Shane for Wax Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 Yes or no? I say yes. We need that research done to stop all these diseases in their tracks! We could probably get rid of AIDs or cancer if we had the ability to research the stem cells. (Please try to keep religion out of this, I know it's hard) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jun Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 I agree as well, but since this kinda falls under abortion.. i am a bit scared on how this topic will go out XD But imagine, all the possibility with Stem Cell Research! You can fix some handicaps as well. People who have had heart attacks, ect. I think it would be nice for scientist to experiment on this some more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livvy Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 I quite agree with stem cell research! I hardly think it falls under the category of abortion; stem cells are harvested long before the lab-grown cells look anything like a baby. There's really not much life being taken there. =\ There are so many possibilities with stem cells today, and if research were allowed to continue, there would be so many more things that could be cured or at least treated without using chemicals or radiation. Heart attacks, heart disease in general, strokes, mental damage due to drug addictions, could all be ALMOST reversed with stem cells. It would be almost cruel NOT to further stem cell research. (Of course, this is all coming from a young scientist.) ~ Livvy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 What I think is amazing about stem cell research is that the death of one person can save the lives of millions, assuming that it's successful the very next time. I mean the potentials are endless... ...and yet, what about the to-be baby? It has no say in this, and what if it doesn't give a crap about possibly saving millions of people? To take a life like that doesn't seem right... ...and yet, think of all the people that could be saved! All of those lives can be improved, diseases once incurable are now curable! But... As you can see, I'm very split on this topic. One side of me supports it, the other is against it. The same goes with abortion, and currently I'm content with having no opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livvy Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 At the time the stem cells are harvested, the "to-be baby" (nice term, by the way) is all of like maybe a week into development. Not much more life there than in bacteria, and we're fine with killing bacteria to cure sickness. The baby can't give a crap about anything; it can't think (or crap, for that matter... but that was crude of me.) Besides, they're grown outside of the womb; they wouldn't develop properly without intensive care and such anyway. ~ Livvy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 Yeah, but then it kinda dips into religion, where all humans at any level of development have souls...but we're supposed to stay away from that. For me, I'll just let the higher powers deal with all of the issues such as abortion and stem cell research. I will decide to remain neutral, since logic tells me to support it, and my morals tell me not to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 The only reason I ask is because of my Psychology class. At the time that stem cells are taken a 'to-be baby' is nothing at all really. It's a zygote. And to be honest, I think we are overpopulated already, so one less 'child' in the world to save those who are already living and can do great things is a good thing. But that's the Misanthropic curmudgeon in me. =/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Yes, we can all see the benefits of stem cell research. I mean I doubt that anyone looking at the situation with their morals set aside will say that they disprove of it, since there's no harm to be done, but that's the thing. Morals. It's the reason why it's so controversial. It goes against the morals of many of the American public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 Sometimes morals have to be set aside for the greater good. But at the same time, the moral thing to do is to do something good... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Morals are what people think is the right thing to do. Stem cell research would be the best thing to do, but is it the right thing? I mean, eating dead human bodies would probably be a good thing to do to reduce world hunger, but is it the right thing to do? I'm pretty sure it would go against many people's morals to cannibalized dead humans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 You make it seem like I don't know what morals are. This is the second time I've noticed the tone of your writing to be harsh and condescending. Anyways, what I said still stands. Is it right to allow a load of people to suffer when the cure is hiding within stem cells? It's immoral to sit by and not use up all your resources in helping someone. At least in my view. BTW, eating dead bodies would be wrong anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 This is the second time I've noticed the tone of your writing to be harsh and condescending. :P Now you know why I don't write for a living. But I didn't mean to sound harsh, I was just pointing out that it's possible for stem cell research to be against morals. And...erm, second time? And there are plenty of people that'd rather search for alternative ways to find cures instead of denying life to a to-be baby. And why not cannibalize dead humans? I mean you cook 'em up and serve them with a side of rice and most people would never even know. (Not saying that I support the cannibalization of humans lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livvy Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Actually, there have been many instances where humans were cannibalized due to overpopulation, crowding, food shortages, etc. But that's besides the point. A lot of the alternatives to stem cells have been tried and shown to be unsuccessful or inefficient. Stem cells, so far, appear to be one of the most humane ways of dealing with some diseases. It doesn't sound humane if you talk about it in terms of killing an unborn baby, but you're not killing an unborn baby. You're killing cells. Just like when you kill fungus cells to make penicillin. Same principle. You really aren't taking a life. ~ Livvy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Yeah, but I think the point is that they're human cells. I mean, we eat animals for meat, why not humans? That's the reason why we can take fungus cells to make medicine, but not human cells. And like I said, many people believe that in stem cell research, you're denying a would-be baby the chance to live, and that's not right to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkyTurtle Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 My main complaint about folks who gripe about stem cell research is this: 20-30 years ago, we were having this exact same debate over organ transplant. I am old enough to remember some of those debates... and my mom is here today because of a kidney transplant. Eventually even the most outspoken folks got the idea that transplants were/are a good idea, and now they are totally accepted in socieity. I keep wondering if these folks who are going nuts over stem cells remember that this has been argued over before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 More on cannibalism: Our ancestors may have practiced cannibalism which in turn transferred genes to modern humans providing protection against brain ailments, a study has said. The study has found genes that offer protection from brain diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), in populations on four continents, Nature magazine reports. This spread might be an evolutionary response to the dangers of cannibalism. Safeguarding DNA is most common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. This is the legacy of the Fore's custom of eating their dead relatives in funereal feasts. However, cannibalism triggered an epidemic of a deadly brain disease called Kuru during the last century. "This is the signature of natural selection in a population where devastating recent epidemic occurred due to cannibalism", says team member Simon Mead of University College London. Seeing the same signature in other parts of the world suggests that diseases may once have spread by the same route, he is quoted as saying by Nature . Kuru and CJD are thought to occur when distortion in prion proteins warp other healthy prions and clump together in the brain. About one in a million people develop CJD spontaneously. Others have caught it by eating infected tissue, as seems to have happened in the spread of mad cow disease causing variant CJD in humans, the study said. It's thought that the Fore caught Kuru around the turn of the twentieth century from eating a sufferer of spontaneous CJD, the researchers said. Nearly 80 per cent of Fore women aged over 50, who had participated in funereal feasts, had the protective gene, Mead's team found - only women and children ate their ancestors. Women born after cannibalism was banned in the mid-1950s are less likely to carry the gene. Mead's team, Nature says, also looked at Africans, Asian and Europeans. All carried some form of protective mutation. "The genes are more common than you'd expect," says Mead. Human bones bearing marks of butchery are seen as evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals, and among early modern humans who lived in Spain 800,000 years ago. Archaeologists have also found cooking pots from twelfth-century America containing human muscle protein. But evidence of cannibalism in modern humans is scant, and dates back only about 15,000 years, archaeologist Nick Thorpe of King Alfred's College in Winchester, UK, is quoted by Nature as saying. He suspects the practice has been widespread but appearing and dying out many times. The key thing to find out, says Thorpe, is how common cannibalism would need to be for the genetic variant to arise. Mead says that his study can't answer this, nor the question of when or where the protective genes arose. At any rate...more on the stem cell thing. Did you know you can take stem cells from the umbilical cord? Is that a wow thing for you? You can also get them from adult cells. So the arguments of 'you're killing an unborn baby' can be somewhat moot, depending on where you take your stem cells from. Although difficult to extract, since they are taken from the patient's own body, adult stem cells are superior to both umbilical cord and embryonic stem cells. They are plentiful. There is always an exact DNA match so the body's immune system never rejects them. And as we might expect, results have been both profound and promising. Links: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/43253358.cms http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/pros-...ll-research.htm @Unstream: The first time your tone was harsh was in your first post when you were talking about 'yes we can see why stem cell research is good' sarcasm there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antiaircraft Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 The post above has the exact point I was going to make. Stem cells do not have to be 'would-be babies', they can be harvested from umbilical cords (and, with much more difficulty, from growing or mature humans). If there's a moral debate over using zygotes for stem cell research, then we can just avoid that matter altogether. :yes: And to be frank, nobody can reliably dispute the massive potential stem cell research has for improving our medical technologies. For many medical conditions (including my own), stem cell related procedures are the only things that even have a chance of working, even if they are still experimental. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 @Unstream: The first time your tone was harsh was in your first post when you were talking about 'yes we can see why stem cell research is good' sarcasm there. I wasn't being sarcastic though. It would be a good thing if it were to be successful. I'm not against stem cell research, nor for it. I'm just arguing since if I wasn't here, I don't think there'd be any opposition lol. And they do harvest the cells of would-be babies, and I think that's the controversy here, since it kills the would-be babies. If we only harvested the cells from grown adults that volunteered to have them taken, then I'm pretty sure nobody would care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 People only care because the media has blown it out of proportion. They don't even say you can get them from adult humans or umbilical cords. I'm sure if people knew that to be frank zygote stem cells aren't as reliable, they would probably change their tune. And how can they harvest them when it is illegal now? lol BTW, I practically write for a living. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macabre Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 Stem cell research is great. Embryonic stem cell research is a different matter. What gives us the right to create human beings just so we can kill them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ΩCCΩ Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 What is stem cell reserching. well, whatever it is I think that it is fun having somebody pull you with your spines out of bed in the morning ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 28, 2009 Author Share Posted January 28, 2009 Stem cell research is great. Embryonic stem cell research is a different matter.What gives us the right to create human beings just so we can kill them? I was talking about stem cell research not having to do with zygotes. (It is NOT an embryo at the time of removing the stem cells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livvy Posted January 28, 2009 Share Posted January 28, 2009 What gives us the right to create human beings just so we can kill them? The exact same thing that gives us the right to breed hundreds of rats just so we can manipulate them for our own gain. Science. (Woah, that came out harshly. I really didn't mean it to.) I understand the moral issues with embryonic stem cell research, and from a personal perspective I'd agree that it doesn't seem quite right, but from a scientist's perspective (I'm in a research/science program at my school, so I try to take the science perspective whenever I can), the potential benefits outweigh the not-completely-moral edge to it. However, expansion in researching stem cells not from embryos will be just as useful if not more so, and will have less moral conflicts. ~ Livvy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane for Wax Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 Zygote------------->Embryo------------>Fetus------------------->Childhood--->Adulthood ^Stem Cells ^no cells ^Umbilical cord stem cells ^Adult Stem Cells (Not as good for research) (Somewhat better) (Best Cells for Research) Is it moral to allow us to breed rats for our research? They're babies too, they're living beings. Their life is just as precious. But I still support it, and so do millions of Americans who are against stem cell research. I bet if stem cell research was legal, and they had been doing it for a while, I wouldn't have the problems with my spine that I do. Crap, sorry for the double post >_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unstream Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 Actually, to religion and to humans, a rat is nowhere near as important as a human. So their life is not as precious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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