Court Rules Against Stem Cell Policy 388
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Reuters:
"A US district court issued a preliminary injunction Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, in a slap to the Obama administration's new guidelines on the sensitive issue. The court ruled in favor of a suit filed in June by researchers who said human embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of human embryos. Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding that the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos. '(Embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed,' Lamberth wrote in a 15-page ruling."
I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to worry, the reset of the world can still do embryonic research.
An (im)Modest Proposal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's just the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, it's just NSF and DOH funding. Cutting it off will do absolutely nothing to prevent researchers from working on the subject. The expensive equipment will somehow turn up for free, the facilities bill will pay itself, and graduate students looking for a RA position won't mind that they can't get funding to pay for their tuition and room and board and medical and so forth if they work in such a lab - which won't do anything to curtail the production of future researchers in the general topic area.
It's just federal funding. Right?
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:4, Insightful)
And why does that override moral concerns? Since you may face the same, why now allow doctors to stick your mother with probes, take core samples of her brain while still alive, test for levels of chemicals, amino acids, level of fat vs protein etc, which would be MUCH more accurate while still alive vs hours/days after death. Surely this would help gain insight and move forward scientific studies on how to detect Alzheimer's in a much earlier stage and more precise treatment for future sufferers. Why not re-open Nazi style medical tests on twins and fetuses, and why not lift all restrictions on live animal testing? How about using those on death row for medical research so they can at least be productive in death or force them to be organ donors? They will be dead anyways, those organs would just go to waste otherwise.
Alzheimer's has occurred on both sides of my family (grandfather on the one side, great-grandfather on the other), my mom's cousin suffered from ALS for over 10 years and even wrote a book by using nothing but moving his eyebrows, and I have already suffered a viral infection that will remain with me the rest of my life. Every time it comes out of remission (I'm currently fighting my fourth bout) it causes the lining of my brain to swell, causing a good chunk of my synapses to get destroyed, and taking years for my brain to recover to about 80-90% of where it had been before. Maybe stem cell research would find a way to fully recover from each bout and keep me from having to drop out of school/work for a handful of years each time, and having to settle for a less effective brain after each occurrence. I still don't see that as a reason to try to lessen the moral implications involved in order to try to tilt the balance in a way that could possibly improve my life of the lives of my loved ones.
I don't mean to say that the morals in stem cell research are clear cut, they definitely are not. I see NO reason though to purposely try to tilt the balance one way or another and fudge the morals and facts due to personal fears of potential illnesses, illnesses of friends and relatives, etc.
Wow, weak cause for harm by the plantiffs (Score:1, Insightful)
Doctors James Sherely of Watertown, Massachusetts, and Theresa Diesher of Seattle, identified by Lamberth as adult stem cell researchers, sued in August 2009, arguing that NIH guidelines breach the Dickey-Wicker strictures. They also argued that they were being irreparably harmed by having to compete for NIH funding with researchers using embryonic cells.
Wait, what? They're being done harm by competing with this research? So... embryonic cells are that much superior? (Sounds like we should make sure this is as legal as can be pronto!) But they can't evidently use them themselves?
Man, if I could sue every time I found someone else who had an edge on me in research, I'd be the only person active in my field right now. Sign me up!
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
And why does that override moral concerns?
Because we suffer from some bozo's religion. If for you following it is more important that avoiding getting crippled and dying to a disease that makes the last 15 years of your life a hell for your family, it shouldn't stop me from having a portion of my tax money used in an attempt to keep me from that fate. And yeah, I had Alzheimer's on both sides of my family too.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating human life as something that should be nurtured and not harvested is not something that is exclusive to religion. There are moral implications way beyond any silly mumbo jumbo myths.
For example, I am against abortion as birth control (note the difference; sometimes they are medically necessary and then there are cases of rape, etc.) but that has zero to do with any mythical dude in a beard sitting up in the clouds. It's because I think life is precious and if someone without any special circumstances winds up pregnant then that fetus should be allowed the chance to grow to term.
I'm not necessarily against embryonic stem cell research, but to dismiss the moral arguments as only those of people who cite their religion as the reason is misguided. My main concern with it is that we avoid any slippery slopes that lead to the production of embryos specifically for research. Then we are talking about the farming and harvesting of humans for our own gain.
Re:An (im)Modest Proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Insightful)
Further, if stem cell treatments take off in a big way, will miscarriages really be enough, or will be be back in this debate?
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly your "moral concerns" don't preclude you from making inappropriate Nazi comparisons.
None of the research that was funded by the federal gov't since 2008 had anything to do with "creating life in order to destroy it.
Why are the "moral" ones always the quickest to bear false witness?
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:1, Insightful)
More complicated than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:4, Insightful)
And someone else might be against the destruction of any form of human life, including human tissue comprising a mole or a tumor.
So what? Why should anyone regard that person's opinion as more or less than relevant than yours or mine?
Hospitals have ethics boards of experts tasked with making these kinds of medical decisions. Abortion is a personal medical procedure, not a political issue, not unlike embryonic stem cell research.
Consider my hypothetical person that is against destruction of any form of human life. Clearly, that is not reasonable. So, based on the state of latest medical knowledge, which forms of human life are ok to destroy and which are not? I think it has to be based on some best (conservative) guess of when sentience is present. (If you think a good argument can be made around the idea of mere "potential for life," please rethink it. Before fertilization an egg & sperm have "potential for life," and conversely, a fetus removed from the womb does not have "potential for life" until fairly late in development—so late, in fact, that it may have already developed sentience, whatever that means. To be completely consistent, you would have to accept that every egg that is allowed to go unfertilized is equivalent to murder.)
In any case, there is no one I've yet encountered that has made an argument consistent with their own views that would also prohibit embryonic stem cell research.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:4, Insightful)
It's because I think life is precious and if someone without any special circumstances winds up pregnant then that fetus should be allowed the chance to grow to term.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that, when you get right down to it, life isn't all that precious. For most of the world, it's dirt cheap in fact. Let's drop the pretense that we care about a clump of tissue that has no possibility of ever being born, or that we really give a flying fuck about the unborn foetus of someone we've never met and couldn't care less about. You may think those are very important to you, but I guarantee that neither of those is as important to you as you yourself, or someone who is close to you. They shouldn't be, if you have your priorities straight.
... we're damn good at knee-jerk reactions.
The reason that it's important to consider life at all stages is far more pragmatic, and you alluded to that. If we, as a society, begin to accept that life is cheap, that life isn't worth as much as we've convinced ourselves that it is, well, it may not be an embryo or a foetus. It may very well be us, and I prefer to err on the side of caution. So, a respect for human life is important, even if only from a purely selfish perspective.
Now, having said that, I will say that your example of requiring pregnancies to continue to term regardless of whether the parents want the child is too simplistic as well. It's easy to say, "life is precious, preserve it at all costs" but one should also take into account what the child's life is going to be like, whether in fact a given society can even afford it. These are legitimately complex issues, involving a large measure of cost-benefit analysis, as cold-blooded as that can be sometimes. If you truly wish to do the most good for the most people, you have to do what is right, not just what feels right. That's very difficult to achieve for many people, because two are often diametrically opposed. As the Bishop said, "Man is a rationalizing animal, and requires training to become a rational one." Most of us never truly learn to think, because that might require painful re-evaluation of our most cherished attitudes.
If we decide that stem-cell research is too morally repugnant to be allowed, well, we have to accept a couple of things. One: other countries point-blank will not see it the same way, and two: even if they did, there will be a cost in human life if we do not realize any potential treatments. That's why you have to be able to make reasonably dispassionate judgments based upon some actual facts, or at least logical extrapolation based on fact, rather than simply offering an unthinking Yes or No. Furthermore, you have to be prepared to change your thinking if the facts warrant it.
And in the U.S. at least, I can say with some certainty that we're really not very good at that. Thinking with our heads, I mean
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Insightful)
I apologize for my laymans terms and potentially making it seem more easy than it is, but I use that description frequently because it does, in laymans terms, and somewhat inaccurately, but close enough for general understanding purposes, describe it. It doesn't have anything to do with any gross misunderstanding on my part as you claim. Though your entire post seems to be a thinly veiled attack on hESCs in general. My apologies if I misread you.
IPS's as I understand it are inferior forms of stem cells for a number of reasons, which I won't mention here as there are already several long posts on why with citations in this stories comments.
Adult stem cells don't have anywhere near the potential of embryonic stem cells and the current advantage for some forms of treatment exists in the fact that they are already tailored to the patients DNA/Required Tissue area. As you do mention accurate implantation of embryonic stem cells is one of the major areas that needs a big breakthrough in order for them to reach their full potential, but as such, once a method is obtained to do so with good consistency the cancer problem will dissipate rapidly and the benefits will remain. More accurate implantation = less rogue embryonic stem cells that could end up in someones treatment.
The whole tech is very new and thus there are problems. Ignoring any area of research, especially one that shows the huge promise of hESCs would be negligent beyond imagining.
Place the blame where the blame belongs (Score:5, Insightful)
(I know I left I lot out, but I don't think I'm distorting the meaning). As far as I can tell, liver cells in a petri dish would count as human embryos under that definition.
Then if President Obama wants the funding, he needs to convince Congress (which his party controls) to tighten the wording of the law, or repeal it altogether.
The judge pretty much had to block this. The President can't simply wave his hand and declare a law passed by Congress (and sighed by the previous President) to be null and void. There's still that whole separation of powers thing to consider. If the wording of the Dickey Amendment is too vague, then it's the responsibility of Congress to fix it.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
If you support abortions that are medically necessary then you place a higher value on the mother than the fetus. Therefore, you should have no issue with abortion in all cases. Unless of course you are not being rational.
You're right, he does place higher value on the mother than the fetus; however, second to the mother, the fetus takes highest value. Therefore, if the mother (top priority) is not at risk, the fetus (next highest priority) should be protected and given the right to live. His argument is perfectly rational, you are wrong.
So just to be clear... (Score:3, Insightful)
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death
So, we aren't distinguishing between research destroying embryos, and research that uses embryos that necessarily are doomed to destruction if they aren't allowed to replicate in stem cell research.
Glad I got that straight.
There is just no way to square it with the statute.
I disagree. Exercise the ability to distinguish, and it is clear how this is not research in which embryos are destroyed, but research in which they are allowed to live when they would otherwise be destroyed. Not live and develop into humans, but that really isn't possible anyway.
How so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Adult stem cells are sub-par replacements for embryonic stem cells.
And yet, despite your claim, almost all of the big advances from stem cell research has come from non-embryonic lines of cells.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think that people think doctors are ripping babies from wombs. It has to do with drawing the line as to what you call a human. Is a baby a human? Is a 6 or 3 month old fetus a human? Is a single fertilized egg a human? There's no easy answer because people can't even agree on how to define a human when it's full grown. Most people have their own opinion based on their indiviudal logic or faith or whatever, and no one can really make a definitive answer one way or another based on any arguement whether it's logical, scientific, or faith based.
My question is: why all the fuss over embryonic stem cells? I'm not a bio-chem guy but I know enough to understand the arguements, and the one thing I don't get is that there are better stem cells out there than embryonic. Embryonic stem cells people think have a lot of promise, but they're blank slates and if you were to regrow some sort of damaged tissue, how would you control the growth so it doesn't become some cancerous tumour, especially when it's harvested from an outside source? There's plenty of research that shows that adult stem cells are much more likely to have better results as cures, and are harvested directly from your own body so it's not like you're infusing your body with teh cells of some other person that may not be compatible. And adult stem cells don't carry all of the abortion political baggage. So why all the fuss over embryonic stem cells when there's a politically more palatable solution already found with potentially more promise?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_stem_cell
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:5, Insightful)
You're really doubling down on the Nazi stuff, hey?
Frozen embryo = victim of the Holocaust?
Not religious morality, religious fanaticism. Morality is hard. Fanaticism is easy because your choices are already made for you. I only wish that the "pro-life" crowd was motivated by morality, because then they could be engaged in discussion. When your starting position is "there is no difference between an embryo and a human being, period" you preclude the possibility of anything like rational discussion and you're just trying to lay down the law. I have no use for people who try to lay down the law for all of us based on their religious rules.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't be obtained from abortions or miscarriages, which occur later, but rather are typically surplus IVF embryos.
Correct, embryos harvested for ESC are 5 days post fertilization. A pregnancy test would not show that a woman is carrying a blastocyst at this point, so it is impossible that abortions will be used to supply ESC: you don't get an abortion 5 days after conception because you don't know you're pregnant.
By the time you know you're pregnant, that embryo's stem cells have continued with development past the point of pluripotency, the ability to make any type of cell.
They sidestep a lot of ethical objections by not having any sort of nervous system, or indeed any tissue differentiation apart from a separate type of cell on the outside of the sphere that is destined to form a placenta.
Unfortunately, the people who object to ESC are less concerned with cell biology or anything tangible or proveable and more concerned about souls. If it has a soul, it's murder, they say.
My question to such people is how do you know the soul is started at conception? The scripture they quote as proof is ambiguous at best (and in my opinion doesn't say much of anything relevant to the matter). I think scripture is a terrible basis for policy decisions as a rule. More importantly, it's my understanding that up until 12 days post fertilization, the embryo can split to form twins. Are these people suggesting that a twin is only half a person? Are they some type of special exception? Does twinning cause these people to question their interpretations? Of course not.
Biology and religion have never squared well with each other, and it's pure insanity to combine those two with laws.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you commented anonymously I don't know if you will see this but I will reply anyhow.
Which is why it is very important to squash the perpetuated lies about abortions being used for embryonic stem cell research. Rather than base a moral decision on visions of dead babies it is better to learn the facts. And the fact is that there is a hugely significant difference between a fertilized egg and a 3 month old fetus, and the difference becomes even more significant when we consider that these are not fertilized eggs inside a womb that have some calculable probability of gestating and growing into a human baby. We are talking about human cells that will absolutely never gestate into a human for the same reason that an unused egg lost through menstruation or sperm ejaculated during a wet dream or even a naturally fertilized egg that fails to embed to the uterus wall will absolutely positively never become human babies even though they are human cells and under the appropriate conditions would actually have a reasonable probability of becoming a human.
It is my hope that a discovery is made that will make this question moot, however, as it stands today there are significant advantages in the use of embryonic stem cells. I have no intention of going through all the article research again but a few months back I had this same discussion with another individual and based on what I have read the adult stem cells actually present a greater risk of cancer than embryonic stem cells. In fact, the wiki article you linked to provides references to research suggesting adult stem cells are the source of cancer.
But I will provide one additional link before I end my commenting, the utilization of stem cells, adult or embryonic, as a source for cures to diseases will require a plentiful supply of cells. This is exactly where adult stem cells fail as noted at the National Institutes of Health [nih.gov].
"Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies."
Re:How so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isolate a population of adult neural stem cells in a person with a spinal cord injury, without resorting to homogenizing (grinding up) their brain for FACS and I'll admit that maybe adult stem cell technology will be good enough for therapy.
Otherwise, yeah, adult stem cells are convenient to some things, but are not the end all be all you're suggesting they are. We had good advances with carriage technology a long time before we got the internal combustion engine working, but it would have been extremely shortsighted to suggest that we shouldn't research internal combustion engines.
Furthermore, from a research standpoint, ESC are absolutely indispensable. You can't use adult stem cells to study early development.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:3, Insightful)
If you saw a pregnant woman drunk and drinking, would that repulse you? Why, or why not?
Sure! Yet oddly enough, no legal system on planet Earth will charge that woman with assault. Why? Because an embryo isn't a human being with rights.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that human cells die constantly, while the human being continues to exist, is scientific fact... that's why that person's opinion is invalid. But to determine at which point a human being exists is something that science cannot answer. A single cell, properly nourished, can become a distinct human being. Most people don't draw the line there, but some do. And if not there, then implantation, first heartbeat, first brainwave, viability outside the mother (a moving target, of course), birth, 1 year old, able to think abstractly, 18... when does life begin? I don't know and you don't know. And there's no way to demonstrate otherwise. Where science must be silent, philosophy must take over... or theology will.
And ethics boards of experts approved eugenics programs around the world. And beyond that, what expertise would be relevant? Is there a scientific standard to apply? Because an MD doesn't really qualify you to determine when a unique human life begins.
Way to beg the question... Currently it is both a medical procedure and a political issue. Your statement implies it should only be a medical issue. The problem is that assumes that the GP's point is invalid... or rather that your view is the only rational one.
The legality of abortion is a perfectly valid political issue, and I would say it should be illegal in the general case.
I just highlighted this phrase, as it seems to sum up the entire rest of your post. This position is a ridiculous strawman. I might as well say that you have to justify allowing parents to kill dependent children, that until they can survive on their own (age of maturity), they aren't real people. Heck, if you leave a baby alone with canned food and a can opener, the baby will starve. Stupid baby.
One can say that the combination of the two is relevant (fertilized egg) without an unfertilized egg being sacred. One can grow given nourishment alone, the other has an incomplete genetic code and cannot. One can draw the line in a lot of places, but that does not invalidate any attempt to do so. Hell, you haven't even suggested a single place to draw the line.
Re:Wow, weak cause for harm by the plantiffs (Score:3, Insightful)
This has to set a new low for ratio of logical validity to Insightful score. By this reasoning, if research into predicting the weather by a ritual involving chicken entrails were illegal, and a team of meteorologists and computer scientists sued the feds for funding such research because they had to compete for the scarce funding, that would demonstrate that the chicken entrails are superior.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:4, Insightful)
They sidestep a lot of ethical objections by not having any sort of nervous system, or indeed any tissue differentiation apart from a separate type of cell on the outside of the sphere that is destined to form a placenta.
Unfortunately, the people who object to ESC are less concerned with cell biology or anything tangible or proveable and more concerned about souls.
I have to admit, I've never heard this as a stated objection to ESC. This is the first time I've heard either of these objections - either the nervous system OR the souls. Makes me wonder if it's a strawman.
The reality is that the embryo is biologically a distinct human being. The same objection would be raised if we had to end a 20-year-old's life to save my mother, or a 10-year-old's life, or a 1-year-old's life, or a -8.3-month-old's life. You don't sacrifice one person's life for another (though they may choose to sacrifice their own life, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that an embryo can choose that sacrifice). And that's the basic objection.
The secondary objection I've heard is that adult stem cells have managed to solve a great number of problems already, and, as far as I can tell, we haven't reached a limit (*) on those yet, so why go down an ethically controversial road when an ethically non-controversial road has not yet been fully explored (**)?
(*) I use "limit" here more as a statistical limit (80-20 rule: 80% of the value, 20% of the work) rather than a mathematical one. Given this is /., I better make that explicit.
(**) Here I use the term "fully" in the same sense as the above "limit". Great breakthroughs are being made regularly still. The pace has not slowed down. And, unlike AI or a lot of other technologies discussed on /., many of these are less than 5 years away from practical use.
Re:Give me a fucking break (Score:2, Insightful)
Fail Alert!! (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, That might be insightful if it was factually correct.
http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/Health/FetalHomicideLaws/tabid/14386/Default.aspx [ncsl.org]
Even CA calls it Homicide if malicious forethought. It would be an exercise for the reader to see if the laws are ever enforced.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:2, Insightful)
Treating human life as something that should be nurtured and not harvested is not something that is exclusive to religion.
Why does this nurturing end with birth? Why not make free health-care available to everyone, even for the most expensive and experimental treatments?
From what I've seen and heard, most 'nurturing' by the religious and politicians ends at birth. After that it's every man for himself.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:2, Insightful)
My question to such people is how do you know the soul is started at conception?
The same question could be posed as how do you know it doesn't? It's as poor an argument to base opposition to a religious belief on a question that science is completely unable to answer in the first place.
The real question that should be posed in this is, what is the possible harm done under either assumption, and which is worse? Under the assumption that life starts at conception, then the harm done is tantamount to murder, however someone else's life might be saved by doing so. Under the assumption that these are just genetic material and don't have any moral implications to their use, then obviously the medical breakthroughs would be preferable. The point is to have the discussion without falling into religious fervor or scientific elitism (which it is since science is necessarily mute on the question of when life begins)
My personal opinion is that breakthroughs from adult stem cells have easily eclipsed the promise of embryonic stem cells Pluripotent Adult Stem Cells [usnews.com]. We could simply avoid any moral hazards by continuing research on those since there are no objections from any side on their use.
Re:So just to be clear... (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Exercise the ability to distinguish, and it is clear how this is not research in which embryos are destroyed, but research in which they are allowed to live when they would otherwise be destroyed.
This is absurd reasoning. Congress does not empower the Executive to distinguish, it bans funding to all research in which the embryo is destroyed or discarded, even if it means they are allowed to live longer than they would otherwise. That distinction just isn't in the statute and the President is not allowed to insert it just because he feels it makes better policy. If the embryo is destroyed or discarded then no Federal money can be used. It's not a difficult concept.
It's very tempting to bend the law to suit your own policy ends, especially when you can rationalize it in some putative linguistic way. If you are willing to grant all Presidents the same leeway, then at least you are making a cogent argument about Executive power. If, on the other hand, you were opposing Reagan and Bush's lawyerly evasion of the law back when they were in power then it's nothing but hypocrisy to start allowing Obama to make 'distinctions'.
It's another manifestation of the normal 'for me but not for thee'-ism that pervades American politics. Both sides routinely excoriate the other for things they have shamelessly done when it suited them. It's utterly predictable and utterly asinine.
Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think it is rational that a woman would be forced to carry the child? Just forcing someone to carry a several kilos weight for a few months continuously should sound stupid.
There's a reason we have age of consent laws, and part of that reason is that we assume that at a certain age, a person is responsible for their own sexual activity. Anyone above the age of consent should know that one of the consequences of having sex could be pregnancy. If we're saying that women can't be expected to appreciate the consequences of sexual activity while they're of child-bearing age, should we just go ahead and say that a woman cannot legally consent until the onset of menopause? How is going to such lengths to allow someone to avoid the natural consequences of their actions even remotely okay?
That's what makes rape a different situation in relation to abortion. No one should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term when they didn't have a say in the sex act that led to the pregnancy. And certainly, if you have to pick one, the life of the mother should come first. But a pregnancy represents a human life (unless you've been having sex with other species, in which case it would only be partially human), with DNA distinct from either parent. The fact that the Supreme Court, nearly 40 years ago, chose to cloud the issue with the concept of viability is irrelevant to that. Lest we forget, the Supreme Court also gave us Dredd Scott. Occasionally, they screw things up and have to go back and fix them.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what the other guy was referring to with IVF is this:
When couples want to get pregnant through in vitro fertilzation, the doctor doesn't just join one sperm, and one egg, and hope it works. The process is too expensive and unreliable for it to (reasonably) work that way. So, they harvest a large number of eggs at once, and fertilize as many as possible, freezing the ones they don't need. Once the woman has been successfully impregnated, they either throw the fertilized eggs away, or send them to a stem cell research lab.
IVF should bring with it all the ethical and moral concerns that come from first-trimester abortion (more so, when you consider how many fertilized eggs are destroyed). But, in the end, a baby pops out of a vagina, so that changes it from "murder" to "miracle from god".
Re:More complicated than you think (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a good reason to avoid embryonic stem cell altogether. The biggest reason is because we have no good ways to control its potential to form teratoma, which is basically cancerous mass of tissues of all types.
I disagree. That's an excellent reason to get better at ESC technology. All medicines have adverse reactions, and I bet plenty of people would be willing to risk cancer if the process cured an even worse (in their opinion) condition.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that your third sentence directly contradicts the first two, right?
Perhaps you meant that souls as supernatural entities that survive the death of body don't exist, which may or may not be true but is not provable either way. However, what should be pretty obvious is that people who think that they do are not going to be impressed or convinced by your assertion that they don't, especially when you deliver it in such an inaccurate form.
We are talking about ethics here. Metaphysical questions - such as do souls exist - are unavoidable in such a context, since what is right and wrong often depend on the underlaying assumptions about the nature of reality.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:2, Insightful)
What is life? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if your conclusion is right, your arguments are weak. Bacteria aren't people. Sperm can't grow into a human. If the blastocyst is 'alive', then it's a human being, at one stage of development. Whether that demands societal or governmental protection is a separate matter. Defining 'life' is tricky.
Since 'funding scientific research' isn't an enumerated power of Congress, there's an easier solution than all of this debate-without-resolution - just stop.
Re:What is life? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, then tell me why before blurting out an unaccredited statement from the blue.
Often a thesis statement precedes the evidence. It's very standard English construction.
Neither are pluripotent stem cells or blastocysts.
I think you're deliberately missing the point. Human blastocysts are human, the DNA settles this. Bacteria are quite clearly not human. Whether the blastocysts are alive is the question at hand.
If they're coupled with an ovum they can. Ever heard of sperm banks?
You were talking about the destruction of un-coupled sperm. Again, they can't grow into a human.
And you think my arguments are weak. Go look up "non sequitur" again. This statement has no logical connection to your previous one.
This is the very crux of the matter for those who are concerned. Of course it has a logical connection - some people believe that it is a living human deserving of full protections. You can't wish that away or pretend to be too obtuse to recognize it.
And it's also irrelevant to this conversation, unless you're talking about "Human Life."
Of course we are, that's the subject of the whole debate.
Should we treat the suffering of an orangutan or dolphin any different than the suffering of the non-sentient brain impaired of our species, or even the non-brain-impaired, just because the latter looks like us?
Of course, this is a fundamental premise of our society and system of justice, no matter what your take on embryo research is. Killing a bull, even painfully, is not a crime (in fact, it's bragged about on product labeling). Killing a handicapped child will get you life to death, depending on jurisdiction.
For me, life is anything that can suffer.
Oh, you have a working definition of suffering? That's escaped philosophers for centuries.
Positing that Humans are a higher form of life, other than the fact that we're sapient, is just cruel anthropocentrism and has led to the full scale destruction of the ecosystems that made us and sustains us.
Full-scale? Strange the world doesn't seem dead ... yep, just checked, my forest is quite healthy. You're a radical vegan localvore, I presume?
I'd advise you yo do the same.
I'm not funding any 'public' research.