Stem Cells and Ethics

I think its better to let an embryo grow inside the mother's womb, just like how your mother let you live and neither be minced or flushed.Make sense?

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

That is totally irrelevant though, in addition to being just your opinion. If you think it is immoral, then don't do anything that leads to such a situation. LOL.But these embryos are NOT attached to an umbilical cord so that is absolutely irrelevant.And no one is killing anything when dealing with these embryos. They are just a clump of cells.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Not at all. These embryos are not going to grow within a mother's womb. That is totally irrelevant to the issue.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Then explain how you don't oppose fertility treatments and female menstruation. Did you not read that part of my post?

I see you still fail to provide your source for your previous argument -- I guess that means it was an invalid assertion. Another quote from a site that is not in the medical study of fetal stem cells and instead make argument after argument from incredulity and ignorance. Please try to stick to reality and not wild claims.Your argument depends entirely on all embryos being always destined for development into human beings, and this just is not the case: most of them are destined to be discarded. Thus the real question is whether it is more ethical to throw embryos away or to use them for life saving medical technology.You seem to prefer throwing them in the dustbin (or forcing fertility clinics to keep an ever increasing bank of never to be used frozen embryos, really another dustbin under a different name), and letting people that could use them die instead of lead normal lives. That would be you trying to play god again.Personally I think it is up to the owners of the genetic material to decide if they want to keep the embryos, throw them away or donate them to medical research.Enjoy.

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WEEEE! You're going round in circles.Consider that embryonic stem cells are heavily regulated and funding is limited. Because of this, the research in this area isn't producing any significant results. Because of this, you are arguing to keep the restrictions. Circular?Restrictions ’ Lack of results ’ Restrictions ’ Lack of results ’ Restrictions etc etc While I can see that adult stem cells could prove effective in terms of cures, there is one area that only embryonic research can help - human developmental biology. There are hundreds of developmental disorders (most of which affect only children, as they die before they reach adulthood) and, with the possible exception of psychiatric disorders, they are the most poorly understood of any conditions. And the sole reason for that is that we can't do research freely on human embryos. No amount of adult stem cell research can shed any light on this.Edited by Doddy, : clarify

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So what? Given that every child that passes through a birth canal is connected to an umbilical cord means that you could extract all of the stem cells you could have ever hoped for without needlessly killing one, single thing.

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No, you aren't understanding me. Umbilical cords are jam packed with stem cells. So are placenta. Both of those items would be discarded. Why destroy a life if what you want is stem cells?This is an agenda to help support abortion, since there is no earthly reason why you couldn't just use the two items I described. So are you. Does it escape your attention that you were once an embryo. You also realize that living things grow, where as non-living things don't. An embryo is living. No matter how much you'd love to dehumanize a baby in utero, its not going to change its disposition.

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

Yet another false assertion.Please explain how using an embryo that will never be implanted in a womb is support for abortion? Yet another misrepresentation of what I have said. What does an embryo that will never be implanted in a womb have to do with a baby in utero?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Does it escape your attention that, once, you didn't even exist?Clearly at some point we go from non-existence to existence, but I don't see why conception is that point. It's certainly never been considered that point by any nation or society, including our own - which still continues to measure age from date of birth, not date of conception.But this is just the abortion debate, redux - which you never, ever finish. Is this going to be just another debate from which you retreat in shame? I'll see your position, and raise you every single rebuttal that you never respond to whenever we have this debate. So you've never grown a crystal, then. But the cells we're talking about aren't in utero, and never will be. They're in vitro and will be until their destruction.

I have made it clear what I think is the big difference between the clump of cells that is is an early fetus and an adult human being. The very point is that the reasoning is not the same for an adult possessing a brain and therefore a personality. What I meant was that when an accident happens, I do not want to hear from so-called pious Christians that what happened was in God's hands because apparently God is not responsible for accidents. That's fair enough, but then the argument that everything is in God's hand no longer holds water.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Your argument depends entirely on the unknown variable of chance. Its far more reasonable to think that an embryo will survive, than won't. It only definitely won't survive when someone extracts it prematurely. "Physician, heal thyself."What I'm advocating is the abolition of taking embryo's out of the mother's womb and dissecting them so they can conduct Nazi medical experiments.The problem is how they arrived in the first place. Which would make you playing God, not me. The owners of the genetic material are themselves. You just think that embryo's belong to you. They don't. They belong to themselves.But really, all this is aside from the point. If stem cells are really what you're after, then extract them from the umbilical cord and/or the placenta. Why bring a fetus in to it when there are more than ample resources to get those cells?I'm all for seeing if fetal stem cells will one day yield as much, or more, fruit as adult stem cells have. But not at the risk of needlessly taking one life in order to spare another's.

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

...extracts it from what, exactly? The test tube? The freezer?Do you understand that we're talking about embryoes that at no point have ever been inside a woman's uterus? ...wha?Who on Earth do you think is going that, NJ? Is that really where you think stem cells come from?Bwa ha ha ha ha! No, seriously. Are you pulling our legs, or what? By the combination of sperm and egg - in a petri dish. That's why they call it "in vitro" fertilization - because it happens in glass - in vitro.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

The only real restrictions are in the United States, and that's only with Federal funding, not private. There are ample resources all around the world trying to figure it out now.

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What is your beef with adult stem cells if they already have an established record of success?

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It's not that they could... They already do. The problem is you have to find differentiated cells. Put it this way: When you were developing in your mothers womb, most of your cells were undifferentiated-- meaning, it could have gone to develop what ever kind of cell it wanted to. As you age, those cells become differentiated and are essentially assigned a function.What researchers like about Embryonic Stem Cells is that they theorize that they can manipulate an undifferentiated stem cell to help repair some malady, say cancer or MLS. The problem so far is that when they take those undifferentiated cells, they metastasize beyond control. And instead of healing the patient, it actually gives them cancer.Cancer, as I'm sure you know, is nothing more than cells splitting out of control. They lose regulatory functions that healthy cells have. That's not true. Adult Stem Cells are already, and have been, healing all sorts of diseases. Like I said, researchers simply like the fact that Stem Cells are pluripotent (undifferentiated), whereas Adult Stem cells are totipotent (differetiated). And even then, the pluripotency is actually debateable.

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

And we are talking about stem cell research which is done on stem cells in embryos created in a lab and that are left over after the needs of the fertility clinic are met. The probability of such a left over embryo surviving is zero unless you perform nazi medical experiments to force them into women's wombs against their wishes, and even then they are small (the reason fertility clinics make so many to use). There is no self in a petri dish, just cells. The owners of the genetic material are the people the genetic material came from. These also happen to be the only people that can answer the question if any one of them is going to ever be used and then what to do with the rest. At the time of birth those are no longer fetal stem cells but similar to adult ones in that they identify with the fetus.Perhaps you have never heard of Rh Disease between mother and child? Check out
Parents (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealthGosh do you have a lot to learn about this situation.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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And we are talking about stem cell research which is done on stem cells in embryos created in a lab and that are left over after the needs of the fertility clinic are met. The probability of such a left over embryo surviving is zero unless you perform nazi medical experiments to force them into women's wombs against their wishes, and even then they are small (the reason fertility clinics make so many to use). There is no self in a petri dish, just cells. The owners of the genetic material are the people the genetic material came from. These also happen to be the only people that can answer the question if any one of them is going to ever be used and then what to do with the rest. At the time of birth those are no longer fetal stem cells but similar to adult ones in that they identify with the fetus.Perhaps you have never heard of Rh Disease between mother and child? Check out
Parents (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealthGosh do you have a lot to learn about this situation.Enjoy.

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Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.