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."
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:4, Interesting)
For the research it seems a bit silly. But if the product of the research is a technology that requires the creation of embryos for the purpose of harvesting their cells, that's really creepy at best. Isn't that the deal with actially using an embryonic stem cell treatment - you need to alter some DNA in an embryo to match your own, let it grow then harvest it for your use, per individual?
Some biochem geek explain this to me!
Fund away (Score:0, Interesting)
The only people who care about federal funding of embryonic stem cells are private corporations who don't want to have to pay their own R&D costs. This is only corrupt, politically controlled, federal funding. Conduct all the stem cell research you want you losers.
Don't bitch next time Exxon wants billions in tax incentives to drill regionally. You support federal funding for businesses to make a profit right?
Re:An (im)Modest Proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Congrats, you know nothing at all about how IVF works.
One of the major expenses in IVF is creating the embryos to begin with, however the cost is relatively the same thing whether they create 1 or 100(to a point anyways, its not limitless where the cost is the same but I believe it is in the hundreds somewhere before the cost increases by a significant amount). Theres a decent chance that the first lot won't take, so they always do two batches to get the success rates up to 75-80% or so. In addition they may implant up to 8 embryos in one shot to get just one to latch on. The womans natural systems will flush the remaining 7 out the door, going by a lot of the idiotic pro-life spiel, that woman just killed 7 kids.
As an aside, a woman who tries to/gets pregnant naturally will likely flush several full fledged embryos out due to misfortune and natural occurrences. The extras from IVF can basically be considered the same thing we just can't use the natural ones because we don't catch them. Saying that killing an embryo is murder is calling almost every woman thats been pregnant a murderer. I say almost because there is that 0.00001% that may have had a pregnancy without discharging a viable embryo either at the same time or at another time while trying due to it not landing in the right place and various other misfortunes.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:5, Interesting)
(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.
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Of course we do. If there are life or even health-threatening complications from a pregnancy the mother will often choose to terminate it. And I doubt there are many sane people that have a problem with that.
A fetus isn't shouldn't be considered a human being until it's viable outside the womb. Until then it's just a 'potential' human being. If we start giving the same rights to a 1 day fetus that we do to a human, where does it stop? Will a man having a wet dream be accused of genocide for the murder of millions of potential humans? Or a woman who menstruates?
Re:Federal funds used to destroy embryos... (Score:2, Interesting)
You have just set a very silly precedent, and you need to think very hard before you eat another steak, or masturbate for that matter, or even let your wife go outside without the appropriate headgear.