Stem Cell Research

[mollycase]

Stem cell research is medical science involving using fetal cells to attempt to cure diseases. Fetal cells can regenerate in ways mature cells cannot. It is believed that stem cell research could eventually cure degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson's or genetic ones such as diabetes. Other countries already use stem cell transplants to treat diseases such as certain cancers, but it is illegal here. Do you think stem cell research should be pursued in the United States?

[MidniteCliche]

It'll be a good way to use the aborted babies. I look forward to seeing how sucessful it will be.

[OliX]

I say go for it....

[Ouroboros]

Gah. Stupid morality getting in the way of progress... AGAIN! I remember I used to get into these huge fights with my teachers because I defended people like Dr. Mengele and such... I just like advancement more than I like ethics. So, illegal or not, I think that, if there's a chance ANYthing could be exploited, mankind should exploit it.

... I guess.

[Nightingale]

There are already enough people on this crowded planet, and we want to save the sick and elderly so that they can leach on us longer?

[Cerberus]

There are already enough people on this crowded planet, and we want to save the sick and elderly so that they can leach on us longer?

Maybe we could make them more strong and healthy and they could work longer and provide more for us?

[Kidthorazine]

There are already enough people on this crowded planet, and we want to save the sick and elderly so that they can leach on us longer?

I agree but i think that it should still be used because there are some brilliant people with chronic genetic disorders that can be cured with the stuff

[Kidthorazine]

and honestly the right to lifers are so full of shit by making this illegal

[MidniteCliche]

if it can save tons of dying people, and they're using aborted babies, that will die anyways...put them to good use! Besides, why is abortion legal, but this isn't? It called recycling !!!

[purplepixie]

There are already enough people on this crowded planet, and we want to save the sick and elderly so that they can leach on us longer?

I agree but you cant really get to choose who lives and who dies thats unethical, and i thought that stem cell transplants are generally taken from the placenta and only occasionally taken from the dead feotus so thats its less contravesial

[Amelia G]

I agree but you cant really get to choose who lives and who dies thats unethical, and i thought that stem cell transplants are generally taken from the placenta and only occasionally taken from the dead feotus so thats its less contravesial

As I understand it, live humans can sometimes donate some stem cells, but fetal tissue has the most stem cells and the most effective stem cells. I'm not super up on the technology, so that might not be 100%.

I am 100% sure that the technology could help people of every age. The elderly are not the only ones who suffer from degenerative diseases such as MS or who suffer injuries which require regrowth of various complex tissues.

Personally, I favor taking good care of the elderly. We could all use more wisdom. I still miss my grandmother all the time, but I started missing her a number of years before she actually died. It was horrifying having her mental capacity degenerate enough that she couldn't remember a conversation she had yesterday, but she was still there enough to feel humiliated by her condition and want to die.

It would have been wonderful if the technology had existed to make her final years as sharp and passionate as her younger years and I'd be a lot happier about my dough going to extend the happy years of someone's life than to extending the miserable ones.

[Tequila Zaire]

Gah. Stupid morality getting in the way of progress... AGAIN! I remember I used to get into these huge fights with my teachers because I defended people like Dr. Mengele and such... I just like advancement more than I like ethics. So, illegal or not, I think that, if there's a chance ANYthing could be exploited, mankind should exploit it.

... I guess.

There's a tough guy to justify...his work was far more sadistic torture than science...while he could be defended as using unorthodox methods to test very unorthodox ideas...one has to keep in mind that of all the things Germany was doing at the time Medical Science was probably their worst subject...they were using many outdated ideas and methods to both justify their racial ideas and exploited human experimentation with little to no justifiable progress for such actions. Personally you'd never get me to defend the guy devils advocate or not simply due to results...his work went nowhere outside of proving his own methods useless...worthless fucks the lot of them anyhow.

In terms of stem cell research in this country...you can't close pandora's box...but their does need to be some set guidelines since the fear of science exploiting before it advances is well documented. The fear many have is having fetuses souly produced for such research and while that in all truth is inevitable the moral implications are to broad to ignore....if people are willing to kill for abortion on BOTH sides of the issue imagine the fallout over this. As much as I put advancement in science above much else you need to keep the public fears and morality in mind and educate them accordingly or you simple get a Dr. Frankenstein effect...and we all know how that story ended.

[KilLAtomiK]

i completely agree with midnite if the aborted babies are just goin to tosed away they might as well make use of them

[TheDeathKnight]

Yeah....
The cells when they are in an embryo, are cells that are not specialized yet.
They can become a brain cell, or a heart muscle cell, or whatever...
So if you stick them in someone's brain, they will grow into fresh,
brand new brain cells, and replace the ones already old and diseased.
If you inject them into your liver, they will develop into new liver cells.

So it's a way of rejuvenating our old, messed-up organs and body parts,
with fresh new cells...

[OliX]

if it can save tons of dying people, and they're using aborted babies, that will die anyways...put them to good use! Besides, why is abortion legal, but this isn't? It called recycling !!!

I say, if abortion is murder then masturbating is a genocide.

[Nightingale]

Maybe we could make them more strong and healthy and they could work longer and provide more for us?

Do you think so? My line of thought is that it can cost hundreds of thousands to make a person live longer who has already had a productive life and is now waiting for their pension. Added to which the millions spent on the research and on legal wrangles. We allow people to live ever longer, with many people now reaching one hundred years, totally incapable of looking after themselves, but costing us far more through care packages and other costs. More and more people are worrying over their jobs and futures (200,000 job losses in Ohio since Bush took power?) but at the same time having to fork out even more money to keep people alive who are going to live in retirement homes for the next twenty years.

[Nightingale]

I agree but i think that it should still be used because there are some brilliant people with chronic genetic disorders that can be cured with the stuff

Who gets to decide who the brilliant people are? Can you honestly expect an ethical and fair decision when faced with one person from a middle class family with good education in the US over a normal person with general education in the Congo? Who's to say that the person in the Congo - who would not be picked, believe me - wouldn't be the one who goes on to bring peace to the entire region?

[Nightingale]

I agree but you cant really get to choose who lives and who dies thats unethical, and i thought that stem cell transplants are generally taken from the placenta and only occasionally taken from the dead feotus so thats its less contravesial

Stem cell research is in the news at the moment because certain scientists wish to clone their own stem cells rather than just using those from the placenta or umbilical cord. And again, my comments from above, who gets to decide who lives and who dies? Someone has to make the decision and, at the moment, it is the pharmaceutical industry who decides simply because of their pricing policy (see AIDS in Africa, for example).

[CPRB]

good thing alwasy turn bad, it will have a price in dollars it will be the greta devide. yes they should but it should have major cotrols on it socially in the fact that everyone should be allowed the privelegae to have it asn an option if they can use it to be healthy. I am sure though like many other things beauracracy and greed and waton cause will ruin it.

[Morning Glory]

yes, rich people will be like oh my god, I'm thiry five, I'm so fucking old, load me up fulla dem stem cells. here's a million bucks. while joe nobody who's dying of congenital heart failure get's the shaft. In the mean time we'll just have to settle for assholes with skewed perverted beliefs that will glady justify murder for thier holy wars but god forbid (and apparently he does just that) you should use a part of a baby that has no other use ( like the umbicial cord, and the placenta) better to throw it away to rot and save your soul then save a life here and now.

[Morning Glory]

and that is what it boils down to. any so called ethical debate is just religious dogma spouting about immortal souls. it's just as logical and ethical to clone a fetus and use the cells for science, as it is to butcher a cow and eat it. they are both just of lumps of flesh that are incapable of higher thought and self awareness.

[Nightingale]

In the mean time we'll just have to settle for assholes with skewed perverted beliefs that will glady justify murder for thier holy wars but god forbid (and apparently he does just that) you should use a part of a baby that has no other use ( like the umbicial cord, and the placenta) better to throw it away to rot and save your soul then save a life here and now.

I agree that the otherwise wasted sections of a birth should be further used, what I object to is the actual creation of stem cells through other means, which is what is mainly being discussed at the moment in medical / scientific circles. We use organs from donors to save lives, so why not the other parts at the beginning of life.

But it will be abused. There will still be a massive divide across the world as to who can have and who not, who can afford and who not. Then the industry will put out their trademarked and patented medicines and block all no-name copies to keep the prices high ... We've seen it all before, we'll see it again and again.

[Nightingale]

and that is what it boils down to. any so called ethical debate is just religious dogma spouting about immortal souls. it's just as logical and ethical to clone a fetus and use the cells for science, as it is to butcher a cow and eat it. they are both just of lumps of flesh that are incapable of higher thought and self awareness.

I disagree with the comparison over a cloned stem cell and an animal being butchered. The cloned stem cell is manmade, that is created by a human from dirt upwards. The cow, or other creature, comes through a pretty much nature course of events into the world and runs a course of nature before being ripped apart and eaten by humans. The use of stem cells from the placenta - without god-like cloning - would be more acceptable.

[Nightingale]

I agree but you cant really get to choose who lives and who dies thats unethical,

The problem is, once you start with the research and create cures for everything, there will be decision making about who gets to live and who dies. It happens all the time in the US and the rest of the world where medical insurance exists. Someone decides who can afford the treatment and who cannot, and whether the insurance company will pay out, or delay until the patient dies anyway. Such decisions are made every day of the week.

However, when the medicine is desperately needed, such as AIDS treatment in the worst effected areas of the world, it isn't available simply because those who carried out the research and development have patented their medicines and demand a price out of the reach of the majority of people requiring them.

[Morning Glory]

I disagree with the comparison over a cloned stem cell and an animal being butchered. The cloned stem cell is manmade, that is created by a human from dirt upwards. The cow, or other creature, comes through a pretty much nature course of events into the world and runs a course of nature before being ripped apart and eaten by humans. The use of stem cells from the placenta - without god-like cloning - would be more acceptable.

oh ok. so you're saying that it would be better to breed babies in a factory and have them slaughtered on a conveyor belt and then shipped off for parts instead?

[Nightingale]

oh ok. so you're saying that it would be better to breed babies in a factory and have them slaughtered on a conveyor belt and then shipped off for parts instead?

Oh, I'm used to people purposely misreading what I've written and then trying to make it seem as if I'm some sort of monster.

Of course, we both know that what I've quoted is neither what I wrote nor what I intended other people to understand. I pointed out that *your* comparison didn't work since the slaughter of animals and the use of birth material which would otherwise be destroyed cannot be viewsed on the same level.

To the best of my knowledge - which is reasonably high - no one needs to slaughter *factory* babies in order to use their parts because the placenta, having served its purpose during the incubation and initial growth period of the baby in the mother's womb, is now a waste product. This waste product may be used for research into stem cells without the baby being harmed.

It should be noted, however, that some English hospitals appear to have done what you mention, and that is use baby parts for research without their parents permission. There was an uproar in the UK last year over this.

[Macabre_Dreams]

Bush wants to used cloned embryos for testing, just as long as those embryos don't make it to fetus stages.

[Nightingale]

Bush wants to used cloned embryos for testing, just as long as those embryos don't make it to fetus stages.

Feels challenged, does he?

[Morning Glory]

naw, I did not mean offense nightingale. I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, I was just taking that point of view and applying it, satirically, to the issues of abortion and stem cell research. I'm saying that people who aren't religious nuts, who try to say that aborting fetus and using baby parts is immoral, are hypocritical in saying so because they are in favor of killing and chopping up animals, which defies there so-called moral logic, since they are both primitive forms of life, as compared to a fully developed human ( in terms of what we consider to be "advanced" thought proceses.) although you can't really make that logical argument at all, since genetically there is nothing that differentiates humans from other animals, but the arangement of DNA patterns.

[TheDeathKnight]

You'll have about as much luck convincing fundementalist christians of that, as you will have convincing them about dinosaurs... It does not matter how much science and logic you have...

[Wol265]

All I have to say is go for it…..As stem cells are the best chance we have at finding cures for disease of the mind and also cancer. Most scientists have agreed that the cure for Alzheimer’s is in stem cells.

[Macabre_Dreams]

Feels challenged, does he?

Confused is probablc closer.

[Nightingale]

naw, I did not mean offense nightingale. I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, I was just taking that point of view and applying it, satirically, to the issues of abortion and stem cell research. I'm saying that people who aren't religious nuts, who try to say that aborting fetus and using baby parts is immoral, are hypocritical in saying so because they are in favor of killing and chopping up animals, which defies there so-called moral logic, since they are both primitive forms of life, as compared to a fully developed human ( in terms of what we consider to be "advanced" thought proceses.) although you can't really make that logical argument at all, since genetically there is nothing that differentiates humans from other animals, but the arangement of DNA patterns.

No offence taken.

The arguments come from all sides and are often based on absolutely nothing regardless of who makes them. Much has to do with preconceptions and with often biased information that people have received and not thought through. I often find myself amused by people who turn up their noses at cannibals but would eat another animal - which they couldn't kill themselves because they are too weak. It's all meat, so why not eat babies?

My thoughts on the use of stem cell research are limited research using discarded cells from placenta and umbilical cord should be promoted and the cloning of cells - the playing of god - should be banned without hope of a second chance to push it through. There are more than enough sources for stem cells, since thousands of babies are born in every country of the world every day and can provide more cell source than most religious nuts have had hot dinners.

[Nightingale]

Confused is probablc closer.

You mean over his lack of knowledge and the shallow, money-primed advice of his lobbying friends?

[incog]

yes, rich people will be like oh my god, I'm thiry five, I'm so fucking old, load me up fulla dem stem cells. here's a million bucks. while joe nobody who's dying of congenital heart failure get's the shaft. In the mean time we'll just have to settle for assholes with skewed perverted beliefs that will glady justify murder for thier holy wars but god forbid (and apparently he does just that) you should use a part of a baby that has no other use ( like the umbicial cord, and the placenta) better to throw it away to rot and save your soul then save a life here and now.

Load me up fulla dem stem cells.

[Yasha D. Speed]

you don't need stem cell research.... the human body has everything in it to heal itself.

(example: had heart problems, even one or two strokes.... didn't feel like goind to a doctor, so i read up on yoga. as long as i do a certain yogic asana, there's nothing wrong with my heart. yeah, call it auto-suggestion, but as long as i'm healthy, i don't give a shit)

[Mr Karl]

just because 'they' say that we cant use stem cells doesn't mean that they wont and then sell the results to us