Fetal stem cell reasearch veto

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You just can't face the truth! You've done the same thing to Thor in the "does god exsit" thread! If thor and I disagree, you do exactly what you say he does! Do you not notice that? I'm not attacking you, im just saying stop the hypocracy! And I'm not posting anything to this thread because I still havent fully researched it yet!

And I'm not posting anything to this thread because I still havent fully researched it yet! OK then, I've been imagining that you're posting to this thread, rather than the Chit-Chat thread or some other thread of your creation. Therefore, the "re:" line at the top of this post should be blank. If it's not blank, then the user ID following the "re:" will contain the pseudonym of a rude person.

Christ! Why can't you admit it already??

Would you please take your anger out somewhere else? There's the chit-chat thread, and any number of threads you can create. We're trying to keep this thing on-topic, but you are hostile to the idea. Why are you being so willfully rude?

Cause you're being a hypocrit! You shoudn't have said that to Thor, since you basically do it to!

Go somewhere else and make your case. This is the wrong place to do it. We are talking about the specific issues raised in this thread, on the thread's topic. If you want to discuss "what I always do", then go somewhere else to do it.Unless you post something relevant to this thread in this thread, I will no longer reply to you in this thread. If you post something rude or distasteful in this thread, then a moderator can deal with it.

Wow. I hate Bush more and more every friggan' day. If the embryos will be thrown out anyway I don't see what's wrong with using them to save lives. I would think personally that God would rather see that they be used for that, then not for anything at all. And either way science is discovering something new all the time. Eventually there will be a day that we'll find something even better than stem cells. However, we need to get through one obstacle before we can move on to another.

You're hopeless.But anyway, this was interesting enough.An alternative way to get these stem cells which i think we need. In reply to: Alternative stem cellsIf a reliable alternative source of stem cells could be found, the controversy over the ethics of fetal stem cell research could end. Recent studies have shown that it may be possible to use stem cells from other adults, or even your own, instead of embryos, thus eliminating the ethical concerns of some people.1 Unfortunately, finding specific multipotent1 , or specialized, stem cells in adults has proven to be a challenge in the past. For example: * Until recently it was believed that the adult nervous system did not contain any stem cells, but since then they have been located in rat and mouse nervous systems, bringing hope for additional sources of these cells.1 * It is also thought that we may someday be able to transplant them back into our own bodies as needed. However, if the disorder you are battling is a genetic disposition then this theory has a few flaws. o Your stem cells will have the same genetic defect. o Growing them in a lab will not change that, and they will be ineffective. o They are found in limited quantities and have not yet been isolated for all cell and tissue types in the body. o If someone needs a stem cell transplant right away, growing adult cells in a lab will take too long and another source will need to be used.Thus, the question remains "From where should we get these stem cells?" http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/chapman.html

There doesn't seem to be a way to get adult stem cells to do what embryonic cells can do. There may have been more debate in the research community in 2001 (the date of the article you cited), but there doesn't seem to be any debate now: stem cell researchers think we need to use embryonic stem cells.

The presidents speech confused me. After reading this thread then the speech.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010809-2.html

He makes a strong case why embryonic stem cell research makes scientific sense (I'm glad most of us are on the same page there), yet still doesn't make ethical sense. The reasoning his speechwriter used is that an embryo represents potential human life (as does a single-cell fertilized egg), and it would therefore be immoral to experiment on it (even though the embryos will eventually be thrown out or washed down the drain). He says, "I... believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator."Now, given that reasoning, and particularly the sentence I quoted, we're trying to understand the underlying motivation of the President's position. We know that he's an evangelical fundamentalist Christian; at least, he says he is. That led to the exchange with thor, which produced some heat, but no light.

personally, I'm waiting for the protractors of fetal stem cell research and/or the proponents of fundamentalism to actually make a point.If any of you have an actual point or argument, just say it!!don't say "you don't get it" or "ha, you just proved what I mean" or "you are an example of what I mean" if you havn't actually made a single point yourself.Just say it!!! If you can't, just go away.

The problem with this is that it will open a pandora's box of ways in which other people (the government, in this case) can decide for us what should be left up to ourselves to decide. If this becomes legal, it will be that much easier to clone a fetus to harvest it for its stem cells. The line between the living and the non-living becomes blurred, and it becomes that much easier to push things over the line that most of the public would, if things remained more clear, protest against. Does a cloned fetus have the same rights as a non-cloned one? Does a fetus have any rights at all? At what point do we answer "yes" to this question? We need to come to a consensus as a society what constitutes right and wrong before we are ready to answer these kinds of questions. For now, the answer I would give to stem-cell research is "no". Are you going to think of what is best for our society, or are you going to be selfish...bottom line.

first of all... thank you for making your opinion on FSCR a bit more clear. Agree or disagree, I'm hapy to hear your full opinion.Now we have something to discuss. In reply to: The problem with this is that it will open a pandora's box of ways in which other people (the government, in this case) can decide for us what should be left up to ourselves to decide. but that's exactly what they, or I should say HE, has done. The opinion of the people was not even concidered in his veto desision. In reply to: We need to come to a consensus as a society what constitutes right and wrong before we are ready to answer these kinds of questions. that's not a bad idea. it just didn't happen this time nor does it fall within the realms of fundamentalism.Maybe it's a question of ownership? "we give our embrio to science"... "I donate my body to science"... "I give my soul unto God who gave it and my body being dead to be buried, and my worldly estate etc etc"So that's the question... do we have the right of self determination? Do we have the right to speak for the unborn? Do we have the right to speak for the ill and dissabled?The argument of "condemning one for the life of another" goes both ways... be it the potential life of an embrio or the real life of a person with an incurable disese.Are you ready to make that decision for me, Thor?

In reply to: Does a cloned fetus have the same rights as a non-cloned one? Thats an interesting question when asked in Ireland. Our law dictates that a fetus has the same right to life as its mother, but if its cloned then it has no mother therefore it would have the rights of a test-tube. Hmm, an interesting loophole.

What in your mind would demonstrate a consensus? This is like waiting for a "consensus" on global warming.If you believe the polls, there is already a consensus on embryonic stem_cell research. The fact the the the conservatively-controlled houses of Congress voted (by a large majority) to fund the research also reflects that reality.Bringing cloning into the discussion just obfuscates it, and the slippery slope argument is logically invalid. You might as well ban all medical research.What about the fact that the embryos_ will be flushed? Out of the several hundred thousand that exist, 100-some have been adopted.There is a clear consensus on the matter of embryonic stem_cell research. It may not be an opinion you share, but it's a consensus nevertheless. Some research in this country will continue privately funded (and harder to regulate because of that), but most of it will move overseas.

In reply to:That led to the exchange with thor, which produced some heat, but no light. Thats sorta like cold fusion, do you realize you can be famous??heat and light are both forms of energy, how did ya get tha heat with no light ? can it be repeated in controled conditions?and more importantly...the real topic of this thread isnt morals, thats what everyone thinks, and then they all have different moralsf that they list as to why they are opposed, but I think the real question here is the same one at the heart of the abortion debate.When does life begin?if you could convince the fundalmentalist that life wasnt created when that sperm hit the egg, that it takes more then that, once your past that, then you cant start arguing about the potentiol for human life and the fact that the little bastards will all be trashed to begin with.meanwhile millions of people sit suffering with numerous things wrong that could be fixed and the quality of life brought up so that others can argue bullshit terms.fJava is heavy into that field, Her and I have talked alot in the past about it, there are so many strains, Bush allow testing on so many of thsoe available, but they are all adult strains, they are already programed to be what they are, you can not fuse them to create new, besides that, if you put any stock in what a woman whos been to school and doesnt give a shit about much outside of that schooling she crammed in her head believes, they are contaminated and for the most part useless.The good news is that not everyone has thier head in their ass, the US is already light years behind other countrys in so far as technology, this is jsut one more strike against us. Other peopel in other countrys are working ondeveloping it and they are jsut as good at what they do as the ones in the US. Since Bush has declared us the worlds police force, maybe another country can step up and be the worlds hospital and alleviate some of the suffering that can fixed with new therapy and medicines and understandings developed through fetal stem cell work.

the whole "when does life begin" debate is pointless concidering that most of the people who care deeply about the life of an embrio are the same people who will gleefully condem adults to death because they have committed a crime.hipocracy is the relm of the fundamentalist

The problem with cloning versus the sanctity of potential human life is that most of the cells of the body can donate DNA that can lead to the production of a twin of the donor. A cell scraped from the inside of your cheek is no different from a fertilized egg, in that they can both produce a complete human being (although they'll both need a human female host).To be morally consistent, whoever is concerned about the plight of fertilized ova also needs to be concerned about the disposition of most of the cells in every human body. (I wonder if the fact that neither a cheek skin cell or a fertilized egg is sentient has any effect on the morality of their destruction. If not, then we'd better stop brushing our teeth.)

When you make it OK to rob a clone for parts, you have devaluated the clone to less than the status of human being. Once you've done that, you have, in effect created a slave race (of clones). I think that should alarm people and bring them to realize that they need to think about the ramifications of their decisions, and not turn a blind eye to other possible outcomes as well. People on this board have no problem slinging mud on behalf of a race they don't belong to...what about clones? Do they count? Why or why not? How many folks saw the movie "I, Robot"?