Stem Cells Cure Paralyzed Rats 330
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article on Forbes as well as other sources, 'Scientists have used [embryonic] stem cells and a soup of nerve-friendly chemicals to not just bridge a damaged spinal cord but actually regrow the circuitry needed to move a muscle, helping partially paralyzed rats walk.'"
Re:Also works as a gender change medicine! (Score:2, Insightful)
Reconnecting Nerves is like hand soldering (Score:5, Insightful)
Its always going to be messy and you will likely fuse the wrong things together.
But having some movement/sensation is good so Thumbs (and index finger) up to this research.
This is what we're talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
Stem cells, biology (evolution!), global warming...The subjection of science to political considerations has to stop.
Re:If only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of subscribing to a moral code is realizing that its requirements are overriding.
Here is the thing about moral codes: individuals subscribe to them according to their own beliefs. The government has no business legislating them. If christians of various flavors have a problem with stem cell research, they are free to refuse treatments based on it.
This could be crucial to the stem cell debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This could be crucial to the stem cell debate (Score:2, Insightful)
We are talking about embryonic stem cell research,and it wouldn't change my viewpoint to have a cure for myself or a loved one dangled in front of me. Some of those "luddites" are not expressing an irrational fear of technology, but a set of deep-seated values.
Re:Reconnecting Nerves is like hand soldering (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference being that the cpu (brain) can recognize those miswired connections and reroute them to work properly. Usually.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
An effective treatment, NOT a "cure" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Actually (Score:2, Insightful)
It has been demonstrated time and time again that Big Business is not in the habit of taking risks. They would rather tweak an existing drug, repackage it and bingo we have another anti-histamine (Claritin-D). If you have done the research you will know that the big cures have NOT been happening. That drug companies have dumped more money into advertising than R&D. The bottom line, government funding is necessary for BASIC RESEARCH. Basic Research is very necessary but is not necessarily profitable. Thus a company operating on bottom line principles - which is all of them - will not TAKE RISKS.
What is needed is less politics in government funding. NIH and the NSF are setup to do just that - hand out grants based on merits of the research not the politics. Tell all the tree-hugging hippies, that includes the religious conservatives, to go home!
Re:Reconnecting Nerves is like hand soldering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:2, Insightful)
"Consideration" and "belief" shouldn't enter into the discussion. It is an objective fact that embryos are human beings. One needs only look at the embryo's genetic make up.
Deciding if embryos are human or not via statistics of beliefs or opinion polls of the populace is subjective to the whims of the day. It is like 1850's United States southern farmers `deciding` if blacks were people or 1930's German citizens `deciding` if non-Aryan peoples were sub-human.
Re:For those (Score:2, Insightful)
The point I was getting at is that there are clearly lunatics in any movement, but those are the only ones you hear from. Rarely do you hear about animal rights activists who understand the need for many medical experiments on animal, but hope to see those animals treated with some level of dignity (I dunno, maybe breeding too many lab mice and just throwing extras away). I would wager you could call me an "animal rights activist", I think abusing pets should be punished, I've never really been in favor of cosmetic testing on animals, and I think Humans do have a degree of responsibility in taking care of whatever we can... but I don't set lab mice free, or tell how we shouldn't test medical advances on animals. I just feel there is a level of decency we can exhibit in these cases... set a few ground rules for respectfully dealing with animals and their use in medicine, and follow them. I hope that that request isn't too "Ridiculous".
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really believe "The government has no business legislating [moral codes]"?
I firmly believe this. The government should be about enforcing agreed upon ethics that result in a conflict between individuals, not about morals.
Does that mean that you won't care if someone...
There is a difference between "caring" and thinking it is the government's job.
Common ethics says children need to be protected until they mature. If one individual tries to violate that ethical rule and in so doing violates the agreed upon ethical rights of others, then it is the government's responsibility to arbitrate the dispute.
hacks into your back accounts and empties them out, steals your car, and backs a moving van up to your home and empties it?
Common ethical rules say a person can make, trade for, and own possessions and taking those without permission violates that right. Again this is an ethical rule, not a moral one and suitable for government intervention.
Some people believe that the government's job is to help protect its people--all its people, including the unborn.
The problem here, is the reasoning behind classifying something as a person. If I claim toasters are people and need to be protected from being dismantled, I need to have a logical argument for why a toaster fits the definition of being a person, within that ethical framework. If my justification for this is, "god told me so" it becomes a religious/moral issue, rather than an ethical one. I agree it is the government's place to intervene and protect the life of all people, but only according to logical and ethical definitions of what a person is, not religious ones.
Abortion and creating embryos (human lives) for the purpose of using their parts are morally wrong and the government would be remiss in not prohibiting them.
Morally wrong according to religious rules or not, the government must look to ethics. I've yet to see a definition of human life that places value upon it for logical and ethical reasons instead of religious ones. Arguing that a bundle of cells has an "invisible, undetectable soul" which needs to be protected is religion, not ethics. There is no logical or evidentiary support for it. It is demonstrable that they do not have brains or conscious thought or any other criteria that make them more worthy of protection than sperm or skin cells, which do not enjoy protection under ethical guidelines.
If you feel each stem cell or embryo has a soul and your god has doomed most of them to a natural death, but it is your religious duty to keep as many alive as possible, I have no problem with that. But the government has no more justification for trying to enforce that religious belief than it does for my religious prohibition on the disassembly of toasters. If you have a religious belief, feel free to adhere to it and even encourage others to via persuasion. Do not, however, think that you are justified in forcing others to comply with your religious beliefs. In fact, the teachings of Jesus implicitly forbid trying to enforce your interpretation of right and wrong on others, while he is somewhat less forthcoming on the topic of stem cell research.
Re:For those (Score:2, Insightful)
The sad thing is that the vast majority of these "Family Planning" clinics also provide services for people who are keeping their kids, and in some more rural regions are the only prenatal clinic in the area. But hey, let's shut them down, the health of women be damned, and if the baby doesn't make it because of the lack of care, at least the mother didn't "kill" it! I've never seen any churches open up free prenatal clinics to compete against the clinics providing free services sponsored by abortions, putting their money where their mouths are just isn't "God's work". God wants that money to go to building bigger temples with more gold trim.
So yes, the majority of anti-abortion activists are ridiculous, hypocritical sheeple who just do whatever the 700 club tells them to do.
That one *almost* makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
So there is a physical wall involved, rather than a metaphorical one.
Though the word "literally" does conjure up a picture of bricks in someone's spine.
It is not a "judgement call" (Score:3, Insightful)
They are routinely discarded by fertility clinics, this is an established practice with established laws surronding it.
Various things are opposed by all sorts of fringe groups. The only group of anti-stem cell research advocates that has any large membership and ability buy votes are the ones who believe the fertilized egg has a soul. If not for this group, the research would proceed apace.
The only real opposition is religious, not scientific. Medical scientists are the ones best positioned to judge whether research has medical potential, not religious groups. The NIH assembles teams of expert researchers to judege whether a proposed avenue of research is worth spending money on, only with stem cells this process is poluted with arbitrary limits, which are based on purely religious beliefs.
At least be honest about your motivations: you want to impose your beliefs on the time of soul creation on eveyone else, and you don't care a bit if valuable research is blocked due to your imposition, and people die or lead needlessly limited lives because of it (which Christian Fundamentalists* rationalize by believing that a short life of pain is followed by eternity of pleasure in paradies--for those who prove themselves worthy by imposing their beliefs on anyone they can't convert).
Re:This is what we're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
It's short for a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body. That's kinda long, so we shorten it.
Say stupid shit like you support my right to choose if I get a tattoo or not all you want. Sorry, but my choices over my body are not limited to what you like and what you don't. I don't tell men what to do with their bodies, don't tell me what to do with mine.
Human Clinical Trial (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering how things are currently going in the US though, this could end up being the only chance many of us will have for getting this sort of treatment any time soon. Eventually, some self-righteous asshat is going to propose federal bans on this, forcing those of us suffering from this type of condition to either live with the problem as-is, or leave the country and pay for it out of pocket.
Answer: yes (Score:3, Insightful)
That's easy. Take your pick:
A. Kill off the entire human species.
B. All of the above.