Skin Cells Turned Embryonic 261
anik315 writes "Nature is reporting a major breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research. A straightforward procedure using mouse fibroblasts harvested from the skin can be used to produce pluripotent stem cells that can potentially become any other cell in the body. Not only can Yamanaka's method use the most basic cells, it can be accomplished with simple lab techniques. Possible applications of this breakthrough are to check molecular changes in cells as certain conditions develop. Stem cells produced using this procedure, however, can not be used safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant."
Re:I knew it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Next step: Embryos (Score:2, Insightful)
At present, they use retroviruses to get the four factors that cause the transformation into the cells. The retroviruses mess up the DNA. There may be other methods though besides retroviruses to get the factors into the cells.
Of course, the factors themselves may also increase the risk that the cells become cancerous - which could turn out to be a harder problem, or not, it's hard to say at this point.
Re:I knew it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I knew it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With so many unquestionably moral methods (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, I think we should do it just out of spite... for people who would spout the kind of self-important ignorant garbage that just evacuated itself from the barren environment of your skull.
Re:Next step: Embryos (Score:3, Insightful)
Assholes don't invalidate the argument. (Score:3, Insightful)
the same people who are the biggest advocates against abortion also tend to be the ones that seek to limit access to birth control, so that argument doesn't get very far either.
Sure it does, if reasonable people can ignore the others. The problem is unwanted pregnancy and reasonable people can work together to reduce it and support the people who have the problem. The use of obnoxious and confused advocates is an underhanded way to kill off a proposal.
The counterexamples are communists, extreme feminists and corporate monsters who put production above personal well being. They don't value babies because they don't value each other.
You don't have to be religious or hate sex to think that abortion is murder. In almost all cases, if no one does anything to a pregnant woman, a child will be born. The person who stops that birth has ended a human life. It is a terrible thing to do and it is not justified by other terrible things, lack of resources or potential uses for the remains.
Re:I knew it.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no problem with this technology or research, but then I also think there is no ethical dilemma with the use of embryonic stem cells for medical purposes/research either. I think it's ridiculous to say we have a moral obligation to a tiny clump of cells with no nervous system
hardly a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
The poster makes a serious ethical point.
However emotively he put it, surely it's quite different to take tissue from a consenting human donor than from a subject whose life has just been ended - however "potential" its (his? her?) humanity may be.
Don't all but the most extreme "it's the woman's body till it's born" zealots regard the abortion of a foetus (with its potential to grow into a human adult) as a necessary evil, rather than a simple lifestyle choice?
Re:Next step: Embryos (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with this approach is that you're punishing the children. You're rewarding being responsible by allowing responsible people to have children, and punishing the being irresponsible by forcing them to go through with their pregnancies --- in other words, you're selecting for children to be born to those people least suited for raising children.
This is not optimum.
Re:Next step: Embryos (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be a moderate approach.
an
This is not a moderate approach. If caution is 'towards killing babies', this is a pro-life approach. If caution is 'towards government invasion of a woman's control of her own body', then it's a pro-choice approach.
Either way, it's the same as saying "We can't agree, so we should assume I'm right in the meantime."
When you get down to it, aborting pregnancies is in general not desirable behavior. But, the government trying to force women to carry pregnancies to term is not desirable either, with various degrees of not desirable based on circumstance. (Forcing a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term is probably less desirable than forcing a healthy 30-year old with a healthy pregnancy to carry that pregnancy to term.)
The problem is, while all of that is undesirable, which is MOST undesirable is not a statement of fact. No one has been able to put forth some sort of scientific basis for determining whether the hypothesis 'Government restriction of a woman's ability to have an abortion is preferable to terminating pregnancies' is true or not. So whether a given person believes that to be true or not is based solely on their own personal evaluation of which of their values is more important.
So what's better, letting a group of the population use the government to choose for everyone how their pregnancy should be handled, or letting each woman choose what to do about her own pregnancy?
Re:Next step: Embryos (Score:3, Insightful)
5. Creates a registry of not only who's having sex, but who is using birth control. No privacy concerns there.
6. Still requires the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Sorry, try again. I, for one, would certainly not consider your proposal moderate. Drastically reducing the amount of freedom women have right now in order to placate a relatively small percentage of the population does not strike me as moderate. "A Modest Proposal" maybe, but definitely not moderate.
Re:hardly a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup.
But remember that it's only a fetus after a couple of weeks. Before that, it's an embryo. Bare naming issues aside, you have to draw a line somewhere between a couple of cells and a human being.
Getting rid of a couple of cells is only a big issue if the morality aspects get blown way out of proportions by religious zealots. No, it's not a human being.
Re:I knew it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I knew it.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I knew it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why the argument does not go far. The only ones who speak loudly enough to argue, tend to be the very evangelical of the crowd. That comes from firsthand experience at protests. Those very vocal people are quick to judge. Even at clinics where women who have gone through a non-induced miscarriage that was no fault of their own go to seek treatment afterwards, pro-life people stand and hurl insults at them, not knowing even a part of the story.
I support embryonic stem cell research, as I have Type 1 diabetes and stand to gain from this research. Most of the eggs used were discarded and would never have come to fruition as a human anyway.
Re:With so many unquestionably moral methods (Score:5, Insightful)
First, if you would RTFS, much less article, much less paper, you would know that one of the fascinating things about this procedure is that it uses skin cells, not embryonic cells as a base. Very few people who believe in any invasive medicine have a problem with this. This is a breakthrough in part because it fixes problems like embryonic harvesting or even The Island-esqe people harvesting because a given sick person could use it on him or herself.
Secondly, a work force that lives productively into their 80's would be a lovely thing for any society's economies. A government should certainly be concerned about its nation's economy, yes?
Thirdly, medical research=good for people. Democratic government=group that uses pooled funds for betterness of group. Are there spending issues? Duh. But still better than most systems. I want to put my money in a pool that can fund science. Hooray that there is an automatic way that this happens for me. I don't even need said science to produce economic results for me to be happy about it. But if it's going to, I won't turn that down.
And for the record, a considerable majority of Americans do want stem cell research, even from embryos. Google news reports around last Nov's Missouri senate elections, & there were several stories about how while most Americans support it, it's a non-issue in the polls.
Re:There's a third way. (Score:5, Insightful)
To keep it in the same terms, lets put it into perspective to keep the comparison real. But she doesn't have right to kill the trespasser without giving them enough time to leave. In almost any state, with the exception of Texas maybe, if you find a trespasser/intruder and they pose no direct harm to you or anyone there, you tell them to leave and then kill them because they didn't leave fast enough, you will be going to jail. But pregnancy isn't even a trespasser or intruder, it is a welcomed guest. You have to take certain actions to invite a fetus into your home(body). And in every state, if you invite someone into your house and then kill them, it is murder.
I know this is someone else's rationalizing. But we can often make judgments to justify something that other see as wacked. You cannot run over a kid playing ball in the street because thats where cars drive when you have plenty of time to stop. Saying the kid shouldn't be playing in the road is just an attempt to justify it to yourself but doesn't make it just. Leaving out the fact that the intruder is crippled and will take a certain amount of time to leave the property and killing them before they can do so because you ordered them out makes no sense either. And repeating this nonsense make even less sense.
Your positions don't matter... probably. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, your wailing about "encourag[ing] promiscuity" and how those damned sluts deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because, well, they were asking for it, what with the having sex and all, leads me to believe that your motives may not be that different.