No need to wear shoes?

I'm guessing you've never walked around in Africa -- particularly shoeless.

Your analogy breaks down, sir.

FWIW, I fully support IPSC. There already exist over a hundred treatments using them, and I see every reason to concentrate effort on expanding this research line.

But you said, "These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient." -- by saying "patient", we were continuing on the line of "treatment", not "research". If ESCs are to be used on patients, and we don't intend to keep them on immunosuppressants, then SCNT requires that we don't just create and sacrifice one human embryo per patient -- SCNT requires tens (if not hundreds) of embryos to be created per patient. So in the context of ESCs being used on patients, I disagree with you in that useful ESCs are _not_ self-reproducing, and must be individually cloned from unfertilized eggs (traditionally, left over from IVF treatment).

And again, must they be human? And if ESCs have no viable treatment avenues, and we're aiming to move SC treatments into the practical realm, then it seems that we should be focusing on researching things that have more potential. More "potency" if you will.

Ethically, there are serious concerns for using ESCs, sure. But even pragmatically, ESCs just have so many barriers to overcome, that things like cord blood and IPSC seem to actually be able to go somewhere (such as this news article). If we know that there's in all likelyhood a dead-end at the end of the ESC road, wouldn't it be wiser to focus on IPSC? You seem reluctant to give up ESCs because of research -- fine. Why not continue with simian ESCs, or if you insist on human, existing stem cell lines? As you said, they're self-reproducing.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but many of our seminal ESC researchers have already moved onto the more promising IPSC research. ESCs may have academic value, and you want to dedicate another 40 years of research to them. Given the power of IPSCs, and the significant scientific barriers to the usability of ESCs, combined with the serious ethical implications, I don't think that you have provided compelling evidence for why public funding is a reasonable thing to expect for ESC research.

But if it looks like a dead-end road, why spend our time messing with it?

I don't say that cloning has no therapeutic value. It's just that we've moved on. IPSC has proven to be so valuable so quickly, it's a veritable gold mine promising near-immediate returns. Given our extremely limited resources for scientific research, wouldn't you want to focus on things that have potential? Unless we seriously compromise human ethics, there will never be enough embryos to go around for everyone who would want ESC treatment. It's just not there.

The scientific community has moved on. Heck, even James Thomson -- the father of modern ESC research has moved on to IPSC. It's like you're asking for another 40 years to research some outdated and debunked theory because there may be value in it, when we'd rather all get on with something that's proven to be effective.

It never wasn't funded. It wasn't banned or unfunded under Bush, it wasn't banned or unfunded under Clinton. The only thing that those executive orders did was ban federal funding for research that resulted in the destruction of more human life -- it did nothing to limit research on existing lines. ESC proponents explain that the lines were tainted and so not as useful, and that it didn't allow research into therapeutic cloning (which isn't a viable option anyways).

Morality is never clear cut. When people think that stem cells are like skin cells, they don't have as much of a problem. But when you're actually taking aborted human lives and chopping up their brains to implant into patients (as what happened in the 1992 study), some lines have clearly been crossed.

On top of that, you make it sound like the ESC opponents are the only ones that present bad reasoning. Plenty of ESC proponents have very little understanding of the difference between ASCs and ESCs, or the actual methods by which they are useful. Heck, just look in this very thread and see how many people expect "right wing religious zealouts" to be against this treatment, even though it's ASC, or how many people think that there was a federal ban on ESC research under Bush.

We combat misinformation with accurate information, and I hope that you and I have done that today. You know where I stand, and I know where you stand -- it has been a helpful discussion for me, and I thank you for your part in it.

G'night. :)

True -- in some previous treatments, each patient may be implanted with brain tissue from as many as seven aborted donors. Granted, that was before isolated stem cells were in use, but for ESCs to move from the laboratory into the doctor's office, unless we plan on keeping all of our patients on immunosuppressants, I was under the impression that SCNT or some other form of "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to obtain ESCs that are usable cells that won't cause rejection. Ultimately you're right -- it's hard to say what would be like in the future, but unless I'm missing some important fact of cell biology, this is one of the serious bottlenecks on the horizon.

So that's a real gap in my knowledge -- IVF embryos are perfectly usable for research, but does another method exist for taking a pre-existing ESC and making a rejection-free compatible cell line from it? All of what I've read has pointed to either pointed to SCNT or induced pluri-potency in ASCs as the "best ideas running" for obtaining usable stem cells for treatment. Am I correct in thinking that, or what are some of the other ideas being floated?

Perhaps I should have used the word "human"?

If one (such as James Thomson) says that there are 400,000 frozen human embryos that are going to be incinerated anyways, and we should at least put that life to good use before it is destroyed, that's one thing -- but I don't think we can simply ram past this issue and ignore the fact that such human treatment makes anyone who thinks about it at least a little uncomfortable.

Are placing the government's role in scientific research on parallel with the government's role in national defense?

While you and I may both not fully understand the value of government-run programs, it seems that you and I may disagree on the actual value of personal liberty in a society. Everyone agrees that totalitarian governments are the best at getting things done, and forced labor has always been the most efficient means of production. But just because something is effective doesn't mean that it is morally or ethically sound.

However, you and I may be at a disconnect here, since I'm basing my case on ethics that you don't seem to share. Impasse?

Def. agree w/ you re: cutting waste.

Promising technology? Relative to ASC treatments, the numbers would seem to show that ESC isn't as promising (unless you feel there is no true distinction?).

You also seem to feel that there is no moral component to any of this, and you seem frustrated that anyone would balk at the idea of ESC research and treatment.

Well to remove this from the realm of abstract third-parties, I'm happy to substitute myself and for you to rail against me. IANA cell biologist, but I feel that I have at least a modest grasp of the idea behind the various kinds of potency in stem cells, where they come from, and how they can be used. I am extremely uncomfortable (on human ethical grounds) with ESC research. You make it sound like anyone who is informed and educated would naturally want to support funding this method of research whole-hog, and I don't think that's the case. There are serious ethical issues at stake here, and you can't just pretend these issues aren't real or don't exist.

Much of that seminal ESC research was animal, not necessarily human.

For another example, much of what we know today about the effects and treatment of hypothermia is taken from Nazi human experimentation (see ref.). These ethical questions surround us -- it's not limited to ESCs.

If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment

Besides, many people will still have ethical problems with forcibly "harvesting" parts / cells from people, even if they are headed for the incinerator. Didn't we just have this same debate a few years ago with harvesting condemned criminals for organs? "And none of you guys seem to realize that these organs are being taken from people who were headed for the electric chair anyway."

All I mean is that the ethics of ESC are severe -- and even amplified when humans are in play. If your argument for "research only -- no treatments expected" holds, then would using animal ESCs sidestep any of this for you, while still gaining many of the research benefits?

I suppose I think that when I give the government money, I am hiring them to provide a service for me. If I don't want my car mechanic adding a spoiler onto my car, I don't intend to pay him for it. I may not understand the implications of the performance and whatnot, but if I would rather it be spent on something like better roads or schools, why shouldn't I have a say in where my money goes? Yes, I'm sure that these research dollars will have paid off in the future for our children and their children, but if my child is flunking basic math right now because their school can't afford good teachers, I think it's a bit unfair to call them an ignorant hick just because they don't place quite the priority on stem cell research as you do, and would rather see the government shuttle that money elsewhere.

In a word, if you want it, spend your own money on it, and don't just get upset and call people ignorant when they don't share your priorities. Other people have legitimate needs for this cash, and there's only so much of it to go around.

Well it's good that we're not a democracy here -- we're a republic. Sadly, it seems that we're trending ever and ever closer to a democracy though, which has never been a stable (or productive) form of government.

Then if people aren't willing to give you their money, then in the meantime, spend your own. Again, you seem upset that people aren't willing to just give you their limited funds for your priorities. Noone's stopping you from spending your own -- they're just not happy when you try to reach into their pockets for your interests. Plenty of disease research groups (such as March of Dimes, etc) evangelize and raise awareness and gather donations for a cause or for research. It's a bit awkward when such evangelism is skipped and the conclusion is mandated through legislation on the federal level. Yes, fundraising is work -- but at least you're respecting people and their basic liberties. I know it's tempting to want Big Brother to handle all of this for us, but when the government looks like a hammer, all of our little problems start looking like nails.

Disclaimer: I shop local, walk to the grocery store with my cloth shopping bag, I recycle, and keep driving to a minimum -- I fill up my tank maybe once or twice a month. My family's energy usage is very low. While I'm an advocate for a personally responsible lifestyle, I have many many reservations about the "Green" movement and the scientific rigor used to arrive at such a consensus, and especially many of the illogical financial programs derived so that people can profit from it ("cap and trade"? "carbon offsets"???)

That almost seems to be a call to scientific elitism. I.E. "You disagree, so you don't understand the nuances of climate change like I do, so you're out of the club." -- to my unlearned and cro-magnon mind it seems like Climate Change is an extremely inexact science. We don't have accurate test points, we don't understand all of the factors that go into this, we don't know the causes of previous cooling/warming cycles (even during human existence, much less before), nor can we isolate human factors in real-world experiments, nor do we have remotely representative simulations to perform isolated tests.

It seems that any climate scientist whose employment and financial well-being is tied to the results of his research is naturally suspect -- whether an oil company or an alternative energy company or a lobbyist group.

It feels like a bunch of self-congratulatory people who puff themselves up and call themselves experts in a field, where they have financial motivations for proving their case. Just as climatologists in the employ of oil companies are naturally suspect, it seems that political fat cats who work for environmental agencies are somehow immune to such criticism, because they're the ruling oligarchy. Al Gore isn't the only one who stands to get even richer from the "Green" movement, but somehow people view him flying-his-private-jet-to-collect-carbon-emissions-awards as somehow "altruistic". I call BS.

There are many groups of "experts" that I have innate distrust for, because their fields lack scientific rigor, and this fact is not acknowledged by its chief advocates. Psychiatrists and climate scientists would certainly be two of them.

Wait, _what_? This is a really absurdly ignorant non-sequitor.

Embryonic stem cells have nothing to do with this mouse experiment. These were adult stem cells.

Take your zealotry and anti-religious pogrom elsewhere -- it doesn't even apply here.