The American Mind

To claim embryonic stem cells are the future of medicine is turning out to be more religious faith than scientific fact.

It’s not an either-or proposition. Moreover, it seems like I have to keep reminding you – embryonic stem cells are plenipotent; adult stem cells are not.

Embryonic stem cells have produced promising results in experiments; but effective cures will forever be beyond our reach as long as there’s a government moratorium on creating new cell lines. All the lines we have now are contaminated and cannot be used for human trials.

Sean, you are quite skilled at presenting one side of the story. Is there a government-imposed moratorium on funding and the creation of adult stem cells? I didn’t think so.

Your presentation of this situation as an either-or debate is highly illogical.

You must not have seen the full story, Sean.

The researcher said that this treatment would not really be practical for most people because of toxicity issues. he said that ESC would not carry the same risk that this treatment does.

I’m sure Sean’s point is something along this line of convoluted logic: that eventually, as long as scientists keep researching non-embryonic stem cell lines, there will be a breakthrough that will allow them to be used as effectively as ESCs, so we should just keep pursuing that path.

Of course, i don’t want to have to tell someone, “oh, i’m sorry, if there were funding for ESC research we could treat you by now, but a frozen embryo has the same rights you do, so you’ll have to suffer and die.”

I’m building a little bit of a strawman, i admit, but unless Sean clarifies what his point is, that’s all i’ve got.

DJ, you’re on the right track. We have demonstrated progress using stem cells from an ethical source. A frozen embryo isn’t a straw man to me, because I consider to have the same right to life as a three-week old embryo in a mother’s womb, a 6-month old embryo in the womb, or a baby celebrating its first birthday.

Using the mentally retarded or prisoners as medical subjects is frowned upon. I would hope embryos were placed in that same category.

I’d love it if you employed some more consistency and started some sort of movement against the disposal of unused embryos at fertility clinics. No one cares about that mass murder happening every day in our society! STOP THE FERTILITY GENOCIDE!

What is it about this story that has gotten several of you so mad? Is it that you can’t stand the idea that there maybe, just maybe, might be an alternative to using murdered human life for stem cell therapy? I see great potential for this if this initial experiment has had positive results… and since when have all first experiments not been without their hiccups? Perhaps you’ve just got so used to the utilization of human life that you are impatient for the rest of us to lose our conscience as you have. Are you aware that in the Ukraine, the stem cell industry has become so lucrative that babies just born have disappeared and the body parts of babies dismembered for the stem cell industry have been found? I have posted this story on my blog but don’t have the link offhand, the source is BBC news.

Dee, I don’t think anyone is mad. I think several individuals, myself included, objected to the logical fallacy that adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells are an either/or proposition. Moreover, Sean played fast and loose with the facts, only presenting the details that supported his argument. i don’t think intellectual honesty is too much to ask for.

Is it that you can’t stand the idea that there maybe, just maybe, might be an alternative to using murdered human life for stem cell therapy?

I work in the sciences and I don’t like to see science misrepresented. For instance, like you’re doing. Stem cells are harvested from discarded embryoes, not from “murdered human lives.”

Are you aware that in the Ukraine, the stem cell industry has become so lucrative that babies just born have disappeared and the body parts of babies dismembered for the stem cell industry have been found?

Are you aware that you can’t get embryonic stem cells from babies? Apparently not. This is an urban myth, like reports of the Chinese eating fetuses in stir-fry.

Why do conservatives so easily misrepresent the facts to support their ideology?

Dee, on top of Andy’s point that the post was factually misleading, i just think it’s really hilarious that there exist people in this world who would hold the “lives” of frozen embryos in a higher regard than the suffering of actual human beings, especially when there is nothing ever said about the scads of unused embryos that are simply tossed at fertilization clinics across the country. This has been brought up by Chet and me many times in these “culture of death” posts of Sean’s (amazing Orwellian language, that “Culture of death”), but it never gets addressed.

Tell ya what, howsabout before a blastocyst is harvested for its stem cells, we dip the petri dish in some holy water and have a clergyman say a prayer. That way the embryo is baptised, Original Sin is wiped from its immortal soul, and when it’s destroyed it’ll go straight to heaven instead of being banished to limbo until the Second Coming? Then everyone will be happy!

When i market “DJ’s Pre-Abortion Holy Water Douche,” i’m gonna be a damn millionaire.