Evidently.
How far does your support for euthanasia extend?
Posted on 09/29/2002 8:41:45 AM PDT by Sabertooth
"Promise of Adult Stem Cells Put in Doubt," proclaimed UPI. "Study Deals Blow to Abilities of Adult Stem Cells," declared Scientific American in its online publication. "Study Finds Adult Blood Stem Cells Will Not Transform into Other Tissue Cells," insisted the Associated Press.
The fuss concerns an article in the highly respected journal Science detailing efforts of Stanford researchers to trace the development of blood stem cells after placing them into mice whose bone marrow had been destroyed. They reported that blood stem cells replenished marrow but appeared worthless for creating other tissues.
"Blood-forming stem cells from adults make blood," primary researcher Irving Weissman insisted to UPI. "They don't make brain; they don't make heart muscle or any of these things."
Such smugness from a scientist who should know a single study never proves anything. As it happens, a report published in Nature Medicine in November 2000 showed that such cells when injected into mice rebuilt liver tissue. A minor co-author of the piece was named Irving Weissman.
Weissman's sureness was just for show.
Indeed, "The Stanford paper is the one at odds with the bulk of the published literature," Indiana State University biologist David Prentice told me.
While nobody knows yet just how capable non-embryonic stem cells will prove, we know they will be extremely useful because they have been.
Ever hear of bone marrow or umbilical-cord-blood transplants? It's the stem cells in the marrow and blood that makes them work. They've been used therapeutically since the 1980s and now some 70 different diseases, primarily forms of leukemia, are treated with them.
True, these comprise direct infusions rather than the next step of "reprogramming" the stem cells outside the body to make them into various types of mature cells.
But there's tremendous progress here, too. As of last year, over 30 different anti-cancer applications alone involving non-embryonic stem cell therapies on humans had been reported in peer-reviewed medical literature. Over 100 non-embryonic-stem-cell experiments in animals have shown success against a vast array of diseases.
The very newspapers that now pooh-pooh adult stem cells were only days earlier reporting on the almost-miraculous cure of a Dutch child afflicted with "bubble boy syndrome." His immune system was worthless. But it was restored when stem cells from his marrow were removed, cultured, and injected back into him.
Even if blood stem cells were worthless for tissue, we'd still have other types of stem cells that have been cultivated not just from marrow and umbilical cords but also from placentas, amniotic fluid, skin, brains, spinal cords, dental pulp, muscles, blood vessels, corneas, retinas, livers, pancreases, hair follicles, and even liposuctioned fat.
Catherine Verfaillie and her co-workers at the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute recently published a report in Science's main competitor, Nature, suggesting that a certain type of marrow stem cells may give rise to almost any type of tissue in the body. They have isolated them from the marrow of mice, rats and people and so far have transformed them into cells of blood, the gut, liver, lung, brain, and other organs.
Yet time and again a single study like the Stanford one is shoved forward to show that non-embryonic-stem-cell therapy is the biological version of cold fusion. Why?
Some of the media coverage may reflect sheer ignorance. But Science and Weissman know better. They're both part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by those who see embryonic stem cell research and non-embryonic stem cell research locked in mortal combat.
The worse the non-embryonics look, the stronger the case for using embryonic stem cells. With every breakthrough in non-embryonic research comes the need to turn up the screech knob on the disinformation box.
That's because while the government can make grants on a whim, venture capital flows towards success. Thus almost all capital is going to non-embryonic research. Those working with embryonic cells are desperate for government funds.
It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Dr. Michael D. West, head of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., told the AP that the Stanford study indicates "stem cells from the bone marrow will not be a practical source for many cell types needed" to treat disease. That is, it wouldn't be surprising if the AP had told you West's company does research with embryonic stem cells.
Just as a 30-year-old panhandler will claim to be a Vietnam vet to shake money out of your pockets, those desperate for funding are obviously not above misrepresenting research to keep their labs running.
But whatever the promises of embryonic research, the actual applications are coming from non-embryonic stem cells. The miracles they have already performed are but little compared to those of which they are capable. We dare not let that progress be hamstrung by the politics of pork.
— Michael Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. where he's currently writing BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing our World.
Evidently.
How far does your support for euthanasia extend?
I rescind my statement.
Hey, RA, I appreciate that, but couldn't you have waited more than 9 minutes?
Torie might think you're a ringer.
Why would you say that?
On not a few occasions I've indicated that I think your opinion needs fixing.
The baby, a plump little being over half an inch long, with short arms and legs, floats in her amniotic sac, well moored by the umbilical cord. Though she weighs only 1/30 of an ounce, she has all the internal organs of an adult in various stages of development.
The baby's heart has been beating for a few weeks, the sex can be determined and brain waves can be measured.
"Within the sac was a tiny human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid. This tiny human was perfectly developed with long tapering fingers, feet and toes. The baby was extremely alive and swam about the sac approximately one time per second."
Paul E. Rockwell,M.D., describing the baby whose photograph is shown at left
Looks sentient to me. :-}
Do you mean to say, sentience?
You're spelling is arguing against your reason (sleight); earlier you said a priori assumptions were crucial to determining protection of life issues, now you seem to be substituting opinion for foundation, hardly scientific.
Is there any reason to believe that anal sex between homosexual men is a more effective disease vector than anal sex between a man and a woman? My impression is that in Africa the latter is the primary disease vector.
The first trimester measurable EEG waves vs the third trimester measurable EEG waves.
Obviously they are different because of the baby's development but he has drawn a third trimester line not based on EEG measurement but based on his feeling that the third trimester EEG is evidence of sentience but the more basic EEG of the first trimester isn't.
Purely arbitrary because he simply can not know.
A chicken with its head cut off my look rather lively, but that doesn't make it any less dead.
I find even early-term abortios disturbing, but given the status quo (abortion on demand any time for any reason) I think it's best to work on convincing people at a 39-week fetus deserves protection. Don't agree that a 38-week fetus doesn't, but agree to put off discussion of the 38-week fetus until there's concensus on the 39-week one. Once concensus has been reached on the 39-week one, then work on the 38-week one, again putting off discussion of the 37-week one.
If Republicans were smart, they could probably use a strategy like the above to significantly reduce society's acceptance of abortion over the next 25 years or so, and would actually gain votes at the polls for doing so. Their current wishy-washy stance costs them votes while netting nearly nothing in the way of useful results.
"The zygotes that do implant soon transform into embryos. During its early growth, an embryo is sufficiently undifferentiated that it is impossible to distinguish which tissue will end up as part of the new life and which will be discarded as placenta. By about the sixth week the embryo gives way to the fetus, which has a recognizable human shape. (It was during the embryo-fetus transition, Augustine believed, that the soul is acquired, and this was Catholic doctrine for most of the period from the fifth century until 1869.) Also around the sixth week, faint electrical activity can be detected from the fetal nervous system. Some pro-life commentators say this means that brain activity begins during the sixth week, but, according to Dr. Martha Herbert, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, there is little research to support that claim. Most neurologists assume that electrical activity in the first trimester represents random neuron firings as nerves connect--basically, tiny spasms."
Whew, I thought you had me on the ropes for a moment, and would have to revisit a judgment I made on this issue many long years ago, albeit with less information.
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