Bush vetoes Stem Cell Research

[Proteus_MST]

Do you really think the opinion of the citizens, the vox populi, really matters?
I can think of only a short time every couple of years and that is during election time
All of the other times it´s the opinion of those who sponsored the election campaign of the winner (and perhaps its religious beliefs) that´s much more important

[asleepathewheel]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Oerdin
What happened to democracy and majority rule? [QUOTE]

Waving your hand and saying the majority wants something doesn't make it the right thing to do. Blindly following polls can be just as dangerous as blindly following just your party's interest groups.


But you seem to be someone that only makes demands for majority rule and democracy when it serves your purposes. Otherwise, you think the masses are uneducated sheep that can't be trusted, eh?

[Elok]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I don't see how you can draw that conclusion - are you just reading the Science section of the newspaper? That's the only sort of thing they actually report about.

I don't have subscriptions to science journals, so I have to rely on the newspaper, the Economist, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, etc. They never mention anything else, but if the scientific community has learned something from GT, so much the better. Huh.

[Dinner]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by asleepathewheel
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Oerdin
What happened to democracy and majority rule?

Waving your hand and saying the majority wants something doesn't make it the right thing to do. Blindly following polls can be just as dangerous as blindly following just your party's interest groups.


But you seem to be someone that only makes demands for majority rule and democracy when it serves your purposes. Otherwise, you think the masses are uneducated sheep that can't be trusted, eh?

When have I said he anything like that last sentence?

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

The federal ban is hurting the US in the biotech sector.

True, but that's not going to change the minds of those who find the destruction of embryos for stem cell research to be morally repugnant.

Most of the embryos that are used for stem cells come for fertility clinics. What would happen to those extra embryos if they aren't used for stem cells? Kept frozen for a while and then thrown in the garbage eventually.

Cracking down on fertility clinics that mix up big batches of embryos would make sense (I'd disagree with it, but it would be logical). But preventing the use of embryos for science that would just be thrown away anyway is just dumb. It's about as logical as not permitting med students to be taught to dissect cadavers.

[AnnC]

If religious-right types were genuinely interested in the fate of unused embryos, they would focus their energies on regulating the IVF industry instead of forcing unused embryos to be destroyed rather than be used for research (which will be the outcome of Bush's ban on federal money for stem-cell research).

In a typical IVF case, 10-12 eggs are fertilized but only 3-4 are implanted. The remaining embryos go in the freezer, which immediately destroys two-thirds of them as only one-third will survive a freezing and thawing cycle. The embryos stay in the freezer until the clinic runs out of storage space and then the oldest ones are flushed to make room for the new ones.

Religious-right types like to talk about embryo adoption, as if it will solve all the problems associated with unused embryos, but only a tiny percentage of leftover embryos get adopted. Why? 1) demand for embryos to adopt is much smaller than available supply and 2) many parents of unused embryos don't like the idea of somebody else raising their genetic child, so they don't make their embryos available for adoption.

In Italy, for example, the IVF process is regulated. Only three eggs can be fertilized at a time, and all three must be implanted. Therefore, Italy doesn't have hundreds of thousands of leftover embryos sitting in freezers. So why is it that you never hear the religious right mention this? (I have my own theory, but I would be interested in hearing what other critics of the religious right think about this.)

[Proteus_MST]

I don´t think the majority of the religious right types knows enough about science and medicine, to know about the facts you posted. Especially those who form the opinion of the masses (like preachers for example )
Therefore they just mention buzzwords they,for example,read in newspapers, like "stem cell research" and say it´s evil. And the majority of the religious people who hear it believe them and second this opinion without thinking further about it.
As I doubt that the thing about the IVF process you mentioned are published in popular (non scientific) newspapers, the opinion makers for the religious right don´t know about it (and probably genuinely believe that no embryo is wasted in this process).

[Elok]

I think it has more to do with having to be somewhat moderate in our demands...assuming by "religious right" you mean the PL movement and other anti-stem-cell groups. Bush is trying for a gesture that appears to mean something but won't cause major trouble, and this is what he settled on. Going after IVF would be tricky at this point. Mind you, I think he'll be facing major trouble anyway, but he's used to that.

[AnnC]

This response is a bit late - I haven't looked at this thread in days.

Proteus, do you think it's just that religious-right types are uninformed and that they would more actively oppose IVF if they understood that standard IVF procedures are designed to create excess embryos which subsequently get destroyed?

Elok, it sounds as though you are a member of the religious right. If so, do you think that destruction of a 100-cell embryo is equivalent to aborting a 12-week fetus? And if you think the two are equivalent, how can you actively oppose abortion but passively stand by and let huge number of embryos be destroyed in IVF clinics (in order to be "somewhat moderate in our demands")?

[Whoha]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400329.html

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Monday to permit limited use of EU funds for research involving human embryonic stem cells provided it does not entail destroying embryos, preserving the status quo.

can you do research on embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos?

[AnnC]

If they don't destroy embryos, it means they're using existing cell lines. As I understand it, embryos get destroyed only when researchers create new cell lines.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Whoha

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400329.html

can you do research on embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos?

Warning: Wild, uneducated, speculating guess follows:

If an embryo is still at the stem-cell stage, it's possible to take a portion of the embryo for research and the remaining portion will re-generate.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Whoha

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400329.html

can you do research on embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos?

The point is that the EU funds won't go to creating new stem cell lines, but will fund all the other aspects of research. Researchers might need other funding sources for a minor portion of their research budge that goes to this issue. Its basically a pretty token compromise that doesn't significantly impact stem cell research.

[Elok]

Originally posted by AnnC
Elok, it sounds as though you are a member of the religious right. If so, do you think that destruction of a 100-cell embryo is equivalent to aborting a 12-week fetus? And if you think the two are equivalent, how can you actively oppose abortion but passively stand by and let huge number of embryos be destroyed in IVF clinics (in order to be "somewhat moderate in our demands")?

I'm saying that this is tempered by political considerations, and not necessarily motivated by them entirely. Going after IVF would mean a huge fight, banning a process that's been legal for years and that involves the destruction of embryos only incidentally and is generally thought of as creating life. A lot of people don't have the stomach for that kind of knock-down, drag-out fight, so they chisel away instead with a "compromise." The consequence is that, as you've noted, such a position makes no logical sense.

I do not consider myself a member of the religious right; I dislike the death penalty, I rather like most forms of welfare, I have no beef with evolution whatsoever and I wish birth control were more widely available. I'm a "religious moderate," I guess, insofar as I have almost equal contempt for both parties at this point--it's hard to say whether Democratic incompetence and ineffectual pandering are more disgusting than Republican cold-bloodedness and wilfull political blindness. I do detest abortion at any stage, and think it ought to be illegal except for saving the mother's life or in cases of fatal defects in the fetus.

IVF is absurd, unnecessary and downright grotesque (I honestly can't imagine the doublethink required to make a child on a production line, throw away the extras, and then think of the remainder as your "sweet lil' baby"), but I'm fine with keeping it legal provided no excess embryos are created and destroyed, as in the Italian law referenced earlier.

At this point, of course, such a law would appear to be a frantic political stopgap meant to shut down a controversy in progress, and I'm pretty sure it would be too little, too late. Looks like we're going to have to fight it out the long, hard, ugly way, unless some scientists find a way to use umbilical/adult stem cells and stop this farce in its tracks.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
If an embryo is still at the stem-cell stage, it's possible to take a portion of the embryo for research and the remaining portion will re-generate.

Not sure if that's true.

As far as I remember, even when an embryo is a blob of four cells, each cell is already earmarked to become some part of the body. If you remove one, a large large of the body would be missing, so you might as well disassemble the thing and use all four cells.