Stem Cell

wijg

wijg

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Well, it has been a while since we discussed anything from the real news. I saw a news story the other night about some recent debate over the stem cell issue. I was at work and the tv was on. I didn't mean to watch the news as I try to stay as uninformed as possible, but it happened. Just wanted to start a discussion about the issue.

I support stem cell research. My current approach to the phenomenon known as life is that souls don't necessarily get only one shot at life. I am labeling the spark of life within us, assuming there is one, as a "soul." So let's say sometime during the embryo's development in the womb, a soul attaches itself. If the baby dies before being born, I don't believe that that was the soul's only chance. While it is sad when it happens to family's trying to have children, the soul just reenters the mix and will have another chance at being born later. Therefore, I support stem cell research. Plus, if I understood the news story correctly, all the current embryos in question are going to be destroyed anyway. So why not put them to some use?

Disclaimer: I may not completely understand the ramifications of stem cell research. Upon further enlightenment, revision of the above could be in order.

Random note: Our system of government, democracy, is a good one, but man our goverment as a whole sucks.
 
I totaly agree. If the fetus dies, why not get some use out of it? If we can take tissue from a dead fetus, implant it (or whatever they do) into a sick person and give that sick person another chance at life, why not do it?

People are too sensitive about mortality and "respect" for the dead. Once you are dead your soul (if it excists) leaves your body, making you a useless chunk of meat. If scientists could use that chunk of meat to help the living I say let them do it.
 
It isn't so simple, also, stem cells aren't only produced by a fetus. Every person is producing stem cells, just not in mass quantities. Deliberately killing a fetus in order to biologically harvest it doesn't fly with me. Especially since stem cells can be found elsewhere.
 
My mistake BC. We are not like the Greeks who almost, sorta had a true democracy. Spudly, what would be another method of getting stem cells? Are the ones in fetuses found in such quantities that they are the only ones worth using? Like I put in the disclaimer, I am not completely informed about this idea. I was just mainly expressing some of my views on life and how it could relate to this issue.
 
this is so sad on so many levels
I DO NOT SUPPORT stem cell research as it stands. There are many different ways to get stem cells (not that I have done alot of research) but like spudlyff8fan said they aren't of the quantities of harvesting babies. And as for SOUL's goin on well we can't say one way or the other.
and considering that the other ways would not cost some one their life I would be all for it. But it would be to timely and we are talking QUANTITIES.
and this brings us back to the hole LIFE thing .........
well your mom's in a coma and she not really Living can we take her heart, lungs ...... after all she's just a chunk of meat at this pont.
chunk of meat.
I well never me a chunk of meat.
I have great RESPECT for the dead, I think people that don't have little respect for the living.
So I'm with Spudlyff8fan on this. and as it was so rightly put IT. Deliberately KILLING a fetus in order to biologically HARVEST it doesn't fly with me ether.
 
This is a really touchy subject. It's comes really, really close to one of the topics that I never, EVER discuss with people in public: abortion. That's way too charged a topic to get into.

Now, the first thing to note is that other countries are continuing stem cell research. This sounds insensitive, but if we want to, as a country, be on the cutting edge of medicine we have to step up to the plate. There is really no question that stem cell procedures work, at least enough to research them further. Last year I watched a panel on C-SPAN that was debating on stem cells, and they have three people there who had gone to (I believe) Portugal for stem cell teratment, and the doctor who treated them. One woman was a parapalegic from a car accident, and after the teartment she could walk 50 feet with no crutches, no braces. One other guy had Parkinson's and the treatment would completely alleviate the symptoms, but only for a few months... you could actually see the difference, as they recently did treatment on one side of his brain and the other side of his body was noticeably calmer.

So, this is something to look into, and it could go so, so far toward treating so many illnesses today.

But the true question is: what is the cost? Now, I don't think anyone, anywhere is suggesting deliberate destruction of fetuses to harvest stem cells. This gets very tricky because stem cells can be recovered from a fertilized egg at a very early stage, certainly before it develops into anything recognizable. We are again getting into the A issue though, as different people have differnet classifications of what they call a "life". Some think that life itself, including conciousness and the concept of a "soul" begins at conception. If that's the case, then even the birth control pill is murder! Unfortunately there will never be an answer to this question that is sufficient.

I have heard that the umbilical cord holds stem cells but I don't know if they are useful for the kind of research being done. But what I can't stand is the refusal to even allow research to be done on the limited strings of stem cell we currently have on ice. These are not fetuses, they are literally strings of cells! They do not have any possibility of ever developing into a human life! And yet our politicians won't even allow research to be done on that limited of a scale.

We have to ask what we can accept. If we can fertilize a donor egg with donor sperm, outside of the womb, and harvest stem cells extremely early in the development process, is this reasonable? Or, since there is potential in those cells to develop into a life, is it unreasonable? If scientists could use the stem cells they currently have to somehow "clone" other stem cells, outside of the reproductive process where the cells would have no potential for growth into a human life, would that be okay?

There must be some common ground somewhere.
 
I believe the way they can extract stem cells from a grown person is by taking out under-developed tissue cells. Stem Cells are, basically, cells which are just blank blobs of membrane and cytoplasm, a fetus is just full of them because they are developing so quickly, they produce in-development cells all the time, while a grown person does it in only small amounts. Essentially the reason they prefer to use a fetus over a grown person is because its quicker, easier and cheaper.
 
i believe that the soul lies within each and every little spermy. look at how they swim around under the microscope! eggs don't do that. so the sperm are actually living organisms. and each one has a soul. so just think about the millions and millions of souls we have all let go to waste already...it's a shame.

just kidding. but what if i'm right? just trying to add a tiny bit of humor to this interesting and tricky topic.
 
Ya know ghost, that was one of the concepts of the Homunculus, that each sperm had a tiny, super-little person in it, and that was how people in the Dark Ages thought people were created.

Anyway, in Australia they are working on using brain and skin stem cells in mice, and it has allegedly been promising. It is also believed by some studies that stem cells are sitting inside your brain, but only 1 in 300 or so is believed to be so, and they have found ways of seperating them.
 
Ahhh, someone else has seen The Meaning of Life. That is the Python movie I know the least. I've only seen it once. I did see Hitchhiker last night, so Spudly's comment about the mice has pertinence. See, the mice are really experimenting on us. They just want us to think it is the other way around.
 
Reply to: GhostToast:

i guess i dont really understand what a stem cell is and how it is different from a normal cell. anybody want to save me the research time? =)
Click to expand...

The very very basic explanation is that a stem cell is a cell that is nondifferentiated, and able to develop itself into any other kind of cell. A red blood cell will always be a red blood cell, and a kidney cell will always be a kidney cell, but a stem cell could grow into a kidney cell or a neuron if you needed it to.

Now, why is this so important? One of the reasons so many nervous disorders are untreatable is because our bodies just can't grow nervous tissue on a large enough scale to repair the damage. Only when you're very young do you actually develop newrvous cells. So, stem cells may possibel be used to develop these nervous cells and repair the damage.
 
neat.

wow so it definitely does kind of tap into people's fears a little... the idea of some kind of super-humanoid monster eating babies to stay young and live forever.... as a most drastic case of course, in some hollywood imagined scenario.

thanks for the info. i wonder if i can sell my stem cells ? =)
 
The other function they are hoping to use it for is cancer and viruses (of course, AIDs is first on the list). If they can take the stem cells, and play with the DNA in it in order to program it to seek out cancerous or infsted cells, then they can easily wipe out the diseases.
 
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