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."
Repurcusions for the U.S.? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
WOW! I smoke, drink, do drugs and download porn. I had no idea I was a fundamentalist!
What happens when they pass a law that allows for experimentation on people your age?
Re:Good (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, with that out of the way, it's a two way street. On slashdot I've seen plenty of religion bashing, but elsewhere you see plenty of atheist bashing from the religious right. "Atheists have no morals" - that's a common one.
Given that religion has been dominant for almost all of western history (and still is in many parts of the world), and further given that up until fairly recently (in historical terms) non-believers were subject to punishment, can you really blame the secular crowd for having a chip on their shoulder? You'd be mad too if "the religious" were constantly ragging on your beliefs.
Want to stop seeing your religion trashed? Start telling your kin to stop annoying/insulting/trying to convert everyone who doesn't share their faith. You can't tell the opposition to stop without looking like a whiner, but you can tell the religious to stop hurling stones of their own.
No.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Once again, people are asking the wrong question. (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone wins. The fundamentalists don't have to finance something they don't agree with, yet modern science is allowed to continue promising research.
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
When the woman gets pregnant, they're done - and there's usually a few left over.
What's most amazing is that, as understand it, when these leftover fertilized eggs are not used for scientific research, then they are simply destroyed. I'm not arguing that we should unscrupulously use any leftover human material from medical procedures for experiments, but to describe destruction of the frozen eggs (instead of experimentation) as a "pro-life" position is pretty galling.
I mean, shouldn't a consistent pro-lifer should favour either:
1) gathering up all the frozen eggs for eventual implantation in women with fertility problems
2) stopping those types of fertility treatments that result in lots of extra fertilized eggs
The reason this doesn't happen, I think, is that fertility clinics are seen as value-neutral or pro-family. So the ethical inconsistency persists.
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
And the imagery I had in mind was the trailer-trash Jerry Springer fan who will do anything for a quick buck, and even save on her birth control pills at the same time. Not the downtrodden women renting out their uteri. Still, I think you would have done better by asking "why aren't they doing it now?"
Your *personal religious beliefs* might dictate that a blastocyst and a newborn baby are one and the same, but *science* says otherwise.
Science also says that a 2 yr old and 4 yr old are different. What's your point? Does one deserve more protection than the other?
Re:Societal Degeneration From The Non-Christian Le (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mistaken premises (Score:2, Interesting)
not necessarily. there's a huge difference between a fertilised egg and therapeutic cloning.
the former requires contact between a sperm and an egg cell.
the latter involves removing all DNA from an egg cell, injecting the patient/donor's DNA, and using artificial means (e.g. a tiny electric shock) to trigger cell division and replication.
the former is human reproduction. the latter is cell culturing.
not at all the same thing.