Bush vetoes Stem Cell Research

[Thorn]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
when Bush made the announcement he was surrounded by living children who otherwise would have been destroyed

perhaps you should tell those kids they are standing in the way of science. . . .

No he needed those kids to grow up to continue to fight in the Iraq War.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Bush isn't much of a tool of the religious right, otherwise he would have done more about abortion/etc. He just gives them enough to keep them voting republican.

JM

Yes he is. He doesn't want to outright ban abortion because he would piss off most centrist voters thus assuring a Republican minority while if he did ban abortion he'd satisfy many of the religious extremist so that the GOP would lose its single best "get out the vote" issue. He wants to restrict it enough to keep the religious right voting Republican but not enough to offend everyone else into not voting Republican. It is a classic political fumble/calculation.

[Jon Miller]

Umm, if he was a real tool of the religious right he would do more about abortion.. you are saying the right thing, you just don't understand what being the tool of the religious right would mean.

He is using them, they aren't using him.

And it isn't just religious extremists who are against abortion.. I know lots of people who never go to church or do anything that would suggest that they were very religious at all who are against abortion... it is just that the religious extremists are the most vocal.. and are a big group of it.

JM
(particularly, a lot of the anti-abortion women I know aren't vocal at all.. or even very religious.. but they are flat against abortion)

[Thorn]

God thinks you should focus more on people that are alive, and stop this pro-life, when in reality a pro-death society on every other front...

[Dinner]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/5194192.stm

China is not holding back. They are going after all sorts of frontier science in the hopes of winning patents for new cures and making money.

[Thorn]

Yeah but China also executes live (non-fetus) babies as pop control, what you think of that?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
He is using them, they aren't using him.

I'm going to have to agree with a great many people on the religious right on this case. They, and I, believe that the Republicans only pander come election year and then don't deliver foir the religious right. They'll toss a bone like eliminating 90% of scientific research into stem cells but they won't ban abortions. They'll pass restrictive laws for abortion ,knowing even the most conservative courts will strike them down, so that they can endlessly wail about "activist judges" which they themselves put in place. They won't outlaw abortion because 1) there is no legal way to do it, and 2) they need people pissed off about abortion.

The religious right is guilty of being to stupid to understand they are being used. three decades and only a minority of them have figured this out and even when a leader of the religious right does voice that the Republicans aren't delivering they get shouted down by the Rush Limbaugh crowd who say "well, those evil liberals want to eat babies so even though we lie and don't deliver you're still better with us".

In short I agree with you and several editorialists on the right. The Republican Party does use the religious right but has no plans on delivering the goods. They know delivering would piss off the majority of voters, that just throwing a bone now and then will keep the fanatics happy or atleast happy enough to keep voting, and that the majority of the religious right are to stupid/blinded to figure out they've been had.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Thorn
Yeah but China also executes live (non-fetus) babies as pop control, what you think of that?

They have forced abortions for women who have multiple children, true. Not good. In the long run it is better then population caused societal collapse but it is still nasty.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Thorn
Yeah but China also executes live (non-fetus) babies as pop control, what you think of that?

That you are a liar.

[Ben Kenobi]

The sad thing is, there's no reason to have to make a choice. There's more than enough aborted fetus tissue to go around.

Bush's veto would be logical if the use of stem cells increased the number of abortions. But since that's not the case, all this veto does is to bar federal funding for experimentation into the most promising are of medical care ever.

First off, I don't see how you can say that creating a demand for the tissue would not also create incentives for increasing the supply. Fact of life. This is one problem with using aborted fetal tissue after the child is dead for medical experimentation.

Secondly, it is disingenous to suggest that the experimentation could be done with dead tissue. Dead tissue does not work you need tissue that is living tissue to harvest stem cells. Even with adult cells, ie skin cells and bone marrow cells could not be taken from a cadaver and still work. You need to take them from another person in order for them to be of any use to you at all.

Finally, there are absolutely no restrictions on the use of skin, bone marrow, blood or other sources of stem cells, the only restrictions placed are on using embryos since you need to kill the embryo in order to harvest the cells. The issue is not whether one science is promising, you can do perfectly fine research without the need to use embryos as a source of stem cells.

[Ben Kenobi]

Are you talking about adoption programs for bona fide people, or something else entirely?

I'm talking about embryo adoption. I don't see why that is so hard to figure out. The folks who go through IVF have frozen embryos that they give up for adoption just like you give up your baby after they are born. The difference is that the embryos are thawed and implanted into the mothers womb so the adoptive mother gets to carry her adoptive child in the womb.

I can't see why this is a bad thing, instead of throwing the embryos in the trash, you allow them to grow and develop like any other child.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by faded glory
It isnt just 'talk'. Studies have been underway since 2000 that prove stem cells are a magic bullet. That they do work. Paralysed mice regain movement.

The trials in humans are having amazing results. In 20 years we will start seeing stem cells affect us more and more.

In 20 years we will probably be relying almost entirely on patient derived stem cells while embryonic stem cells and embryonic derived stem cell lines will have a very secondary role.

[Ben Kenobi]

No one's going to take them.

http://www.nightlight.org/snowflakeadoption.htm

Folks have and would just for the privilege of having children to look after. I can see this taking off since there are way more parents looking to adopt infants then there are children for them to adopt.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Thorn
God thinks you should focus more on people that are alive, and stop this pro-life, when in reality a pro-death society on every other front...

Tell God if he thinks that he should tell us in person instead of sending us a memo through some guy on our game forum.

Not that I necessarily disagree with God on this particular point.

[Ben Kenobi]

It's stupid and pointless since his decision does nothing to change the number of embryos that are killed or are allowed to die. It's basically stopping research involving cadavers since these embryos will be immediately destroyed in any event. The research would have simply provided an alternative to destruction.

They are frozen after a successful IVF cycle. Why do you believe these frozen embryos are immediately destroyed after being conceived? This is where they get their supplies of embryos from the frozen embryos from IVF cycles.

Fortunately adult stem cell research is probably getting more money as a result of this. In the long run even if everybody in the world thought medical use of such embryos was acceptable the adult stem cell research would likely still be more useful. Adult stem cells allow the production of stem cells from the patient. Even though embryonic stem cells have a drastically reduced set of rejection issues as compared to other allogeneic tissue sources they still can't compare with autologous tissue sources.

Needless to say, adult stem cells are a proven technology. Well said. If I have a hundred bucks to put in something that works, or something that might work, I think I'll invest in the something that works.