Stem Cell Bill Passes in Australia 253
nickd writes "Having recently being passed in the Senate by only 2 votes, an Australian bill to overturn the ban on 'theraputic cloning' has now been passed in the House of Representatives by 82-62. The amendment that was seeking to prevent stem cells being extracted from the eggs of aborted late term female fetuses has also been voted down. The changes will allow scientists to create and use embryos up to 14 days old for research."
Re:We Do It Because We Can (Score:4, Insightful)
This can take something that is rather upleasant in the first place, that would not be avoided, and turn it into something that can save millions of lives.
That being said, I hope the bill has a rider in it that says a person cannot recieve compensation for donating the genetic material.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they aren't the only ones but almost all fundamentalists Christians are made at least a bit uncomfortable, and they are the group against the use of both stem cells and cloning technology that carries the most political clout, at least in the U.S., where the Conservative movement and, in particular, the Republican Party have set back important and potentially life-saving stem cell research by decades because they wish to impose their religious and moral views on everyone else who may or may not agree with them through legislation.
Go ahead, fundies, mod me down! Join me on the Dark Side!
Re:We Do It Because We Can (Score:3, Insightful)
Ethical Science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the line between Ethical Science and Unethical Science. This is the issue which needs to be debated not every single thing that falls in the gray area.
We know there are some things that are defenatly beyond the range of ethical science. Like Killing healthy and productive people to examin how a perfectly working body and mind works, or taking identical twins away from their parents at birth and giving one a loving family and putting an other one in a box with no human interaction to see where the limit of Nature vs. Nuture lays. Even though these things if widly experemented could help out greater humanity but it beyond the range of Ethical Science, and should be avoided.
Now things like Stem Cell resheach is falling in a Gray areas. Where people feel both ways about it. For Sciencetist there is no real line for this gray area so it is up to them to realize how far to go. This could be good or bad. But that is where the problem lays.
For those people who are against this type of science, it is not because they are religios extreamest or sciencetificly enept. It is just that when they look into the gray area it seems to dark for them to say yes this is right. As well the people who are for it are not always Unreligious, imoral, who only listen to science as the only source of wisdom. They look at the spot in the gray area and they see it is more light then dark.
We can't allow Scienctist to do whatever they want just because they want to see the results, just as much we can't prevent sciencetist from learning more just because interpration of books written over a thousand years ago say it is not right.
So Stem Cell research is actually a very difficult topic and not something that is compleatly sensible at all. It is a difficult decision.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Too abd this isn't about people, it's about a ball of about 128 cells.
Or do yo cry for all the 'people' that your body sheds every day?
Re:We Do It Because We Can (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there is nothing wrong with stem cells being harvested/used instead of decaying in the ground.
I believe that there is nothing wrong with a fetus being developed used, in a lab (not in a woman) and terminated before there is a chance for any neural tissue (and hence brain activity) to form. No one is being hurt by this, the life that was created wouldn't have been created anyway, and it has less ability to feel pain than the average lab animal used for various experiments.
Re:Societal Degeneration From The Non-Christian Le (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you can't join every religion (many of them won't allow it), and since you cannot know for a certainty in advance which of them is right (out of several thousand), plus you cannot rule out the possibility that the "one true faith" died out thousands of years ago (have you ensured you can get into Valhalla?)... basically you're screwed no matter what you do. The odds are against Christians as much as they are against everyone else.
Pascal's wager is bunk, and always has been.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:U.S. the new "down under"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not have a significant qualm regarding stem cell research. I have limited issues with cloning ONLY for the purpose of producing more research material. I also do not consider an embryo to be on the same moral level as a fetus, or a fetus to be the same thing as a viable baby. But I do think every major advance in science presents us with a new slippery slope, and that concepts of morality change drastically over time, based primarily on the decisions made by previous generations.
You can rest assured that whatever you consider slightly dubious but warranted or necessary today with either be absolutely shunned by your children's children, or embraced in ways that would horrify you.
Without a clear line being drawn, I guarantee you that some parts of the world will do whatever is possible. Once you loosen the boundries in one area (creating biologically human lives, even if of highly dubious status), the rest can quickly fall like dominoes. Then you end up with debate over how far a test subject should be allowed to gestate before it's consumed, or debate over the legal status of a human created by humans specifically for study. Genetic manipulation only makes the lines blur further.
Progress is the core of modern society. But err on the side of caution, because the last century has shown what happens when you let morality take a back seat to that progress.
It's the new "FOR THE CHILDREN!' catch phrase! (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, I'm as pro-stem cell research as you can be. I think it's great, and I think someone is going to do it no matter what so we might as be the ones who do it.
But I'm tired of the arguement that says, "We must do X, because it could possibly do Y".
It might NOT do Y, also. We do scientific research to gain knowlege. Sometimes there's even a goal in mind behind the search for that knowlege. But this constant shrieking that "We must do stem cell research because it could cure disease (fill in the blank) smacks to much of the the old saw "We must do it FOR THE CHILLLLLLDREEEENNNNN!".
Steve
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
Err... because that would be illegal, just like any unregulated trafficing in illegal tissue. Same reason Betty won't sell you her kidney.
There's already laws to protect 'little Betty' from unethical harvesting, the only thing the ban is about is whether it's ethical at any level to use discarded blastocytes or embroyos (sp?), so fundamentally it's an issue of whether you consider the embroyo sentient. Trying to make it a free market issue is just silly and distracting (probably the latter is why you wrote what you did.)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to dying of Parkinson's or various other diseases that cloning research may cure?
I would suppose putting dead viruses into my body is a bit creepy too, but I'd rather do that than die from a disease that could have been prevented with a vaccination.
Rather than looking at just the creepiness factor, you should consider how much human suffering you can cause or alleviate by the choice.
If the choice will save lives and end suffering while not causing suffering to a sentient being, then the choice is clear. Of course this depends on your definition of what a sentient being is...
I for one do no consider human embryos to be sentient nor conscious. Since they were never going to exist anyways in a conscious form seeing these embryos would never be used to create human life.
However, I would more likely to object to research on humans or embryos that was going to be a conscious human unless perhaps they died of natural causes and the next of kin agreed or had some organ donor agreement before hand.
Babykillers!! ..? (Score:2, Insightful)
I, for one, do see a slight difference between a cell and a full life-size baby, though. And if that makes me a "terrorist, who disregards human life", so be it. I just see it as a baby-could-be, if anything other than a cell. But hey.. I women "kill" a "baby" about once a month too, by failing to get pregnant! They should all fry! That'll teach 'em. But thats no suitable solution, either. And men.. Don't even get me started on how many potential babies we men kill each time we jerk off. Hell, i just done went and convinced my self. We should all die. Eventually.
Anyways, back to killing ba... Jerking off.
And no, I haven't read the article. And I'm no expert on the subject either. He who is may throw the first stone.
Re:Babykillers!! ..? (Score:3, Insightful)
And what happens when we get to the point in science where we could develop a baby start-to-finish completely outside the mother's womb? You would fertalize the egg in a petri dish (you can use your imagination how THAT would be done), nourish it to a time of "delivery" and voila, you have a baby. So at what point is that "bundle of cells" a life? At what point is it ethifally wrong to kill it? We're getting to the point where viability is no longer an acceptable argument.
Christian morality (and the morality of other religions) cherishes life from beginning to end. Yes, there are those who claim to be Christian who do not actually follow Christian beliefs, but the point is that Science is removing any sense of ethics or morality, and the Left is using emotion to drive an agenda that is really aimed at doing nothing more than helping human life at the expense of others by harvesting human life.
Re:Is there bias showing the article itself? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
Re:Visit to Australia (Score:2, Insightful)