Well first off in order to actually obtain stem cells you must stop development before the 'embrio' becomes more than a tiney ball of cells. If they are allowed to continue to develope then they turn its a little ball of developed cells and theya re not good. This is persay to get traditional stem cells. Stems cells can also be obtained from things like umbilical cords and such but they are not as 'pure' they are still undefined cells but they will have certain attributes to them that early development stem cells won't have.
With that said, it is sad that many people don't understand when and how stem cells are harvested. You yourself seemed unsure as to when the optimum time to harvest them is. I think much of what holds stem cell research back is that many people disapprove because they thing we are getting them from 16 week old aborted babies or some such. Good stem cells are obtained from an egg that has recently been fertilized. This is not to say that we can not get the second type of stem cells from 16 week old aborted fetuses umbilical cords but we can also do that from fetuses folks bring to term.
So it is really only a matter of weather or not you concider a tiney ball of undeveloped cells a human life. Please keep in mind, like half of all pregnancies end in spontaniouse abortions in the first few weeks of pregnancy, before the woman even knows she is pregnant. So its not even a ruling on when a fetus becomes a human life, its when does an embrio become a life and no embrio can support itself outside the body.
The trouble with trying to define a life by if it can survive outside the body is that it keeps getting earlier and earlier. I am sure that we will be able to eventually raise a person 'in a test tube' per say. But when Jason was born 3.5 months early he had a 85% chance of death, now we save babies born that early all the time, they have something like a 15% death rate. We have saved infants now who have had almost compleatly undeveloped organs. You can not define life on this because it will always change. Though I also agree that this is the best method. I would say that even if we can keep a brand new embrio alive in a tube then thats the womans right to give it up right then and there. But then, who is to pay for all these unwanted babies?
And on a side note, we have not compleatly illegalized stem cell research (at least not last time I checked) we just illegalized 90% of it. We are allowed to use cord cells and there is one lab that is allowed to make stem cells it is just however severarly limited in how many and how it gives them it. In order to make these technological break threws that we might have, we most definatly need more cells. He is holding back so much research but banning several methods of harvesting and utilization of stem cells.
I actually do not know Kerry's views on stem cell research, and I am sure he will try to dodge that question all the way to the white house. NOthing can loose or gain you a vote like stem cell research, I think its to risky for him to say very mucha bout it. That and I think many folks have forgotten about them all together, and why shouldn't they. We won't make any big discoveries to get them in the news when there is only a trickling supply. They made it in the news before only because we made discoveries, its sad to say that if no one announced the potential of stem cells, no one would know about them and we would still be moving forward.
yeah, i dont relly know what is needed for stem cell research. i knew it was stuff that is considered pre fetus, but i didnt know how much... and i consider myself as informed as the rest of the public, at least... and yet the public supposedly outcries the stem cell research. it's like usual, uninformed people making decisions before they should.
aided and abetted by the politicians, of course.
and yeah, the age at which life might begin will be decreasing, and i'm not sure how to control that. maybe there is a different standard we can find. like when brain function begins, or when someother indicator of life starts? i don't know, this area is so difficult, becuase i dont know if we know that much a bout it all yet. more research!
i'm glad to hear we havent outlawed all stem cell research, but we need to allow more research, as long as it is properly controlled.
and no joke any opinion on stem cell research would make kerry lose any chance of the white house... if he's got any good advisors, they'll make sure he keeps his mouth shut on this issue until he theoretically wins.
Thats what I was saying, you I consider even more informed than the average Joe (your young, stay current and are in a learning enviornment) in many ways and you yourself have trouble explaining stem cell's, how they work and where we get them. Perhaps if we informed the public more they would oppose the research and the production of stem cells less. Half of america pictures fetuses in beakers being killed and harvested for cells. Pro life blew it way out of proportion when scientists asked if they could have the umbilical cords of aborted fetuses. We are scientists, we don't want to see something very useful go to waste. We could save lives with those cells!
The determination of being 'human' is difficult under the premis of brain function because we all have different definitions of what that is. The brain begins to form very early on and begins to funtion fairly soon in the capacities to see light (fetuses will turn away from a brigh light) and eventually feel pain (this is difficult to proove also, but we think they can). Are primative brain funtions counted as a human brain? Do we need to wait until the baby has some sort of actualy thought processes, and if so how do we test this.
See choosing factors like that are difficult because they are a warren of questions. If it is when the heart forms, this begins to happen early on to, but it wont fully form until much later. The fetus takes a little while to start 'looking' human but this again depends on your definition of what looks like a human form. Everything depends on your point of view. It is a sticky subject and always will be.
I actually think going with 'the baby being able to survive outside the woumb' would not be so bad. Even as our technology get better, allowing the baby to survive outside the womb at a much earlier age, woman will be able to induce labor or have the baby removed and then right then and there give it to the state. Then the woman has the right to choose to keep the baby inside of her or not, and pro life gets their living fetus.
The only question is, if we have 1 million abortions a year (I have no idea how many) thats 1 million very high cost babies (It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a premature baby alive) being turned over to the state. Who will pay for these now 1 million new super expensive orphans? I know that I don't want to have to bear this cost as a tax payer but it is unethical to say if your pro life, you pay.
I think that the availibility of birth control is the key to solving this debate. With more effective and availible contraception I think the number of abortions will go down. If the number of abortions go down then perhaps bearing the cost of the new 'saved' children in our scenario wouldn't be so bad. But this would involve tackling several nation wide problems at once, and we all know Uncle Sam is no good at that.
Well first off in order to actually obtain stem cells you must stop development before the 'embrio' becomes more than a tiney ball of cells. If they are allowed to continue to develope then they turn its a little ball of developed cells and theya re not good. This is persay to get traditional stem cells. Stems cells can also be obtained from things like umbilical cords and such but they are not as 'pure' they are still undefined cells but they will have certain attributes to them that early development stem cells won't have.
With that said, it is sad that many people don't understand when and how stem cells are harvested. You yourself seemed unsure as to when the optimum time to harvest them is. I think much of what holds stem cell research back is that many people disapprove because they thing we are getting them from 16 week old aborted babies or some such. Good stem cells are obtained from an egg that has recently been fertilized. This is not to say that we can not get the second type of stem cells from 16 week old aborted fetuses umbilical cords but we can also do that from fetuses folks bring to term.
So it is really only a matter of weather or not you concider a tiney ball of undeveloped cells a human life. Please keep in mind, like half of all pregnancies end in spontaniouse abortions in the first few weeks of pregnancy, before the woman even knows she is pregnant. So its not even a ruling on when a fetus becomes a human life, its when does an embrio become a life and no embrio can support itself outside the body.
The trouble with trying to define a life by if it can survive outside the body is that it keeps getting earlier and earlier. I am sure that we will be able to eventually raise a person 'in a test tube' per say. But when Jason was born 3.5 months early he had a 85% chance of death, now we save babies born that early all the time, they have something like a 15% death rate. We have saved infants now who have had almost compleatly undeveloped organs. You can not define life on this because it will always change. Though I also agree that this is the best method. I would say that even if we can keep a brand new embrio alive in a tube then thats the womans right to give it up right then and there. But then, who is to pay for all these unwanted babies?
And on a side note, we have not compleatly illegalized stem cell research (at least not last time I checked) we just illegalized 90% of it. We are allowed to use cord cells and there is one lab that is allowed to make stem cells it is just however severarly limited in how many and how it gives them it. In order to make these technological break threws that we might have, we most definatly need more cells. He is holding back so much research but banning several methods of harvesting and utilization of stem cells.
I actually do not know Kerry's views on stem cell research, and I am sure he will try to dodge that question all the way to the white house. NOthing can loose or gain you a vote like stem cell research, I think its to risky for him to say very mucha bout it. That and I think many folks have forgotten about them all together, and why shouldn't they. We won't make any big discoveries to get them in the news when there is only a trickling supply. They made it in the news before only because we made discoveries, its sad to say that if no one announced the potential of stem cells, no one would know about them and we would still be moving forward.
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aided and abetted by the politicians, of course.
and yeah, the age at which life might begin will be decreasing, and i'm not sure how to control that. maybe there is a different standard we can find. like when brain function begins, or when someother indicator of life starts? i don't know, this area is so difficult, becuase i dont know if we know that much a bout it all yet. more research!
i'm glad to hear we havent outlawed all stem cell research, but we need to allow more research, as long as it is properly controlled.
and no joke any opinion on stem cell research would make kerry lose any chance of the white house... if he's got any good advisors, they'll make sure he keeps his mouth shut on this issue until he theoretically wins.
Reply
Thats what I was saying, you I consider even more informed than the average Joe (your young, stay current and are in a learning enviornment) in many ways and you yourself have trouble explaining stem cell's, how they work and where we get them. Perhaps if we informed the public more they would oppose the research and the production of stem cells less. Half of america pictures fetuses in beakers being killed and harvested for cells. Pro life blew it way out of proportion when scientists asked if they could have the umbilical cords of aborted fetuses. We are scientists, we don't want to see something very useful go to waste. We could save lives with those cells!
The determination of being 'human' is difficult under the premis of brain function because we all have different definitions of what that is. The brain begins to form very early on and begins to funtion fairly soon in the capacities to see light (fetuses will turn away from a brigh light) and eventually feel pain (this is difficult to proove also, but we think they can). Are primative brain funtions counted as a human brain? Do we need to wait until the baby has some sort of actualy thought processes, and if so how do we test this.
See choosing factors like that are difficult because they are a warren of questions. If it is when the heart forms, this begins to happen early on to, but it wont fully form until much later. The fetus takes a little while to start 'looking' human but this again depends on your definition of what looks like a human form. Everything depends on your point of view. It is a sticky subject and always will be.
I actually think going with 'the baby being able to survive outside the woumb' would not be so bad. Even as our technology get better, allowing the baby to survive outside the womb at a much earlier age, woman will be able to induce labor or have the baby removed and then right then and there give it to the state. Then the woman has the right to choose to keep the baby inside of her or not, and pro life gets their living fetus.
The only question is, if we have 1 million abortions a year (I have no idea how many) thats 1 million very high cost babies (It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a premature baby alive) being turned over to the state. Who will pay for these now 1 million new super expensive orphans? I know that I don't want to have to bear this cost as a tax payer but it is unethical to say if your pro life, you pay.
I think that the availibility of birth control is the key to solving this debate. With more effective and availible contraception I think the number of abortions will go down. If the number of abortions go down then perhaps bearing the cost of the new 'saved' children in our scenario wouldn't be so bad. But this would involve tackling several nation wide problems at once, and we all know Uncle Sam is no good at that.
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