Troll? I'm not the one comparing people who legitimate reasons against ESC with those who bomb abortion clinics. Who's flame-baiting here?

The first article you gave me showcased using IVF leftovers (which I addressed in my post). Using stem cells harvested in this way has the major problem that they are only suited to academic research where tissue rejection is not a problem, because their genetic material cannot match the patient. I covered this in my post already.

The second article you sent me showcases a modified form of standard SCNT, where they add the twist of crippling the embryo, because they think that people will object less to destroying a crippled human embryo rather than one that is created with normal SCNT.

Do you want to see how the public ethic responds to stuff like this? Imagine the KFC headless chicken scenario, only with humans instead of chickens. Yeah, that'll fly like a lead balloon.

But even on a practical level, the technique listed in the second article suffers from the issue that there are simply not enough IVF leftovers to fuel widespread ESC-based treatments. There just aren't enough eggs.

Neither of the articles you quoted address the criticisms referenced in my original post, and all of the arguments remain untouched.

ESC-based treatments remain as unviable as the Whitehead Institute's crippled embryos, and there are no answers on the horizon that solve both the issues of tissue rejection and human egg supply.

False. ESCs have trouble in that they differentiate _too_ much -- they are too unstable, and multiply without regulation (cancer). One of the markers used in detecting if ESCs "took" in rats is to measure tumor rates. While they theoretically have the most potential for forming different tissue types, they have the worst track record for actually behaving how we want them to.

If that's true, then it's interesting that James Thomson, the father of modern ESC research has moved onto ASCs with IPSC. While some people may think that ESCs are "better", many of our top researchers (Thomson being of note) have changed direction to the more promising ASC line.

ASCs are also the only ones that have any fruit, with IPSC being in the news most often, despite it being the youngest of the three fields that you listed.

I would like to note that there is a big difference between "stem cells" and "useful stem cells". Sure, you can take any discarded IVF leftover or abortion remains and get stem cells, but if you inject those into a patient, you will have severe tissue rejection issues. To obtain ESCs usable for treatment in a patient, the only avenue available for that is SCNT, which necessitates the destruction of one or many embryos.

That's what SCNT solves, and why so many were anxious for the recent reversal of the Bush order to deny funding to SCNT ESC research.

Of course the book is never closed. But there currently exist over a hundred treatments using ASC and IPSC, and (despite it being the oldest), zero treatments involving ESCs. There is no viable avenue for ESC treatments now, nor there is there any on the horizon that anyone can name. If you're the budget director for a large amount of scientific funding, at what point will you cull the fat and move on (as James Thomson has done) to things that have actually produced?

Sorry, that should be "hundreds of thousands". An order of magnitude doesn't solve the problem, and the point still stands.

Okay, I'll bite.

Citation please. Maybe it's because IANA cell biologist, but I am not aware of any mechanism outside of SCNT that provides an avenue for ESC treatment that wouldn't result in severe tissue rejection by the patient.

Are you hinging the weight of your statement here on "viable"? If so, how is a SCNT embryo not "viable"? If so, those embryos are quite viable, and the usefulness of the stem cells largely depends on their viability. Who wants to take stem cells to cure a disease if the stem cell has bigger problems? I mean, seriously -- whole companies are founded based on cloning dead pets through SCNT. Your statement is false, and you're spreading mis-information. Citation, please.

You word this as if it's such a slam dunk. If it's a point not worth debating, then would any reasonable person object to the non-consentual harvesting of organs from death-row criminals? I mean, they're already discarded anyways.

So what happens if you run out of newspapers? You give a faulty analogy, because newspapers are fairly common -- IVF leftovers, while they do have a surplus supply of tens of thousands, is a supply that has built up over the last thirty years. And as we have gotten better at IVF, we create and save fewer and fewer embryos with every treatment. If ESC with SCNT reaches the point of actually having a viable treatment available, we would burn through our IVF reserves incredibly quickly. A simple look at the numbers will show you that the demand for embryos will far outstrip the supply, and we will have to start farming human eggs.

All that to say, I'll call your bluff. Citations, please.

Phalanges is the plural of phalanx. [1]

Uhm, citation please? How in the world can someone use aborted fetuses for stem cell treatment without extremely severe tissue rejection issues? Last I heard, that sort of stuff hadn't been done since the 90's, and hasn't been repeated since.

All of the arguments that you gave supporting ESCs in the name of research are satisfied by using animal life, rather than human life.

I think by "use", he was talking about treatment uses, not just biological study.

Definitely -- but let the record show that this pioneering IPSC research was done with mice, not with humans. I think we're really in a great place right now -- for human treatment, we can use IPSC, and for destructive research, we can use non-human life.

Now you're talking about treatment, rather than research? Even if we solve the problems of tissue rejection through a foreign ESC donor, where is one supposed to get enough donated human eggs to make this a viable avenue of treatment? If anyone is still holding onto the idea of ESC providing widespread treatment, I don't think that they're opening their eyes to the reality of the oncoming brick wall that there simply would never be enough donor embryos. Some of our greatest minds and heroes of pioneering ESC research (James Thomson being one such example) have left ESC for the more promising fields of IPSC.

I'll say my thesis succinctly. Destructive human embryonic stem cell research (as practiced today) is barbaric and unnecessary, and should not be given safe harbor in the scientific community of a civilized society.

Yes, you are wrong.

The only reason we are tied to Uranium-235 is because of restrictions that make it illegal to recycle (reprocess) nuclear fuel in this country, hence we have a surplus of "waste" (that can still be used in a breeder reactor -- we're just legally prevented from doing so) that we either bury (stupid) or sell to France (who isn't so ignorant when it comes to nukes).

In short, there is plenty of nuclear fuel -- we're just not allowed to use it because Carter thought that recycling nuclear fuel could lead to proliferation of arms-grade plutonium -- we of course have long since now known that it doesn't, but that hasn't done anything to remove these laws outlawing nuclear fuel recycling.

Here is a link for further reading.