Cell Transplant Allows Paralyzed Man To Walk 161
New submitter tiberus sends word of a breakthrough medical treatment that has restored the ability to walk to a man who was paralyzed from the chest down after his spinal cord was severed in a knife attack. A research team from the UK, led by Professor Geoff Raisman, transplanted cells from the patient's nose, along with strips of nerve tissue from his ankle, to the place where the spine was severed. This allowed the fibers in the spinal cord to gradually reconnect.
The treatment used olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) - specialist cells that form part of the sense of smell. ... In the first of two operations, surgeons removed one of the patient's olfactory bulbs and grew the cells in culture. Two weeks later they transplanted the OECs into the spinal cord, which had been cut through in the knife attack apart from a thin strip of scar tissue on the right. They had just a drop of material to work with - about 500,000 cells. About 100 micro-injections of OECs were made above and below the injury. Four thin strips of nerve tissue were taken from the patient's ankle and placed across an 8mm (0.3in) gap on the left side of the cord. ... Two years after the treatment, he can now walk outside the rehabilitation center using a frame.
Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
If only our daily "news" was filled with more with these types of stories than the typical FUD and propaganda perpetuated by these organizations.
Just the stories should be accurate.. (Score:4, Informative)
Just the stories should be more accurate.
The research was mostly in UK but surgery was in Poland:
"Our team in Poland would be prepared to consider patients from anywhere in the world who are suitable for this therapy. They are likely to have had a knife wound injury where the spinal cord has been cleanly severed"
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The nasal cells were responsible for guiding the direction of nerve growth.
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The spinal nerves could smell those other spinal nerves an inch away.
Re:Did they forgive his sins while they're at it? (Score:4, Funny)
In this case I'd say it's more about sinuses.
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All of that means nothing to me. Quoting scriptures to a non believer is useless.
I'm not penguinoid, but am the (now GP) poster you've replied to. I feel sorry that the sorry state of the world makes so many of us feel that way about God.
Quoting scriptures is valuable because "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16)
Some non-believers start to believe, even when you personally may not yet do so:
"Now there was a man named
Pros and Cons (Score:2)
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Wasn't there a news story a few weeks ago that the loss of the sense of smell was strongly correlated with mortality within 5 years [plosone.org]? It's apparently totally debilitating psychologically.
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I don't think that the man has had a sense of smell for close to 50 years, and it hasn't held him back.
Interesting trick (Score:5, Interesting)
Not always about the money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to see breakthrough research like this coming from a single-payer healthcare system like the UK. When people start saying that the only places that can afford groundbreaking medical research are the ones where the "customers" pay a fortune, it'll be good to be able to point them to things like this.
Simon
Re:Not always about the money... (Score:5, Insightful)
For-profit medicine is indisputably good at generating profit. Various outrageously priced targeted cancer treatments are ample evidence of this.
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Unless it's different than the one I am thinking of: it was developed under US government grant.
It wasn't the single-payor (or multi-payor) system that did it; but rather direct government investment in research.
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Well yeah, more sick people means more profits for private for profit health industry and the supporting private for profit health insurance industry. So it is all about treat the symptoms not cure the illness what kind of communist are you ;)?
Psychopaths rule, unfortunately I am not joking about that :(!
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Most promising EBOLA vaccine currently in human trials was developed in Canada, another single-payer country.
Lots of drugs are developed by non-US companies. They make all their profits selling them in the US, just like US companies do.
If the US instituted price-controls on pharmaceuticals it would hit the bottom lines of the likes of GSK just as fast as it hit the bottom line of Pfizer. The location of a large company's headquarters has very little impact on anything other than how it manipulates its taxes/earnings/etc. Large companies source from the entire planet, and sell to the entire planet. The main exc
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Nice to see breakthrough research like this coming from a single-payer healthcare system like the UK. When people start saying that the only places that can afford groundbreaking medical research are the ones where the "customers" pay a fortune, it'll be good to be able to point them to things like this.
According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal... [bbc.co.uk]
"The lack of financial incentive for the pharmaceutical industry could help explain why it has taken so long for the research to get this far. Using a patient's own cells to heal them means there is no profit for the pharmaceutical industry."
But I'm not sure where the funding did come from, some at least came from the Polish government. The scientist mentioned in the BBC article works at UCL (University College London), which has a large NHS teaching/research h
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Nice to see breakthrough research like this coming from a single-payer healthcare system like the UK. When people start saying that the only places that can afford groundbreaking medical research are the ones where the "customers" pay a fortune, it'll be good to be able to point them to things like this.
What you're assuming is not true. Rich and upper middle class people in the UK still pay a fortune for private healthcare. Sometimes that's the only way to get around the rationed care and the impossibly long waiting lists of the UK public healthcare system.
Also and more to the point, this particular research was funded by two foundations, both of which only seem to be funded through private corporations and private individuals.
The groundbreaking research was supported by the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation (NSIF) and the UK Stem Cell Foundation (UKSCF). UKSCF was set up in 2007 to speed up progress of promising stem cell research - the charity has to date contributed 2.5m. NSIF was set up by chef David Nicholls after his son Daniel was paralysed from the arms down in a swimming accident in 2003. To date the charity has given £1m to fund the research in London and a further £240,000 for the work in Poland.
Take a look at the list of corporate logos and the list of private patrons that
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What you're assuming is not true. Rich and upper middle class people in the UK still pay a fortune for private healthcare. Sometimes that's the only way to get around the rationed care and the impossibly long waiting lists of the UK public healthcare system.
Also and more to the point, this particular research was funded by two foundations, both of which only seem to be funded through private corporations and private individuals.
So, what you are saying is that instead of funding a single payer system correctly, the rich and upper middle class keep voting UKIP and doing their level best to gut the UK single payer system?
Take a look at the list of corporate logos and the list of private patrons that seem to back the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation (NSIF) [nsif.org.uk]. And take a look at the web site for the UK Stem Cell Foundation (UKSCF) [ukscf.org]. For that second Foundation, it's less clear who the backers are, but still I don't see anything crediting the British government for providing any of the funds.
Great! Its wonderful to see private patrons acting in an altruistic manner. So...how much is that spinal treatment going to cost your average UKer when it becomes mainstream? How much would it cost your average American?
Also on that note, I have no doubt that those two foundations will receive an avalanche of funding after this announcement (both private and public funding). That's usually how things go. Everybody will be wanting to be part of their success. Personally, I hope that this preliminary result isn't a scam. If this result is really true and can be replicated by other institutions, then it will mean the end of paralysis for many people. And I just hope that's true.
Disclaimer: Please do not assume that I'm against the idea of national single-payer systems. I'm actually for single-payer systems, but I just don't think that the UK system is a particularly good example. My family has experienced the French single payer system, the British single payer system, in addition to the pre-Obama US healthcare system, and putting aside my critic of the pre-Obama US healthcare system, I find the French single payer system far better than the British one (although, it can be extremely expensive and wasteful as well).
Oops! Too late. My bad. Having said that, however, I think its important to realize that the
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The tiny sums mentioned in the article were a surprise. If it can be that cheap to make significant progress on such an intractable problem, imagine what some serious dough could do! Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation have some resources.
That might not be the total cost. I tried to find what that was, and who funded it, but can't. I got as far as the sources of support for the research department: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ion/depa... [ucl.ac.uk] -- but the actual operation was done in Poland, and I think going further might require reading Polish.
Inaccurate (Score:2)
Obligatory /. comment (Score:2)
Correlation does not imply causation.
(ducks)
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Plus come on.... N=1 is anecdote not data! :)
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Super powers! (Score:2)
I've heard a rumour that he can also smell things behind him too!
(yes I just started that rumour)
Next, the brain (Score:3)
This is great. Now if we could only get a cell transplant that would allow idiots to think.
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This is great. Now if we could only get a cell transplant that would allow idiots to think.
Nooooo!!! Who would flip the hamburgers then? :-)
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Finally a way to eliminate creationists, Republicans, anti-vaxxers, organic food consumers and climate change deniers from the human race!
Is the article overstating or understanding? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone clarify the discrepency here?
Dr Tabakow carried out an initial trial involving three paralysed patients who each had a small amount of OECs injected in their damaged spinal cords. While none showed any significant improvement, the main purpose of the study was achieved, showing that the treatment was safe.
Prof Wagih El Masri said: "Although the clinical neurological recovery is to date modest, this intervention has resulted in findings of compelling scientific significance."
Darek Fidyka, who was paralysed from the chest down in a knife attack in 2010, can now walk using a frame.
So the doctors think that going from paralyzed to walking is modest and insignificant? Were they not talking about the same patient? Something doesn't make sense here.
Re:Is the article overstating or understanding? (Score:4, Informative)
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NOT UK BUT POLAND (Score:2)
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Prof Geoff Raisman, of UCL, has spent his career pursuing the dream of spinal cord regeneration. Nearly 30 years ago he showed that nerve cells in the lining of the nose constantly renew themselves. In animal studies, he demonstrated that paralysis in rats could be reversed by a transplant of specialist cells known as olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs).
Dr Pawel Tabakow heads the Polish team of scientists in Wroclaw responsible for making the leap from animal research to hum
some bladder and bowel sensation and sexual functi (Score:5, Insightful)
He has also recovered some bladder and bowel sensation and sexual function.
I'm happy to not be paralyzed and certainly hope to stay that way. But, if I was... I think these functions might be even more important to me then getting my legs back. Don't get me wrong, not being able to stand or walk would really suck. But.. a person with no leg function might get along in a wheel chair. Shitting oneself and not being able to enjoy sex... there just isn't a chair for that.
Nice! (Score:2)
Such a success is nothing to sneeze at.
The only problem (Score:2)
every time he smells food his legs start shaking.
What happened? (Score:2)
You guys are slipping and got scooped this morning. I usually hear about these things on the local news-traffic-n-weather radio station 2-3 days after I read about it on Slashdot. This story must've languished in the queue for a long time.
Wrong summary - it was operation by a Polish team. (Score:3)
A research team from the UK, led by Professor Geoff Raisman, transplanted cells from the patient's nose
RTFA.
UK team researched it TOGETHER with Polish team. TFA mentiones both teams, and two leading doctors, one in UK, one in Poland.
Polish team performed the actual transplantation (practical part). It was led by a Polish doctor.
It's $%&^ Enigma all over again, "solved" by British who conveniently forgot it was Polish team who solved it first.
Possibly fake (Score:2)
There has been a lot of dubious research in this area. Studies where only a small minority of the subjects of the experimental procedure had their results published, and a lot of work with patients where the spinal cord was not actually completely severed. At least some of the results are likely to come simply from insufficient retraining prior to the experimental procedures.
Hopefully this one is actually true. We could really do with some good news in this area.
So Chris Reeves was right (Score:2)
And George W. Bush and the Republicans, pandering to their funnymentalist base, close to stopped all stem cell research...
And killed Superman.
Hmmm, Dick cheney *does* seem to channel Lex Luthor....
mark
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The point wasn't to use embyronic stem cells for treatments, that leads to immune compromise and rejection. The point is that embryos that were unused from IVF procedures and slated for disposal were able to provide some benefit before destruction, in the form of research.
Unless you're willing to volunteer your w
Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think that was ever promised. Embryonic stem cells were seen as very promising for research and possibly treatment.
There's been one notable success:
http://healthland.time.com/201... [time.com]
Other therapies have been significantly hampered by Government policy, but despite this some researchers went ahead. They found unforeseen obstacles like tumor formation, and unstable gene expression.
The problem with the Embryonic stem cell debate hasn't been the ethical concerns. Those are real, and should be address. But you need to know that there are those out there that used the debate not to fight Embryonic stem cell research, but to fight science itself. You don't want your tax dollars to go towards stem cell research? Fine, that's a reasonable request. But what happened was they not only pulled funding for Embryonic stem cell research, they also said that researcher couldn't receive ANY federal funding at all. For any other project. You were basically blacklisted if you even touched the topic. That had nothing to do with moral concerns, that was an attempt to use the governments muscle to kill the research entirely.
Embryonic Stem Cells had, and still have great medical promise. If your kid died from some disease, then a few years later research into stem cells lead them to some new drug that would have cured him, how would you have felt about the way this had been handled? Does it matter that they didn't find the cure? What's the next research they'll try to kill? Will it be the one that could have cured you?
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You don't want your tax dollars to go towards stem cell research? Fine, that's a reasonable request.
No, it's not. Democracy--any form of government, really, but especially democracy--requires that citizens accept the democratic will within broad constraints. These constraints are usually called "rights" or similar. In Canada we have the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms", In the US you've got the Bill of Rights. In the UK you've got "a marshal nobility and a stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property", at least in theory.
Within those constraints, though: anything goes. I don't get to withhold my tax dollars from enterprises I don't support. Neither does anyone else. Do my tax dollars go to things I don't approve of? You're damned right they do, and at times those things cause the death of other human beings, including adult human beings (our current federal government in Canada is spending some of my tax dollars to fight harm-reduction as an approach to drug use, for example, and people are dying because of that.)
So it is not a reasonable request to withhold anyone's tax dollars from any publicly funded enterprise so long as due process has been followed in the funding. Don't like it? Get involved in politics and change it.
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False dichotomy is false.
Embryonic stem cells CAN AND ROUTINELY ARE HARVESTED WITHOUT DESTROYING THE BLASTOCYST.
http://www.ivfnj.com/preimplan... [ivfnj.com]
Educate yourself. Stop spreading FUD.
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Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah.
People coming in and demanding proof of things their politics made illegal to study are really annoying.
It's similarly illegal to study gun violence under a US public health research grant, even though every other class of mortality is nominally okay.
In my state, it's illegal to use state funds to research the effect of global warming on coastal water levels.
People who ban researching things for political reasons(rather than say consistency with existing laws outside of research) are harmful. There's something very wrong with the notion of not researching things that might reflect negatively on your ideology.
Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's similarly illegal to study gun violence under a US public health research grant, even though every other class of mortality is nominally okay.
More pointedly, the US keeps statistics on deaths from gun violence, except the number of people killed by police. From: List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States [wikipedia.org]
Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the FBI does not collect this data either.
Note: This was recently covered by The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
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We keep statistics, yes, but only in the context of criminal law.
To study, say, gun ownership as a matter of public health, as a risk factor for overall mortality, is illegal(with public funds).
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We keep statistics, yes, but only in the context of criminal law.
To study, say, gun ownership as a matter of public health, as a risk factor for overall mortality, is illegal(with public funds).
Cite?
It seems to me that the main obstacle to such studies is detailed information on gun ownership, because mortality information is readily available, and not just from law enforcement. The CDC tracks it closely.
In any case, I'd love to see this research done... though I suspect that I anticipate a different result than you expect.
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When criminality problems are being made fun of in comedic talk shows, you know your government has a big denial issue.
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Oh, look, an article objecting to a specific methodology, that in no way was made illegal.
Okay. Those are equal. Yep. Look, your objection requires people to believe in a huge-criminology wide conspiracy to suppress data, whereas my objection just references a law on the books.
I'm not even going to refute what you're saying, because, hell, Straus is a criminologist, and I'm not. But I will accuse you of willful false equivalence. Don't do that.
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Oh, look, an article objecting to a specific methodology, that in no way was made illegal.
It's a paper, not some smear of a blog entry.
Okay. Those are equal. Yep. Look, your objection requires people to believe in a huge-criminology wide conspiracy to suppress data, whereas my objection just references a law on the books.
My objection requires people to believe in well supported research, and I don't really give a shit what you're referencing. Want more? Here you go: http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert... [csulb.edu]
I'm not even going to refute what you're saying, because, hell, Straus is a criminologist, and I'm not. But I will accuse you of willful false equivalence. Don't do that.
Get fucked.
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Oh, look, you responded to the side points of my post with mindless detail quibbling on points I acknowledged as valid, which is fucking petty
And then you responded to the central argument of my post with brainless hostility.
You. Are. Stupid.
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Your central point is that it's not okay for one group to do it, but okay for a group you bray your support for endlessly to do it. And then you have the gall to start complaining about false equivalency and of all things hostility, particularly hilarious given your own penchant for leaping in with both boots on. So once again, get fucked you fucking hypocritical little fuck.
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No my central point was clearly that you were making a false equivalence. The end. You can live in an imaginary land where I said something different, but you have to know that's bullshit.
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Where is it illegal? Certainly not the US. Social Conservatives argued that federal funds were not to be used on embryonic research. That's not making it illegal. It was only illegal to create, grow and harvest embryos for the purpose of research - that's not the same thing as making it *illegal*.
If you say "Gov't has decided to not fund project X"... yawn, boring. Not newsworthy.
Better to say "Gov't BANS X and makes it ILLEGAL to study X" (with a tiny disclaimer at the bottom saying "while using federal funds"). Now it sounds like gov't is teh evil, spawning much outrage.
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REALLY?!? So they cannot do any of the things necessary to actually have a sample of embryonic stem cells but it's perfectly legal to do the research should such a sample magically come into being because someone wished real hard?!?
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I'm not a socon so I'm not defending them. I'm only saying that it's hyperbole to state that this research was illegal. It wasn't.
I'm an atheist and for stem cell research but demonizing people who disagree with you is not the best way to go.
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Seriously, this is totally a non-issue when you think about it.
The "Oh, I cant make embryos in a dish just to smash them up in a tissue homogenizer! Oh woe is me! I guess I cant get any new cell lines now!" argument is not even wrong-- it's not even right. It's as close to a classic false dichotomy as you can get. (Can't harvest cells specifically for research, so no embryonic cell research!)
Tissue collection happens routinely for diagnostic reasons from perfectly healthy embryos created for IVF.
The easy so
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It wasn't even that. It was illegal to create new embrionic cell lines using federal money. In other words, if you wanted to do stem cell research you could use one of the existing lines, or you could use private money.
The whole controversy was just red meat for abortion supporters. Didn't have anything to do with science.
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This is not a debate worth having again and again and again and again.
Presumably because you keep losing it, again and again and again?
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Or, and this is crazy. I'm totally aware of your argument, made that clear, and also made my contempt of the exact nonsense you spewed readily apparent, and I don't want have anything more to do with it.
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It wasn't me that made the statement that you responded to. And if you don't want people to call you out when you are blatantly lying, you probably should start telling the truth, rather than throwing a temper tantrum.
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So you're argument, as I understand it is: "I don't care that it wasn't actually illegal, because this is really about why Bush was bad"? Or was it "I'm going to insist on my own private definition of illegal and yell at anyone who uses the normal meaning"?
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*If you want to argue against this point on minutia that ignore the reality of how preliminary medical research is performed, please just shut up.
No. I think I'd rather join the chorus of those correcting you. I'm not sure how you got marked insightful; your post was both rude and inaccurate. Embryonic stem cells are not illegal to study or experiment with in the United States.
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That may be the case in your country, because you let the religious idiots be in charge of the politicians. That's not the case in the rest of the world.
Ah, following the traditions of Slashdot by not RTFA, or WTFP (Watching TF Programme), or knowing WTFYWOA (WTF You're Wittering On About). Yes, the study did use stem cells. Specifically, the stem cells that continually regenerate nerve cells in the nose, to re-connect ole
Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, I still think the ignorant asses are the people arguing that a clump of cells without so much as a functioning brain stem can somehow be so special as to deserve special consideration.
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Since they're not your embryos, why do you care?
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Re:I'm still waiting... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't find the idea of fertilizing an egg just so you can harvest the embryo creepy, and morally dubious? Seems creepy to me - if the problems can be solved a different way, lets do that.
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Just to level-set, do you find camps where undesirables (defined however you like) can be sent creepy, and morally dubious?
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I don't.
Since it's not your wife or husband, why do you care?
I don't.
Since it's not your dog, why do you care?
Since it's a living, breathing creature, unlike a blob of cells, mistreating it shows ones lack of civility, humanity and general lack of morals.
Since it's not your house, why do you care?
I don't, up to the point where your negligence in keeping your property maintained interferes with my property because critters from you
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Human embryos are apparently more human than you are. When you declare "let's kill people out of convenience because they don't know any different!" you forsook your own humanity for some shitty rationalization. Embryos ARE life, you fucking idiot. That's not even debatable.
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It's almost as if some people just really want it to be legal to destroy human embryos.
In your imaginary land where any people are this hostile, what do you think is done with leftover embryos from fertility treatments, right now?
Do you think they're all frozen forever, just in case someone needs a spare implanted in their uterus?
Do you think that maybe they get grown in secret cloning vats that let them turn into human beings?
Or do you join us in reality land where they're put in a nice clean chamber labeled "biohazard" and hauled off by a medical waste company to be sterilized and destroyed
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So... now you're the person who wants them to be destroyed. You know, the evil, mustache twirling villains from your own post not 20 minutes ago. I mean... you were presenting that as outright evil. And now it's the highest calling?
Really?
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but....why?
They are just cells. I just took my fingernails, scraped some from my body, and tossed them on the floor to dessicate and die. Human cells! So what?
The only thing special about am embryo is what it is capable of doing under very specific conditions, it is only really special after it has done those things and created a living being capable of participation in a society. Until it does that, its really no different from an apple seed.
Why does it matter either way?
That is the thing... if there is an
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and yet, without it nothing at all matters.
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Since meaning is as subjective a thing as can be, consciousness actually tops the list, for it provides the very substrate for meaning.
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I dunno, I still think the ignorant asses are the people arguing that a clump of cells without so much as a functioning brain stem can somehow be so special as to deserve special consideration.
YES! That's the core issue, and I get sick of proponents of stem cell research (and pro-choice politics) who are too timid to stand up and say it!
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(Forgive me. The first image that came to mind when I read this story was the movie "Sleeper", when they were trying to clone the assassinated leader using his nose.)
Yes, I am shocked at the lack of quotes from "Sleeper" in here.
"I've seen him shoot a nose!"
"Checking the [nose] cell structure!"