miracle cures or even marketable therapies. And none is likely for years, if not decades, to come. The promised financial payback for the financially strapped citizens of California is also far off.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
see #20
see #20
>Be sure if you get a treatment, you know what you are talking about.<
it wont happen here for YEARS if at all.
Too many people just saying no to all types of this treatment without being specific. It is killing the chance of it being done here :-(
No matter what women will be having abortions - it can not be stopped. There are tons of reasons for it including to save the mothers life.
There are circumstances that this opportunity should not be wasted for just to blanket a statement like “Use all the stem cells you want, until you want them from embryos.”
If the baby is going to be killed for a few reasons that are acceptable then let it be not in complete vein.
The world is not black and white and using absolutes in any case should be done with a great deal of caution.
[What about a stem cell that is taken from an embryo without killing or harming it?]
How much “harmless” research will it take so THAT can be accomplished?
OK, yes/no question, my answer would be “NO”.
>>And to say that I’ll just deal with what god gave me, well if you lived as i have since 1989 - I *think* you may change your mind a tad<<
Nope, sorry.
I have non-treatable pain myself.
I wouldn’t kill a baby for it. And the Placenta is not what they are talking about with embryonic stem cells.
>Nope, sorry. I have non-treatable pain myself.<
Not gonna trade pain stories with you. But I guarantee with enough pain, you’ll do anything to end it.
>>But I guarantee with enough pain, you’ll do anything to end it.<<
If you’re weak or amoral.
Killing babies to relieve my pain ain’t in the playbook, dude.
[The world is not black and white and using absolutes in any case should be done with a great deal of caution.]
The world is full of gray area, don’t you know, and gray is a small dose of black thrown into white to hide the black.
When you mix dirty water with clean water, you just have more dirty water.
While I sympathize with your pain, I cannot condone the advancement of the agenda to farm and harvest human parts, as you selfishly desire. I might add that at 21, I was at least as selfish, and did not have the reasons you have.
You might petition the MSM to separate stem cell research from embryonic stem cell research in their reporting so that more folks would be on board supporting the research that could benifit sufferers like yourself.
Perhaps we can just agree to disagree, albeit it vehemently.
May God give you comfort and strength and bring a blessing out of even this. I did not mean to sound harsh and I apologize for not giving first thought or concern to your own condition. I’ve suffered with lesser pain (I’d peg at a 3 on your scale) for a matter of weeks, and recall thinking that I’d prefer stabs of 9-10 pain occasionally to the constant, ongoing pain. So I can’t really imagine what you live with, and can appreciate your point about being desperate to get relief. I hope and pray that you get it.
Munz, no-one here is opposed to the use of adult stem-cell research, and that’s what that article was about. One of the arguments against fetal stem-cell research money is that adult stem cells are the more promising research line, but if we spend all our research on fetal stem-cells, harvesting human babies may just become the QWERTYUIOP keyboard of stem cell therapy.
(If you don’t get the reference, the QWERTYUIOP keyboard was designed a century ago for manual typewriters to prevent keys from sticking together; it’s fantastically inefficient, but that’s what everyone uses, because that’s what everyone used before them.)
Your original opinion was in favor of the California Embryonic Stem Cell initiative, but your link describes an adult stem cell-based cure.
You are either ignorantly or deliberately confusing the issue.
Good people want cures for diseases, WITHOUT destroying another's life, or profiting by the the immoral destruction of that life.
Crappy, horrible people want to push the view of human beings, especially in their most vulnerable form, as being nothing more than objects of service to the more powerful.
They hate the idea that we all have intrinsic rights, granted by our Creator. And they're willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get their way.
How much profit are you making and was that green or black tea?
Of course, those who know about it realize that it could not have been developed without the use of techniques developed from embryonic stem-cell research already conducted.
And, of course, not a single embryo needs to be killed to conduct embryonic stem-cell research. Those who claim otherwise are using a ploy to confuse well-meaning people.
Plus, embryos are being destroyed every day, with absolutely no benefit to anyone (except reduced storage space... :-/ )
...even if embryos were used for this research, there would be no more destroyed than are otherwise destroyed.
As several people already pointed out, the article you linked is specifically about taking stem cells from your body and using them. The article at the top of this thread was about using embryonic stem cells.
Putting aside the moral issues, as a scientist, I have huge reservations about the use of embryonic stem cells. Those cells are primed to grow at a fairly high rate, and what keeps them in check and forces them to grow into the various tissues that make up a baby is a poorly defined soup of constantly changing growth regulators. When those cells are removed from the regulatory soup, they have no controls on their growth--and they have a very high resemblence to cancer cells. The defining characteristic of cancer cells is their unregulated growth. In many types of cancer, genes that were turned off during the fetal stage are turned back on. Given these facts, I wouldn't want them injected into my body.
Morally, of course, I am not a person who can be comfortable with having a baby killed to treat my medical condition. It would be better for me to die than to kill an innocent for my benefit.
The problem is that saying NO to any research is wrong.
During the first half of the 20th century, the Japanese conducted especially brutal research on human subjects, involving vivisection, usually without any anesthetic or pain killers. By your stated standard, that kind of research is perfectly acceptible.
When you have been duck taped to a surgical table, cried like a baby and begged the doctor to end your life to stop the pain. Then I’ll listen to what you have to say.
Till then, a broken knee ... crushed hand ... broken teeth with nerves exposed and none of it was 1/10 th of what I go through now - none of that compares. So if you know what pain is, then I’ll listen to your sanctimonious attacks with some compassion. Till then your just another person telling ma all the great stuff you can do that I can’t. I am hardly weak or amoral .. I am human .. apparently unlike yourself who is able to withstand pain that jets your heart rate to near fatal conditions. Causes you to black out and covers you in sweat in moments. Leaves you unable to lift a coffee cup, sit, stand, walk or lay down.
Your just too amazing to even be bothered with someone as weak and feeble as me .. so don’t bother with scum like me your righteousness.
BTW - My original intent was simply to say that not all stem cell research should be banned as so many people say.
>While I sympathize with your pain, I cannot condone the advancement of the agenda to farm and harvest human parts, as you selfishly desire<
But I don’t actually and never did. I just support the research in general, not the killing of anything.
Your right. I guess what upsets me most is that when anyone mentions stem cell research, it is seldom said in a separation between embryonic and adult donors. It is just treated as universally bad.
Look at the threads. people just shoot it down and there needs to be a distinction made.
I am not advocating abortion at all.
I am however fiercely advocating that not all research is bad. And just because this particular branch of research and treatment is called “stem cell” many people could care less where it comes from. So many people here who are against one side of it (fetal) should make that clear. That abortion is out but there are other ways to do it and that those ways are alright.
Imagine all the people who call or write their congresscritters and say “I am against stem cell research”.
I think it is a much higher number of people than say “I am against embryonic stem cell research but adult stem cell research should be allowed”
That is all I am trying to get out here. Which is why I posted that article about adults having success.
all kinds of stuff is coming about now like this i was told of today
I believe that we are close to end a lot of suffering through medicine and science. I only ask that people make the point that it be allowed - without killing anyone.
Thank you. Your thoughts warmed me more than i can say.
As for this type of treatment I doubt that they will be doing anything like this in the states for quite a while. There are just too many people that are so diametrically opposed to anything dealing with the science of stem cell research. Again, I am just asking people not to lump it all in one big garbage heap when they discuss it or write their representatives.
Maybe someone is opposed to the whole thing entirely - that’s okay. But if they aren’t, then I am just trying in my own way to encourage people to separate the two types of research so our reps know that it all shouldn’t be curtailed. There is a lot of hope in this now for a lot of people. Me included. If I could get two discs rejuvenated I would have about 1/3 of my problem taken care of. If they can grow one fresh, all the better. If they learn enough to replace an entire chord, I’m half way there!
I just posted this in another reply:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1333925/Have-elixir-eternal-youth-Scientists-reverse-ageing-process-landmark-trial.html?ITO=1490
It just seems like there is nothing that is really out of reach now, just not here yet.
“Where there is hope, there is life”
>You are either ignorantly or deliberately confusing the issue.<
neither, I was just showing that not all stem cell research is bad. I posted my reasoning quite a bit here, so you can kind of gloss through the above replies if you like as well.
I meant neither to confuse or deceive anyone. I simply wanted people to know that there are ways that stem cell research is being used effectively in a very moral and responsible way. That not all research is bad.
Because some people immediately jump on the band wagon and say things that would be taken as it is all bad, immoral and evil. They get all pious because they haven’t had a sick day in their lives. They think that they know what suffering is but haven’t a clue. because it does not effect them, why bother to make any difference between types of treatment? Much easier to just slap a label on the whole thing as a bad plan and leave it be.
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