Stem Cell Research

[jakee 1,489]

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No, actually they don't. A sperm or ovum has only 1/2 of the chromosomes needed to produce a person,

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Should we feel outraged for every sperm and egg that never meet up?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Michele 1]

Sorry, Jakee, I must not have been clear.

Once fertilizatin occurs, the potential is there for a life. Until that occurs, there is no potential. Comparing sperm and ova as individual "groups of cells" to a zygote isn't a good comparison; whereas one does indeed have a chance at becoming human, the other does not unless it is paired with another cell grouping which has the necessary chromosomes to complete it.

Does that make my comment more clear?

Just for clarification...as for masturbation, as a woman I don't "waste anything" according to any leanings. I also don't think masturbation by a guy "wastes" anything. But the apples to oranges comparison you made isn't a good one...huge difference.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[jakee 1,489]

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But the apples to oranges comparison you made isn't a good one...huge difference.

Maybe think of it as steps on a ladder. One big step to be sure... but still nowhere near the top.

Embryo's are created every single day that will never grow to be people - some scientifically for artificial insemination, others completely naturally that just dont make it..

In this context, saying something is out of bounds for its 'potential' is bogus. It is not yet 'there', it will never be 'there' - why not use what it has to offer?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[WeakMindedFool 0]

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I understand your position, though. If there is no God, then there is no soul. If there is no soul, then why concern oneself with it in an ethical/moral sense? I don't agree, but I understand.

This point of view assumes that without god there is no morality, this is something I hear a lot and am always confused. Morality, true morality, has nothing to do with fear, rather compassion! I try to lead a moral life as I see it, using compassion gained through empathy as my guide. If, and here is a biggie, there is a god, I don't belive he is living in some remote location keeping a list of my sins, seeing if I worship his kid as the only way I can get past the red rope at the gates. This said I have to use that same measuring stick to make a decision about the morality of certain research...what does the best for the most? Can I look upon the Alzheimers patient and say no, I won't use this avenue of research because it makes people uncomfortable. We are talking about a collection of 150 or so cells that has the POTENTIAL to be life. Watch out, with cloning techniques moving forward as they are, damn near any cell will have that same potential. I do not see this line of reasoning as justification for anything that the researcher wants, just in the instace of stem cells. I remember being very young and arguing with my mom about Mangela's research into many areas of medicine. I didn't understand why that research was sealed, if it could help, why not use it? I am no longer 8 years old and understand that some prices are to high to pay.
It comes down to morality. I refuse to knowingly benefit through the suffering of others. I see no suffering with stem cell research. I see a lot of suffering that could possibly be aleviated by it.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer -
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[Nightingale 0]

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Without oversight, there could easily be uses developed that are negative and horrific...and elitist.

Is there any branch of science for which this statement does not hold true?

I think there's many branches of religion for which that statement holds true as well.

[Lindsey 0]

Michelle....this "potential for a life" argument just doesn't matter to me. "Potential" is everywhere. Sometimes it's wasted, and sometimes it's not. Potential for life is not the same thing as life. In my mind the meaningful question is "when does life begin?" It's frustrating to not know the answer, but it's a question that's fun to think about. To go a little further, I really don't care that much if it's life. I care more if it's life that's capable of feeling and rudimentary thinking. Who cares if it's alive but can't comprehend the experience of life.

I can say that a clump of 16 cells...or 64 for that matter....doesn't constitute life in any meaningful sense. To use these clumps of cells for research is to be a good conservationist. But the people who are so adamantly against the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research aren't generally good conservationsits, are they?

If you're gonna talk about morality, the problem I foresee has to do with creating embryos for the sole purpose of medical research, which is bound to be a racket down the road. The problem there, in my mind, has less to do with the use of the embryos themselves than the intent with which they are produced. Somewhere in there, there's a moral problem for me. But that may not be a moral problem for the next person, and who is to say that my sense of morality trumps the next person's. I'm glad that our thinking about what's moral and immoral has evolved over the years. I can hope that my prudishness will give way to better thinking in the future....

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Once fertilizatin occurs, the potential is there for a life.

Not if done in a test tube and not inserted into the womb

[Michele 1]

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If you're gonna talk about morality, the problem I foresee has to do with creating embryos for the sole purpose of medical research, which is bound to be a racket down the road. The problem there, in my mind, has less to do with the use of the embryos themselves than the intent with which they are produced. Somewhere in there, there's a moral problem for me.

Me too...therein lies, for me, the crux of the issue. Should one create a conceptus/embryo simply for the purpose of getting those few cells which can produce any other cell in the human body? Or is that something which should be taboo?

The topic again came up in Bio last night; my professor, a research Dr.'s specialty is the whole realm of societal embryology...there's a fancy word for it, but I forgot it, sorry...she deals with preterm delivery research, implantation failure research, and - yes - stem cell research. Even she is not sure about the ethics - only that cloning a person is definitively wrong. But, as she says, that's the end result, not the beginning.

And so that's the issue at play; those cells which can do anything in the human body only exist for a very short time - and can't be naturally produced (i.e. in the uterus of a female). So do we produce those cells? Or do we learn more about why a salamander can regenerate itself, and use the adult stem cells (which show promise and have produced results) and the few stem cells found in the umbilical cords from birth?

Not that I know much about the field, but it's an intriguing topic and fun/frustrating to wrestle with, both morally and societally.

And I still don't know where I stand on it...I vacillate on a regular basis.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[Pubwoof 0]

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If you do believe in a soul, the moral choice is not as easy.

I've heard the following hypothetical being used to test that assertion: You're in a large room inside of a burning building. On one end of the room is a petri dish chock full of human embryos (let's say thousands of them). On the other is a newborn human baby. If you had to choose between saving the baby or saving the embryos (not enough time to save them both), what would you do?

This is an obviously far-fetched hypothetical, as most of them are. This scenario also sidesteps the moral question involving whether such embryos should be created for reasons other than the sole purpose of procreation (unless, of course, fertility clinics also represent a moral outrage). However, I'd fall out of my chair in shock to hear anybody claim that they'd save the embryos instead of the baby.

Honestly, wouldn't saving the baby be one of the easiest decisions you've ever made in your life? How much time would it take you to weigh such a choice?

Assuming you'd rightfully choose the baby over the thousands of embryos, how would you reconcile your choice against the "a soul is a soul is a soul" argument? If an embryo truly has a sole as many people believe, how would you justify your choice, in the eyes of your maker, to save one soul at the expense of a thousand others?

If logic is to have any bearing here at all (not that I'm saying it does), you can't choose the baby and believe that all embryos have souls at the same time. The only way around this paradox would be to concede that the soul of an actual human being is indeed more valuable than any soul that might reside within the cellular structure of an embryo. If that is the case, how do we turn our backs on the lifesaving/soulsaving potential of the research that can be performed on embryos that are otherwise destined for the autoclave? How do we do so in the name of morality of all things?

Is this really a tough moral choice, or am I just being manipulative and misleading like Michael J. Fox?

The glass isn't always half-full OR half-empty. Sometimes, the glass is just too damn big.

[sundevil777 102]

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Is this really a tough moral choice, or am I just being manipulative and misleading like Michael J. Fox?

I would say no, you're not at all manipulative or misleading, like Michael Fox was.

I think the choice is easy, you save the baby. It is the right choice, one cannot prove this, but it 'is' in the same sense that Mount Everest 'is', or that Alma Cogan 'isn't'.

Goodnight.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[jcd11235 0]

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If you do believe in a soul, the moral choice is not as easy.

I've heard the following hypothetical being used to test that assertion: You're in a large room inside of a burning building. On one end of the room is a petri dish chock full of human embryos (let's say thousands of them). On the other is a newborn human baby. If you had to choose between saving the baby or saving the embryos (not enough time to save them both), what would you do?

This is an obviously far-fetched hypothetical, as most of them are. This scenario also sidesteps the moral question involving whether such embryos should be created for reasons other than the sole purpose of procreation (unless, of course, fertility clinics also represent a moral outrage). However, I'd fall out of my chair in shock to hear anybody claim that they'd save the embryos instead of the baby.

It's an interesting hypothetical, but it makes the faulty assumption that the option we did not choose was not worth saving. Imagine another newborn baby in place of the embryos. Now which do you choose, still only able to save one or the other? Is the one you left behind any less worthy of being saved?

I'm not against ESC research, I just don't believe it was a fair hypothetical.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[kallend 2,026]

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Is this really a tough moral choice, or am I just being manipulative and misleading like Michael J. Fox?

I would say no, you're not at all manipulative or misleading, like Michael Fox was.

I think the choice is easy, you save the baby. It is the right choice, one cannot prove this, but it 'is' in the same sense that Mount Everest 'is', or that Alma Cogan 'isn't'.

Goodnight.

Alma Cogan?
What does Alma Cogan have to do with it? She died 40 years ago. I doubt anyone here besides me even remembers her.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[sundevil777 102]

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Alma Cogan?
What does Alma Cogan have to do with it? She died 40 years ago. I doubt anyone here besides me even remembers her.

Alma Cogan has nothing to do with it! Since the question at hand involved making logical/philosophical choices...

Just a silly allusion - to the logician sketch that follows the witch burning on the album of the soundtrack of the trailer of the film of...

From Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" album, in which John Cleese as the professor of logic explains why the witch burning sketch was not logically correct.

Good evening.

The last scene was interesting from the point of view of a professional logician because it contained a number of logical fallacies; that is, invalid propositional constructions and syllogistic forms, of the type so often committed by my wife. "All wood burns," states Sir Bedevere. "Therefore," he concludes, "all that burns is wood." This is, of course, pure bullshit. Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan. "Oh yes," one would think.

However, my wife does not understand this necessary limitation of the conversion of a proposition; consequently, she does not understand me. For how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic, if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder.

For example, given the premise, "all fish live underwater" and "all mackerel are fish", my wife will conclude, not that "all mackerel live underwater", but that "if she buys kippers it will not rain", or that "trout live in trees", or even that "I do not love her any more." This she calls "using her intuition". I call it "crap", and it gets me very irritated because it is not logical.

"There will be no supper tonight," she will sometimes cry upon my return home. "Why not?" I will ask. "Because I have been screwing the milkman all day," she will say, quite oblivious of the howling error she has made. "But," I will wearily point out, "even given that the activities of screwing the milkman and getting supper are mutually exclusive, now that the screwing is over, surely then, supper may, logically, be got." " You don't love me any more," she will now often postulate. "If you did, you would give me one now and again, so that I would not have to rely on that rancid Pakistani for my orgasms." "I will give you one after you have got me my supper," I now usually scream, "but not before" -- as you understand, making her bang contingent on the arrival of my supper.

"God, you turn me on when you're angry, you ancient brute!" she now mysteriously deduces, forcing her sweetly throbbing tongue down my throat. "Fuck supper!" I now invariably conclude, throwing logic somewhat joyously to the four winds, and so we thrash about on our milk-stained floor, transported by animal passion, until we sink back, exhausted, onto the cartons of yoghurt.

I'm afraid I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief. But in a nutshell:

Sex is more fun than logic -- one cannot prove this, but it "is" in the same sense that Mount Everest "is", or that Alma Cogan "isn't".

Goodnight.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[kallend 2,026]

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Alma Cogan?
What does Alma Cogan have to do with it? She died 40 years ago. I doubt anyone here besides me even remembers her.

Alma Cogan has nothing to do with it! Since the question at hand involved making logical/philosophical choices...

Just a silly allusion - to the logician sketch that follows the witch burning on the album of the soundtrack of the trailer of the film of...

.

OK, I was thinking you had some deeper meaning, since Alma Cogan died of cancer 40 years ago this week (Oct 26, 1966).

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kbordson 8]

Well... hopefully this debate will now be unnecessary.

Although they did use fetal cells (YES - Fetal cells as argued against in a previous post) and newborn skin cells (foreskin) in addition to the adult cells- so still some controversy.