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Posted on 02/10/2006 11:34:38 AM PST by Stellar Dendrite
WASHINGTON – Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri on Friday withdrew his support of legislation that would criminalize key types of stem cell research. He instead suggested a more flexible regulatory approach that would take into account new scientific advances.
Talent said the bill he had co-sponsored, which had been criticized by scientific and business leaders in Kansas City and St. Louis, was overly broad given that new discoveries showed it possible to get the benefits of embryonic stem cell research without the risk of cloning human embryos.
“It now appears possible to get stem cells without cloning an embryo,” he said.
The new discoveries render the bill “obsolete,” and “signals the end of the ethical dilemma in this type of research,” Talent said in a Senate floor speech Friday.
The pro-life movement, an important part of Talent’s political base, opposes some types of embryonic stem cell research, saying cloning violates their view of the sanctity of human life.
Abandoning the restrictive bill could allow Talent to thread a political needle that had begun to trouble his re-election campaign in what is already a close race against Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill.
Many Missouri business leaders, including key Republican leaders, are supporting a ballot initiative to protect stem cell research in Missouri. The pro-life movement opposes the initiative.
Talent said he had not yet decided whether to support or oppose the Missouri ballot initiative.
“I want to wait until it gets on the ballot and through the court system,” Talent said.
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Well, this article is not specific enough to tell, but as far as I have seen the announced ways of doing fetal stem cell research without cloning or using fetuses are a sham.
I have no problem with adult stem cell research, but fetal stem cell research still remains a form of medical experimentation that depends on killing human persons. Whether or not any more persons need to be killed, I am firmly opposed to ANY medical research that involves killing one person to help another. It's simply immoral, and should be illegal.
The death dealers keep thinking of new ways and new twisting of language to conceal what they are doing. Abortion becomes choice. Killing a baby becomes a woman's constitutional right. So I am mistrustful of this kind of spinning by researchers greedy for government funding and abortionists eager to lock in some sort of additional support for killing babies by appealing to people's fear of growing sick or old.
Hmmm. I wonder how much influence Monsanto and Malinkrodt had in this move?
Bottom line: money trumps everything. Big bucks are expected out of this research. If you believe it's about anything else then you're being naive.
The old people will just be spared from one disease only to die of another. They are being used to build a cash cow. Missouri simply wants its cut.
At the rate research is moving along, it will soon be possible to create a whole person from an adult stem cell. The distinction between "embryonic stem cell" and "adult stem cell" will be meaningless.
What crap! Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors. Let's get the freaking Federal budget fixed !
Well, you raise another question, namely cloning.
There's nothing wrong with using tissue from adult, volunteer donors to do medical research or to cure diseases. It's a whole other kettle of fish when you kill an unborn child to get the tissue.
As for cloning, we have not actually reached the stage where we can clone a whole human being (or facsimile of a human being?) from any old cell, but it's possible that we will. In my opinion, cloning human beings is illicit too, and should be made illegal before people start doing it, but it's a whole different issue.
Whole cats and at least one whole dog have been cloned from "any old cell", however. And what's the difference between an embryo that used to be "any old cell" and an embryo that used to be a sperm and an egg? I'm prefectly comfortable with all of this. The only issue with cloning that needs to be considered is when it gets to the point where the whole development process can be done in a lab, with no transfer to a woman's uterus. Then we'll need some serious laws re who is responsible for the resulting babies, lest we have nuts mass-producing single-minded suicide bombers and "perfect Aryan warriors" and such.
Is God?
Not everyone thinks of God as a big Super-Daddy who doesn't want his children to ever grow up and take over for him. Any higher intelligence that may have been responsible for our existence should be proud that we're learning to do grown-up stuff.
Any chance you have 666 buried in your gene pool somewhere?
"Not everyone thinks of God as a big Super-Daddy who doesn't want his children to ever grow up and take over for him. Any higher intelligence that may have been responsible for our existence should be proud that we're learning to do grown-up stuff."
Well said.
What if we all died of some horrible affliction and went to God and said "Why did happen to us?".. he might have said "Well, I gave you the stem cell thing, and you didn't run with it.. so here we are"
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This technically erroneous equivocation between embryonic and adult stem cells comes up from time to time but is easy to refute. The difference is that the use of embryonic stem cell intrinsically relies upon the destruction of an embryo, while the use of adult stem cells doesn't. Adult stem cells hold the potential of new medical possibilities without having to develop an embryo at all, such as simply growing a stand alone kidney in nutritive media. Anything made with embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, always requires the destruction of a human being.
Read up on biology. The only way to get an adult stem cell to do everything an embryonic stem cell can do, is to first transform it into the precise biological equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. Once you've done that, and start the thing developing into multiple cells, you have an embryo that could become a baby if you didn't stop it, and steer it into becoming just one organ or cell-type. There are a some potential applications of stem cells that wouldn't require this, but most of the big ones would, especially growing replacement organs.
Read up on theology, philosophy, and history.
Theologically, and according to traditional natural philosophy, a fetus is a living, separate, distinct, individual human being. A piece of tissue taken from an adult who volunteers (it would be unethical to take it from someone who did not volunteer) is merely a piece of tissue.
If you use adult stem cell tissue for medical purposes, that does not violate the sanctity of life. If you use a fetus for medical purposes, you are committing or are complicit in murder.
As I said earlier, the issue of cloning adult cells is a separate issue. I believe it would be a terrible error to start cloning human beings, assuming that it proves to be scientifically possible. For one thing, it would raise the question of whether these beings were fully human or not.
Let's say someone clones a hundred thousand specimens of the same person in order to use them as soldiers. Are they fully human? And, if so, do they all vote the same way? What would it do to the gene pool to introduce thousands of the same person with the same genes into it? And don't say it couldn't happen, because it easily could.
There is, of course, also a biological difference between a fetus, descended from the genes of two persons, and a clone, built from the genes of a single person. It's by no means clear that artificial manipulation of this kind is a good idea, ethically or for the sake of the species. As someone like bill clinton reveals, just because you CAN do something doesn't mean that you SHOULD do it.
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