Stem Cells Mend Spinal Injuries 331
Darkman, Walkin Dude writes "New research shows that rats that had their spinal columns severed were able to regain use of their hind legs through the use of stem cells from embryonic rats." From the Wired article: "Spinal cord injuries can be caused by accidents or infections and affect 250,000 people a year in the United States alone, costing $4 billion annually, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders. Whittemore's team took specific cells from rat embryos called glial restricted precursor cells -- a kind of stem cell or master cell that gives rise to nerve cells."
We're not persuing this as fast as we can because? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Funny)
This is America. How dare anyone presume to step into the shoes of God by improving the conditions of or completely healing those who are sick or disabled. Man has no right dictate and change what God has obviously deemed his will by employing ridiculous and sinful medical practices.
Unless you live in the midwest and you're trying to knock your wife with the funky teeth up with nine babies. That's totally fine.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Informative)
Simple politics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
I'm sure Bush would invent some reason why he should be allowed treatment if he were to lose the use of his legs. Doing gods work or something similar.
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Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Interesting)
According to them, there are 155 stem cell lines in the world atm, 78 out of them can have federal support in funds, and 22 out of them is usable for research AND can have federal support for them, thats mostly because most of the stem cell cultivations are just too old alrea
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2, Informative)
This is a false dichotomy. The reason that humans are considered different from other animals is that we are sentient. That is the distinction. S
Not foggy, faulty (Score:2)
I guess you could use a few injections yourself.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
A five day old impregnated zygote is smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence.
I don't think the problems were ever biological with this research. Although normally I find myself squarely on the side of scientific method in every discussion (I'm talking to you, creationists), I'm not as certain in this debate. Its a question of spirituality here. The real question is, assuming the presence of an immortal human soul or some kind of presence which exists beyond the failure of the biological suppor
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
When are you clueless people going to figure out that even the most dimwitted among your opposition knows that? It's short-hand. Quit being so God damned pedantic.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
What it was obviously supposed to say: "due to the direct intervention of Bush that public funding for stem cell research was banned in the USA."
Three words, whose implicit inclusion was obvious to anyone who at all cares about the issue, were left out. Same meaning, shorter sentence. Short hand. You can feel free to keep screaming, "It's not banned," but you're just going to make yourself look dum
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also a very valid concern about preventing trafficking in human tissue. Just as there are lots and lots of controls on organ harvesting and donations, there needs to be a way to prevent pregnancies simply for the sake of harvesting embryos to gain such tissue.
There are also a lot of concerns about ensuring this is actually a path with true possibility of results rather than a ghoulish battleground over the value of life and a macabe sideshow. Think of how the Nazi and Imperial Japanese performed experiments on living people. Where is the line drawn? It's a very serious issue.
Monstrously irresponsible snake-oil statements like that made by John Whatshisname (yeah, he was even "my" senator, shows how much he did for NC) that if John Kerry was elected President quadraplegics woudl stand up out of their wheelchairs and walk again are...shall we say...far less than responsible.
On the other hand, if the comments Senator Frist made are true that it is now evident that stem cells are not capable of endless regeneration and there are far fewer than the original 78 strains of stem cells available for federally funded research, perhaps allowing collection of stem cells from those which are left over from invitreo is a good idea.
Your post shows you don't really know much about this.
There is no restriction on private investment into stem cell research.
There are sources of human stem cells other than killing human embryos. Given the current belief that human embyonic stem cells cannot replicate indefinately, they are actually a poor source of the genetic material.
(Sidebar: there are very, very, very few human cells which can replicate endlessly. I don't remember the anem of the woman from whom one strain was harvested and is used for bio research. Virtually all cells have a limit to the number of tiems they can split.)
Prior to President Bush's plan of 4 years ago, there was no Federal funding for this research at all. A lot of what you would be seeing in the common media is not scientific, it's political.
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Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, they've already shown us that being paralysed does nothing against intellegence (Stephen Hawking)
Well, duh. Being paralyzed is a huge dexterity hit, intelligence doesn't enter into it.
~Will
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In a normal market where commodities are manufactured, research is hard to fund. It's been monopolies like Bell Labs and the National Gov't which have really pushed things forward because they had both the cash and the desire to do so.
1984 was pretty dead on. The govt funds science and technology because we need to compete with other nations economically
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
It's not true. Tell me one are in which German science of the Nazi age was ahead of the rest of the world. Experiments done in the death camps carry no scientific value, just because they're not repeatable -- you can't do it again and ch
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
Too true.
I see two main reasons science becomes political:
1) Scientists want government money.
2) Politicians want to control everything. They generally do this by giving out money.
I heard government money referred to yesterday as "free
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2, Interesting)
The Bush government is pro in-vitro fertilization, a practice which by design produces large amounts of unwanted embryos, blastocysts really, which are frozen down and eventually thrown away, since they can only survive for so long in a frozen state.
If your position is that human life begins at conception then I fail to understand how this practice is
Only in the bible belt or Teheran :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never seen credible evidence that a person with a personality gets created before there is a working brain. Would love to be contradicted here with a few references to e.g. Nature? (-: Or even a few bible verses with claims that life start at conception...? :-)
I am, frankly, not holding my breath.
Now, someone might argue that a process is started at conception which would end up with a functioning human. The potential is critical. There are a few problems with that position:
- When a fertile woman smiles back at me (-: it has happened
:-), there is a potential for a new human
- Soon, all our cells will be potential humans with a little "twist"...
- Half of all conceptions ends soon with a spontaneous abortion. That means, according to the bible belt, that half of all people dies at an age of a few days. To be consistent, the believers should argue that half of all medical research should try to stop this mass death!
I could go on. (The potential argument is pathetically blurry and compare amateurs like Stalin and Hitler with tens of millions dying from spontaneous abortions... every year.)Your correct (IMHO) point is that given the assumption that life starts at conception, the rest of the religious people's position is logical. My point is that they are quite easily described as fuckwits with the same basis as "Son of Sam" had for his world view.
Life doesn't 'start' at some point because it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only in the bible belt or Teheran :-) (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL. Next time a fertile woman smiles at you but refuses to copulate, accuse her of murder!
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I have karma to burn...
The exact quote from John Edwards is, "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
I don't find anything particularly monstrously irresponsible about this quote. He doesn't imply that people will get up out of their wheelchairs a week or two after Kerry would have been elected. I think most people, like me, are smart enough to realize that curing spinal cord injury is a while coming.
However, personally, I'm convinced that if we put our collective ingenuity in medical research towards finding a cure for spinal cord injuries, we will get real and tangible results, as this article demonstrates. It's not a cure, but it sure is progress.
The election of John Kerry would not have necessarily accomplished this goal during his presidency, and I don't think that Edwards's quote was implying that it would. After all, John F. Kennedy said in 1961, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Even if he had not been assassinated in 1963 and re-elected in 1964, his goal still wouldn't have happened while he was in office.
It is certain that the election of George W. Bush has hindered the goal of finding a cure to spinal cord injury. He has shut down a major source of funding in an area of research that, as we can see from this article, is directly relevant to finding a cure.
The really frustrating thing is the reason given for shutting down this funding—some misguided notion that an embryo is somehow morally equivalent to a human being. I find it interesting that most of these fundamentalists have no problem at all with killing highly complex organisms such as rats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on in the name of scientific research, but a clump of nondescript cells with no capacity for thought, feeling, or any sensation at all; a clump of nondescript cells with no past, present, or future; a clump of nondescript cells very similar to the kind that we wash off in the shower every day without even thinking; is somehow sacred.
What if these same fundamentalists had insisted that researching advanced rocket propulsion techniques in the '60's was too similar to building a Tower of Babel, attempting to reach to heaven? Would John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson have cowered to this weird religious-based belief and let the Russians unilaterally own space today?
I hope not, just as I hope that in the next election, we manage to get some leadership who is willing to stand up for science that can make our lives better instead of trying to push America further and further into a new dark age of technology because of religious fundamentalism.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that most of these fundamentalists have no problem at all with killing highly complex organisms such as rats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on...
Heck, forget the monkeys--what about their bland willingness (or even outright blood lust) for killing non-christians? "Thou shalt not kill" isn't all that hard of a concept.
It doesn't say "thou shalt not kill people who look like you".
It doesn't say "Thou shalt not kill except for oil."
It doesn't even say "Thou shalt not kill unless they started it, in which case it's fine to open a little Whoop-ass on their sorry Is-le-amic butts."*
I wouldn't mind the fundementalists (of any flavour) nearly as much if they actually pratciced what they preached instead of running around like a bunch of anti-social nitwits, blowing up buses and abortion clinics and killing people--or voting to have somebody else's kids go kill them--in the name of their god.
--MarkusQ
* What it does say about "they started it" is "turn the other cheek."
Re:To be or not to be...born? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was the clump of cells that would have turned out to be me, I promise you I wouldn't have minded at the time, and after that I wouldn't be in a position to be minding anything.
Re:To be or not to be...born? (Score:2)
Re:To be or not to be...born? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, no problem. A lot of people like to think that an embryo is morally a person, but in our practical day-to-day lives, no one really treats it as such. Ponder this:
These are just a few ways off the top of my head in which even conservatives do not treat an embryo or fetus as the moral equivalent of a human being. I'm sure if I put some more thought into it, I could come up with plenty more.
No, we're not. That's my point.
But the clump of cells wasn't me, therefore it's irrelevant. I keep seeing people confuse something's potential with it's reality. Just because something has the potential to be something else doesn't give it the status or rights of that thing it may someday become. As someone else pointed out, if my mom had had an abortion, it wouldn't make a lick of difference to me because I simply would have never existed. This is far, far different from my present life being ended by someone sneaking in and killing me in the middle of the night, because at this point, my existence isn't potential, it's reality.
Using your logic, one could just as easily say that if Osama bin Laden's mother had had an abortion, the world would arguably be a much happier and safer place, and because of this, women should have more abortions. It's a non sequitur and I reject such arguments. Let's make important decisions like this based on what what the reality of the situation is, not what it may or may not be someday or what it could or could not have been if something had been different.
Or framed in a different way, it's very possible in the near future that we'll be able to clone human beings from the intact DNA contained in any of the millions of cells in our bodies. At that point, should we start saving every sloughed off cell because the potential exists for it to be a person? Additionally, we probably have the technology now to freeze our extra cells to save them for the purpose of becoming new human beings when such technology does exist. Should we never let any of them go to waste now? Of course not, everyone knows that's silly. The same holds true for the clump of cells that is an embryo. Just because it has the potential to be a human being someday doesn't give it any special or sacred status today.
Obligatory Monty Python quote (Score:3, Funny)
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."
Re:To be or not to be...born? (Score:5, Informative)
No, we're not. This is the thing that "Human-at-conception" camp, which refers to itself as "pro-life" constantly ignores, no matter how many times it's brought up. All human cells do not have rights. Only individuals have rights. Embryonic stem cells are not individuals for a variety of reasons.
Those who want to assert that life begins at conception frequently fall back on logic that flies in the face of longstanding legal precedent. They say embryos are human, for example, because they represent a unique set of human DNA. But if this definition of what is human were true, it would be okay to kill a twin as long as the other twin remained. It's not. A human is more than simply a set of cells with unique DNA. And we've recognized that for thousands of years. The set of cells must also pass a certain stage of development. Otherwise, any stem cell which could potentially be cloned through somatic cell transfer would be human.
While many socieites differed radicially from ours in terms of their legal code, and assigned rights to a patriarch, a family, or a nation, our society assigns rights primarily to individual human beings.
Cells don't have rights until they become individuals. An individual is one person, and one person only. Never two or three or possibly four people. An individual is only one person. An embryonic stem cell is one or two or possibly three people, or none at all if it doesn't attach to the uterine wall.
Likewise, the often repeated canard of 'what if you were aborted doesn't support those who say people are humans at conception unless you also don't believe in contraception, or any other act which would prevent the birth of a person. After all, if my parents had gone to the movies instead of making me, I wouldn't be here either. But what kind of logic is that? This is a case of assuming what you're trying to prove. People who don't believe than individuality starts at conception will never be persuaded by this argument, because they don't believe that they were 'them' at conception. They believe they were still a 'pre-individual.'
Hmmm, yes a "clump of cells" as long as it wasn't the "clump of cells" that turned out to be you. Strange how the "human" dividing line moves so.
Moving? Are you claiming that he's applying one standard to himself, and another standard to other people. If so, I really don't think you understand his argument. But if you're saying that there are a lot of people who disagree with you and hold different moral standards which they apply to all people then yes, you're absolutely right.
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It's all a question about when to give legal status to life.
Do you really want to endow an unborn fetus with the rights reserved to an adult? Be prepared for reckless endangerment lawsuits filed on behalf of the fetus against the mother, filed by a concerned party (the father). Which sounds improbable until you realized that it would be a very nasty move to make during a divorce.
A
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
Yes, where is the line between stem cell research and Nazi experiments on living people? Oh, where is the line!?
This is a serious issue. We need to find out where this line is before we cont
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
Why? They're just some cells. Sure, if they were to stay in a womb for another 7-8 months they'd grow into a human. If you can't tell the difference between a gastrula and a human being, you've got some issues. I slough off more cells from my skin on a daily basis. Why does nobody weep for my skin cells?
Anwser to flaimbait. No $$ for abortions... (Score:2)
Do you have a soul? Do you believe in God? To many people, their ethics are more important than science or cars or money. You might be able to tell me at what speed an object falls to the earth, but can you tell me why it falls
Re:Anwser to flaimbait. No $$ for abortions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except nobody would ever say that. That's what pisses me off so much about your side. What kind of freaking monsters do you imagine doctors to be? "If you get an abortion, you get a lollypop... Come on. Do it, do it, do it. Sissy." There are way more than enough people getti
Re:Anwser to flaimbait. No $$ for abortions... (Score:5, Informative)
You might be able to tell me at what speed an object falls to the earth, but can you tell me why it falls? Something as simple as gravity? Science is observing events and trying to predict what will happen. Science does not purport to understand why something happens.
Um, science _does_ attempt to explain to the best of our ability why things happen. Is "gravity" not a perfectly valid answer to your question? If you want to recursively ask "Why?" to every explanation, then I challenge you to explain your faith and allow me to extend the same courtesy. I guarantee you will run out of productive statements long before I will.
The fact that you refeer to soul and "some such shit" in the same sentance leads me to believe you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong, and that you should be the one who decides where my tax dollars are spent.
Blah, blah, blah. Vica versa. Ad nausem.
All that Bush did was listen to his constituents, who said they don't want their tax dollars being spent on embryos that came from abortions.
Woah, Woah! Hold it right there. This is where you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding. Embryos that came from abortions? From the wikipedia...
Embryonic stem cells are stem cells derived from the undifferentiated inner mass cells of a blastocyst, an early stage embryo consisting of 50-150 cells. They are pluripotent, meaning they are able to grow into any of the 200 cell types in the body. Embryonic stem cells can be obtained from a cloned blastocyst, created by fusing a denucleated egg cell with a patient's cell. The blastocyst produced is allowed to grow to the size of a few tens of cells, and stem cells are then extracted. Because they are obtained from a clone, they are genetically compatible with the patient.
200 cells is not a fetus by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is a blastocyst a fetus. These is very much a lab created process and trying to apply your morality via rubber stamp doesn't exactly line up.
Science does not answer *WHY*. It answers *HOW*. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are asking Why do we exist or why does this happen, you are already assuming that god, or some omniscient, omnipotent creator exists and asking what their intent was.
Re:Anwser to flaimbait. No $$ for abortions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, science is all about determining why just as much as how. Admittedly, how is usually the focus because until you really understand how, determining why is kind of tough.
All that Bush did was listen to his constituents, who said they d
Re:Anwser to flaimbait. No $$ for abortions... (Score:2)
YES !
Science is observing events and trying to predict what will happen. Science does not purport to understand why something happens.
YES, IT DOES.
This may be hard for your pinhead brain to comprehend, but "God said so" is not the only possible answer
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:5, Insightful)
It was largely agreed at the end of the second world war that the human experimentation that went on in NAZI germany was wrong. This is despite the numerous real medical advancements that were made as a result of such experimentation. Most reasonable individuals agreed that the societal cost performing compulsory experiments on essentially random members of society was greater than the benefit of the resulting medical knowledge.
It has since been agreed that, to some extent, animal experiment is okay as long as certain moral guidelines are followed. This is because cruelty toward animals has a dehumanizing effect on the human participant (as evidenced by the fact that most serial killers got their start with animals).
This puts us in a tricky situation when it comes to embryos and cloning. On the one hand, it is well established that an embryo is not the same as a person, on the other hand, an embryo has the potential the become a living, breathing member of society. So where do you draw the line? If experimentation on embryos is not human experimentation, is is certainly the cousin of human experimentation.
I'm not saying that the cost is not worth the benefit, I am only saying that there is a cost, and that we need to decide how far down the path toward human experimentation we can go before the costs outweigh the benefits.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2, Insightful)
Much of this debate could be solved by once and for all agreeing that the mere fact that the research subject is human is not morally significant. Right now, many people are willing to grant a cell rights because less than 1% of its DNA is different from all other organisms save other humans. That's
It's simple (Score:2)
Every sperm is sacred [taboo-breaker.org]
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonderful, said organism is frozen and 99% likely never to see any functional life.
When it comes to human stem cells, that organism is another human life. It's a simple path from "We want the paraplegic to walk again" to "we will kill humans to allow others to walk again".
Do tell, Anonymous Coward, why is taking stem cells from a donated and otherwise perpetually frozen embryo equal to killing a human?
*shrug*. and people wonder why this country is going downhill
Obviously, because of MTV.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Funny)
An early embryo does not have even a single functioning neuron, so certainly it can't have any kind of conscious existence, and it is a far stretch to say that it has a "soul".
The reasoning seems to be that it has the "potential" for becoming a human being. But once cloning is perfected, every cell
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. Do you think that a human embryo is not human?
Is a human foetus human? How about a child? Or an adolescent?
What defines human for you?
Is it the presence of intelligence? In which case do you consider people less intelligent than yourself less human?
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people would be against killing the latter for the benefit of others. The former? That isn't so clear, but in any case don't mix those togheter when discussing stem cell research.
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Insightful)
I am of the opinion, cold-hearted as this may sound, that until a fetus is capable of surviving without the 'life support' provided by the womb of the mother, it is not a human being, and is in the same category as a cancerous growth or tumor.
Let's face a fact, one that most men probably don't know, and probably alot of women, too: Having a baby is bad for your body.
It causes a depletion of calcium from the bones. Every child a woman has increases he risk of osteoporosis. A fetus sucks up other nutrien
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2)
Well, for starters, I post with my user account.
Honestly though, why is every human life precious? Have you ever eaten eggs before? That's one life that will never have a chance to experience this wonderful beautiful world, all because of your senseless "hunger".
Even if you don't, if you mean to tell me that you've never killed anything ever? What makes the life of a fly or ant that you've most certainly killed less precious than the frozen embryo that never d
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:4, Insightful)
> precious than the frozen embryo that never developed into a human?
The same thing that:
- makes _your_ life more precious than said fly
- made it precious when _you_ were a _human embryo_
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:2, Insightful)
So why all the outcry about embryonic stem cell research? Why not go after the people who are wasting and killing all these embryos in the first place? The infertile people "playing god" and destroying embryos in the first place? They are endorsing
Re:We're not persuing this as fast as we can becau (Score:3, Informative)
You're on crack. Seriously, it takes absolutely no effort to find people who are 100% pro-choice.
ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:5, Informative)
I've had a lamenectomy. It's a procedure where tissue has to be removed from between discs in the spine. In my case, I herniated the tissue during heavy squats (word to the wise from a lifetime power lifter, don't do squats, they're too dangerous.) In my case, the tissue was pushed through the fibrous outer sheath that holds the spinal column together. The only possible way to "heal" this would have been to somehow take all the pressure off that part of the body (prevent all muscle movement and stretch the body on a rack), push the tissue back inside then seal the fibrous outer sheath.
Would I pay for such an option? Yes. Is it possible? No. Would some form of simple application of stem cells allow my body to rebuild the missing tissue? Probably not. Not only is a human spinal column far more complex than that of a rat, so are human brains. The human body also lives far longer and the human body is more articulate.
This is nice news but it's just the start of what would have to be a long, long, long process. There's no way to have perfect regeneration of plant tissue yet. Thinking human tissue would be able to regenerate any time soon is silly.
Re:ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually... (Score:2)
Re:ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:5, Informative)
while the cited article in this posting is a little light on details, this research is potentially novel for the reason that these researchers appear to have recovered function in an animal with a complete spinal cord transection. incomplete spinal cord injury (aka "crush") injuries are a different beast. for some time now, some degree of functional rehabilitation has been possible. the hope is that in humans, we will be able to culture the appropriate stem cell, provide the correct growth factors and achieve connection between the motor/sensory cortex and the peripheral nerve(s).
the problem is that until this point, we have not had very much success getting neurons in the central nervous system to grow across scar tissue and make appropriate connections to regain function.
in anticipation of a heated debate in this forum regarding stem cells etc, it's worth noting that the cells used in this study probably fall into the category of "adult stem cells" and not embryonic stem cells (the more contriversial of the two).
Re:ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:2)
My injury happened on a roller coaster, when it went around a corner, it broke a small piece of my spine and cut through the outer part of my spinal column. I was lucky to get off with nothing more than a gradually herniating disk and a whole hell of a lot of back pain.
Meanwhile, stem cell research is being done to (hopefully) allow for damaged nerve tissue to be regenerated, thus, allowing for disabled body parts to c
Re:ok, but it's still a long way from being useful (Score:2)
Spinal vs. Embryonic stem cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many people who could ultimately benefit from this research, and it certainly shows much promise. I know several people personally who could stand to regain some quality of life if doctors could regrow nerve tissues in humans.
Are spinal stem cells better than embryonic stem cells at growing this type of tissue, or is it simply a case of too little money going into embryonic stem cell research?
Re:Spinal vs. Embryonic stem cells? (Score:3, Informative)
That is not 100% true. There is a ban on using government to fund research using new embryonic cells. When Bush signed the original law, he was trying to make a comprom
Re:Spinal vs. Embryonic stem cells? (Score:2)
Spinal VS embrionic are both off the mark. (Score:2)
If that's too 'Blade Runner' for some, it can be the clone from something that we know is not viable. (end of moral argument because we take the cells from the cadaver of the non-viable source and grow function fractions in agar.)
As for Bush's ethics; I'll stay out of that quagmire, thank you.
Re:Spinal vs. Embryonic stem cells? (Score:3, Informative)
See relevant web pages from the UK Medical Research Council [mrc.ac.uk], the UK Department of Health [doh.gov.uk], the NIBSC [nibsc.ac.uk] and Cambridge University's Stem Cell Institute [cam.ac.uk].
Research in this area is also being conducted by the UK universities of Bath and Liverpool, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust and Smith & Nephew.
Re:Spinal vs. Embryonic stem cells? (Score:2)
embryonic stems cell have huge amounts of problems with them including uncontrolled growth rates(aka cancer).
As for why embryonic rats were uses is because it was easier to extract the items neede in quantities and because the subjects where not human(never mind the liberal chant that a boy=rat=bug). The same items could be extracted from an adult which produces them at a constant rate.
As it was explained to me... (Score:2)
stem cells (Score:3, Informative)
I wish.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wish.... (Score:2)
I call bullshit. Before he signed into effect the limitation that federal funding cannot be used to persue research in or aid new embryonic stem cell lines, there was no limitation on which types of research the money could go into. His new rules doesn't enable researchers to do anything they couldn't do before, it limits them on what they can do in the future.
Re:I wish.... (Score:2)
Birth Defects? (Score:2)
Re:Birth Defects? (Score:2)
Possible use in Multiple Sclerosis (Score:4, Interesting)
It is great news as it also may have implications for the large number of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients [thisisms.com].
As you may already know MS is a chronic automimmune disorder [wikipedia.org] where your body attacks the protective sheath around nerve cells causing them to degrade slowly over time. It is not yet curable. This type of damage is smaller than if your spinal cord was ripped apart in an accident and thus it may be easier to repair.
If this therapy proves to be useful in MS it will help a large number of people and save billions for countries.
Sounds great (Score:2)
What's wrong with this picture?
this just in from marketing (Score:5, Funny)
Funny, (Score:2)
This brings up way too many political issues. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is "they"? (Score:3, Insightful)
We take human life all the time. We take it when we have people work in extremely hazerdous conditions - like mining, or in the old days, building bridges. We take it when we decide we need a regime change. We take it when we allow the sale of tobacco products, or alcohol. We take it when we allow people to operate motor vehicl
Re:This brings up way too many political issues. (Score:3, Informative)
Second, everyone says that Bush is against stem cell research.
Okay.
He is only against federal funding to embryonic stem cell research.
Because that's the only thing he has control over?
That doesn't mean he wants to ban it, well he does, but that is besides the point.
So he wants to ban it, but he isn't against it? That makes perfect sense...
Bush doesn't believe in stem-cell research. He is trying to limit the research that goes on. Politically, there are only a c
Question for the biologists (Score:2, Interesting)
Every time I read about it, I get the impression that the subjects are simply injected with stem cells and they magically get cured. Is it really that simple, or are there additional invonveniences, like unwanted tissue types, or surgery or drugs needed?
Why fund PBS and NPR and not fund stem cells? (Score:2)
The government funds NPR (radio typically enjoyed by a minority of Americans), yet won't fund something that might arguably benefit all Americans. Furthermore, the benefits of the funding go to private people, not the govt. itself (Australia is different in this way).
The inconsistent policies of the government are irritating; funding all or none, or perhaps using some market mechanism to decid
Frist's split with Bush on stem cells (Score:3, Interesting)
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) announced that he would support legislation allowing the federal government to finance research using a broader range of embryonic stem cells. His decision substantially raised the odds that the bill would win approval in Congress and face a presidential veto, which White House strategists had hoped to avoid.
Frist said he would back legislation allowing the government to fund research using embryonic stem cells no matter when they were created.
Frist's stance appeared to put him closer to the mainstream of public opinion. In a May survey for CBS News, 58% of respondents said they favored embryonic stem cell research; 31% said they opposed it.
Commentary
I can't help but what what the political and scientific ramifications of Frist's recent actions. I wonder if Frist is really being confrontational with the White House and GOP, or could this be part of a plan to broaden Republican appeal...
Personally, I suspect the latter. The embryonic stem cell stance is one of the most-often criticized things used to criticize Republicans in general, and this could be a way of putting a damper on that criticism.
I think this will hurt Frist's chance of getting the GOP nomination, but if he gets that, it'll increase his chances for the actual 2008 election, assuming he can get people to forget about his silly remarks during the Schiavo case. I still doubt I'd vote for him myself, but I know many people would.
Re:Frist's split with Bush on stem cells (Score:2)
Oops. Replace the second "what" with "will be."
Tessera, sera.
About time! (Score:2)
What...
Oh...
Sorry...
Two types of Stem Cell research (Score:4, Interesting)
For adult stem cells (Score:3, Interesting)
This product seems to stimulate stem cell production in adults. Go to mannatech.com and check out the reasearch. It works for me and might help you, I'm not trying to sell anything.
Nothing to see here, move along (Score:2, Insightful)
Mice are different from humans and just connecting nerves don't work as you have to connect the right severed nerves together. Mice can't tell us how the "repair" feels is the movement just relex is it controlled?, it has been shown that a human can still walk if only 5% of his sp
More than one way to skin a cat. (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize that these won't cure verything, but why is this research being ignored in favor of embrionic stem cells? There are no moral issues here, no politically-demanded guidelines to be followed, only a chance to help lots of people before they wither away and die. Yet, from what I've been able to see, this avenue is being soundly ignored by researchers.
'I am truly baffled.
Re:Sounds like progress to me, (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of fucking maniac are you? Your publically advocating the maiming of innocent children for what you preceve as the sins of the parents. You should have your spine severed somewhere between your brain and your body....no wait, it's already happened for you to make such a hateful comment. I'm all for progress, better life through science, and all that bull shit. But give it a rest. You wanna maim the people that are voting and deciding this bull shit on the government level, fine, I'm all for that. It's people like you that give the freaks in the religious faction all the ammo they need to push forward with this shit. Mod this down if you like, But the parent post needs to be modded down too.
Re:Cruelty is discusting (Score:5, Funny)
Right, glad you volunteered, just lay down please this won't hurt a bit...
Re:Cruelty is discusting (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cruelty is discusting (Score:2)
Cruelty is not an absolute. Cruelty is directly based on intent. A physician operating on a patient is not cruel because he intends to assit the patient. Jack the Ripper operating on a patient is cruel because he intends to disembowl and kill his patient.
The researches intend to create a cure for spinal injuries. You apparently don't value a cure for spinal injuries and are viewing the action from your own personal standpoint, no
Re:Hey that's great for the paraplegic... (Score:2)
Let me know when you find an embryo capable of caring, although without a nervous system I'd be pretty skeptical that you'll ever find such a creature.
Re:Hey that's great for the paraplegic... (Score:2)
Re:Hey that's great for the paraplegic... (Score:2)
Look, you can harvest more stem cells that it is possible to use on the entire U.S. population if you just turn to freeway accidents for a supply source. Your body contains approximately 50 trillion cells, that's 50,000,000,000,000 cells depending on size, age, weight, etc. If you extract a measly 1,000 of these cells which can be transformed into adult