Stem Cell Research

[JerryStopher]

The Culture of Killing to Preserve Life

When America went to war in the 1940s, the object of the game was to kill so many German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers and civilians that they would not be able to kill more of us. That's how war works, isn't it?

Kill someone to save the life of another, and do it on a massive scale.

America & the UN did the same in Korea, yezno?

Americans were told that we must do it in Viet-Nam, killing Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers, and dropping bombs on civilians, killing them so they wouldn't kill us. Killing a person to save another, right? And on a massive scale (though no killing has compared with the scale of WW2).

When Sad-Damn invaded Kuwait and GHW Bush sent our young soldiers to drive him out, we saw same-day video of smart-bombs killing vast numbers of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. We killed so many of them so fast that we won that war in short order. We killed some, to save the lives of others, didn't we?

And President Bush's son, Dubya, justifies the current war and occupation of Iraq as necessary, to kill them before they kill us. There are terrorists in them thar hills, we are told, and we must kill them to protect the lives of others, namely our innocent little children here in America. Fight 'em there, so we won't have to fight 'em here.

Am I right so far?

Okay, so Dubya says that an embryo at a fertility lab is alive, and is a human being blessed by God, and to use it for stem-cell research would be killing it to help protect another from disease. So how does that differ from war? Why is war okay, but medical research is a sin?

And if we don't use that embryo for research, what will become of it? It will be thrown out with the trash. Killed. Wasted. Dead.

And Bush is insisting that it must be put to death, wasted, rather than used to benefit humankind.

Does anyone really think he's got good sense?

[mr pru]

This is a classic example of GB's narrow mindedness.

He is so worried about offending the big donors of the "moral right"-that he is hindering the progress of medicine in this country.

The USA used to be the pioneer in everything. Now we will fall behind in the research and development of this beneficial medical process.

There is no logical reasoning behind refusing to use an embryo that will be disposed of to potentially help millions of people at some point in the future.

What a pity.

[madison]

Jerry,
Excellent post.

I view the right's position on stem cells in a slightly different way.

It's easy to hold to a position when it is kept 'cerebral', by that I mean, not experiencing or acknowledging the human suffering that any given position holds.

But anyone who has been seriously ill, or is seriously ill sees this position through the eyes of desperation. Almost moment by moment, they hope, they pray, for something on the horizon that will help them escape the agony of serious/chronic illness and/or death.

Some of us know this through personal experience; some through watching a loved one suffer sometimes for years or decades before succumbing.

There probably will be disagreement about the use of embryonic stem cells in the same manner as abortion for many years to come - or maybe not. It is so much more difficult to watch someone's life crumble in front of our eyes than the other issue (not wanting to start WW3 here). Suffering - extreme suffering, speaks to our hearts and souls I think on a different level. We want to help - to alleviate the limitless suffering.

And all of us will someday pass away; many of us from degenerative diseases and cancer. We cannot escape that fact.

So GWB may not fund stem cell research now, but I expect a surge of money being spent anyway, and given the current state of the government's spending, it may be to our benefit to keep the government out of one of the most promising medical research fields to come along in a long time.

[manskater]

Great post Jerry.

So Bush wants to use little babies in the background when he talks about stem cells. Maybe he should wander the halls of nursing homes full of people suffering from alzheimers or visit the families that have members suffering from parkinson's disease. Was he not even paying attention to the committee hearings where people like Michael Fox presented their views. Oh wait since he doesn't read newspapers maybe he doesn't watch television either.:rolleyes

Christopher Reeves is more of a hero than this president will ever be because he fought for the lives of others even though Reeves probably knew he would never see the day where stem cell research would be able to help him.

[Sparks]

Christopher Reeves is more of a hero than this president will ever be because he fought for the lives of others even though Reeves probably knew he would never see the day where stem cell research would be able to help him. This is more true that you realize...:(
Remember, the Right needs soldiers for the coming years...that's why we can't kill "embryos". The sick and disabled do not have a place in GWB's empire.

[EigthAv]

It looks like soldiers to me,who are now searching for the missing girl from Alabama. Ya'll add your own extra misery to war.Do you have a real better alternative to violence vs violence? Can you explain stem cells and why everyone should want it? Will it be economically feasible for poor people? I could say that liberals are so in love with themselves is why thay favour wholesale abortion.Would that be a fact or just another politically biased statement from someone of an opposing viewpoint? If Bush really was Next Hitler and after the perfect human species,why wouldn't he be all for selective wholesale abortion? You can sure weed out a lot of inferior products if you let it run wide open.Get everything modern and future science has to offer working for us,toss out all thoughts of religions of any sort.........including Moslem..... and we could create a theoretically more perfect America. Two sci-fi movies,Matrix and Terminater 2,dealt with a future World wherein machines take over and quickly determine that the human species is potentially more dangerous to the well-being of the planet than fleas,roaches,fireants and mosquitoes all put together.A third sci-fi classic,Aliens,gave us a vision of what mutated future generation of our top insect species might be like. War is all around us. I hope those stem cells do save some lives.I'm nuetral on the issue.The science is moving fast,so I doubt one man can change it's destiny.

[Sparks]

First - no one in this thread said Bush was the next Hitler.
Second - Hitler and his crew didn't support abortion either. They set up special places for unwed mothers to go to have their children and these children were supposed to be the Third Reich's new generation.
Third - Valuable stem cell research and subsequent treatment should be available to all Americans...just like good health care should be made available to all Americans (but is not!).
Fourth - This is not a Sci-Fi movie...this is reality and the reality of war is miserable enough...liberals do not 'add' our own extra misery to it. I believe that there are many ways to subvert violence and war. I try to follow the teachings of Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr.

War is not the answer...only love can conquer hate.

[Krista]

There's also the viewpoint of the people saying that they don't want war, but yet they want stem cell research...........So to look at one side, you have to look at the other. And both sides look hypocritical by this standard.

If stem cells from embryos would really be helpful, Im for it. But Im not convinced yet that we can't get stem cells from other sources. Not all stem cells have to come from embryos.

[GinnySmith]

But Im not convinced yet that we can't get stem cells from other sources. Not all stem cells have to come from embryos. I'm no expert, but from my limited knowledge on the topic this is absolutely true.

One of my very best friends who was in advanced stages of breast cancer died in 1998 undergoing leading edge experimental research involving stem cells. My understanding is that somehow the stem cells were harvested from her living bother, who is still alive. She had nothing to lose and IMHO, died a hero for being basically a "test case". She was a wonderful person.

So blanket disapproval for any form of stem cell research is not OK, as far as I am concerned.

[moxie]

As Ron Reagan has pointed out in numerous speeches, there is a significant scientific difference between "embryonic" and "embryos."

The term "embryonic" refers to a certain number of cell divisions; it doesn't necessarily mean that a viable human embryo has been formed that can be implanted in a womb.

Also, none of these embryonic cells ever results in human life unless successfully implanted in a woman. So I don't see how using these cells is "killing human life," since human life is not possible at that point in the process.

[colinmom71]

I found this web site to be a very good primer on stem cells and the technology used to culture them... stemcells.nih.gov/info/ba...asics1.asp (http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics1.asp)

Essentially, somatic (adult) stem cells have much potential to also aid in healing disease as embryonic stem cells appear to have. However, there are some limitations with non-embryonic stem cells in that adult stem cells come from already differentiated tissue types. This means that these stem cells can only be cultured to produce similar tissue within it's class of genetically coded tissue types. For instance, as the article mentions on page 4, bone marrow stromal cells can only generate bone, cartilage, fat, and fibrous connective tissues.

Embryonic stem cells, harvested and cultured from blastocysts (pre-implantation embryos), are completely undifferentiated tissue and this can be manipulated into any specific tissue type. So it may be a safer to use when addressing certain diseases than the differentiated tissue arising from use of somatic/adult stem cells, in that the person's disease may make retrieval of clean stem cells problematic.

For example, if you have a patient with compromised neural pathways in the brain, excising brain tissue from an already unstable neural patient may make the problem worse or may not produce a good quality tissue sample with which to culture the stem cells. This could especially be an issue with say a patient presenting with disease involving demyelination (destruction of white matter in the brain). This is also why patients with certain cancers that respond to bone marrow transplants cannot simply have their own bone marrow excized from aseemingly uneffected oart of the body. With metastatic cancers, all the patient's blood tissue has to be considered (for want of a better term) genetically corrrupt since there is great potential that the genetic code for the cancer itself would be transferred into the stem cell culture... A separate, compatable donor must be used.

I'm also not an expert on stem cell technology, but I do read on it when I have time. As the parent of a child who will never be approved by a transplant committee should he ever be ill enough to need transplanted tissue, I have a great personal stake in stem cell technology. I personally think *all* potential sources for stem cells should be investigated and researched to our best ability.

Also, as an aside to the issue of federal/state funding of stem cell research, keep in mind that refusal to fund the research results an inability for the government to conscript and enforce an ethics code on such research. This allows privately funded to conduct their research as they please without any oversight or legal method by which to weed out any groups conducting potentially unethical and abusive approaches to the use of stem cell technology. This is an overlooked consequence of conservative political groups' lobby against stem cell research... Ironically, their moral objections may indeed contribute to unethical research...

[Jayjen36]

From reading around the NIH site and a few others I found some information about conservatives promoting the Cord Blood Stem Cell Act of 2005 as an alternative to embryonic stem cell research. The problem with this is that umbilical cord blood while a good source of hematopoietic stem cells doesn't contain pluripotent cells, or cells that can develop into almost any cell type.

These cells have the potential to treat or cure diseases like Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, liver failure, and cancer. This research is far too promising to and holds too much hope for so many to simply be dismissed.

I've been thinking about the embryos that have potential use in stem cell research. Those belonging to couples or individuals who've decided not to implant all of the embryos produced for them by their fertility specialists. I'm wondering what exactly conservatives want done with them? Should they all be destroyed? Buried? Donated to other couples? Or simply stored indefinitely?

Wouldn't a hospital medical team dealing with a child whose life would not continue ask that child's parents to donate their child's organs so that another child might live? Even if that child must die? How is this any different?

A conservative might answer that there is no evidence that the embryo couldn't develop into a healthy child whereas the dying child cannot be saved. But the embryo has no guarantee of life. No guarantee that someone will wish to carry the embryo to term, but there is a very good chance that the embryo would allow for many lives to be saved. I am not suggesting that this is a "joyful" or "wonderful" prospect, but as with a dying child, from something tragic something very wonderful can happen. I just don't understand how something with this kind of potential good can be so easily dismissed.

[Puce]

i did a research paper on stem cell research 11 years ago! i am SHOCKED that it is just not getting the attentuon that it deserves. it holds too much promise to be ignored. i just hope that it's not too late for some of us when they finally do the right thing.