Stem Cell Research

[cannon_fodder]

I haven't started any fights for a while, so here goes:

The current limitations on stem cell research in the United States are the enforcement of arbitrary religous doctrine that are inhibiting science.

Given:

- Stem cell research is a new line of study in biology that has the potential of replacing aging cells in human.  

- The potential could lead to the treatment of degenerative diseases from Alzheimer's to MS.

- While stem cells are already used to culture test pharmaceuticals and other applications,  there have been no wild breakthroughs in the realm of miracle cures.

- Stem cell research today is viewed by experts as having the same potential that the discovery of antibiotics did in the 1900's.

- The most useful stem cells are embryonic stem cells - harvested from embryos in a pre-fetal stage either from purging excess embedded eggs from fertility treatments or from first trimester abortions.  Current law forbids federal funding for research on such stem cells and limits research to less useful adult lines.

Argument:

The religous beliefs' of a minority are restricted medical research for all. There is huge potential in embryonic stem cell research and the United States is the most qualified nation to conduct such research.  However, as we hold out we risk losing that edge to other nations; not to mention delaying potential discoveries that could improve countless lives.  

Ignoring the obvious medical ramifications, economically we could lose out on a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical, research, and medical industry and watch our high paying research jobs move overseas.

To me, even the moral argument does not make sense.  Usually if someone says "because god says its bad" the argument has to end.  You cannot argue with an imaginary friend nor can you argue with someone else's god(s). However, in this instance, I do not believe that argument holds up. As the issue relates to abortion it is moot.

The harvest of embryonic stem cells does not create nor even promote abortions.  Is anyone willing to argue that a woman would get pregnant and then decide to have an abortion so she can donate embryonic stem cells?  "You know, I really want a beautiful baby boy - but since Mr. Science wants some stem cells I think you should purge my womb."  No.  That's insane.

Instead, I view the ban as a refusal to make the most of a bad situation.  When a loved one is murdered do we ban the donation of organs?  No, we do not.  Because no one commits murder to free up some organs, so such a ban would serve no logical purpose.  Likewise, it is highly unlikely that a woman would decide to get an abortion to provide stem cells - so the ban provides no useful purpose.

Like it or not, abortion is legal and it happens all to often.  Instead of throwing the embryo into a biohazard bag and incinerating it; perhaps it could be used to give someone else a better life.  

note:
I have ignored the ethical dilemma of "playing god" because I believe such a notion is silly in the only post industrial nation that encourages genetic engineering of food, funds gene therapy, and has created life in a physics laboratory.  The left hand is creating life in a test tube as the right drafts a memo calling stem cell research "playing god"...

Lift the ban:
The stem cell research ban is predicated on a minority religous belief.  The government refuses to acknowledge the scientific communities statements that embryonic stem cells hold huge potential.  As the ban continues we risk losing our place the the foremost center of research and the jobs that accompany our prowess, as well as delay medical advancements.  

Given that stem cells are harvested legally everyday, I think we should allow federal funding to be used to attempt to put them to use, instead of throwing away our future.

[Conan71]

quote: I haven't started any fights for a while

Hang on, I gotta go find my boxing gloves []

I don't have a problem with the concept in itself.  Why let frozen left-overs from fertility or aborted fetuses be a complete waste?  

I say let well-funded bio-tech companies foot the bill as they will be the ones to profit from it if successful.  

I do have a serious problem with the fear-mongering that embryonic research would lead to more abortions- total BS.

God did give us brains and free-will, and the means to create this technology.

[sgrizzle]

I agree with parts of all of the above. What I don't understand is why we are arguing over what is basically subsidizing biotech & pharmaceutical companies. While those companies thriving is important, I would like to see them quit spending money on direct-to-consumer marketing if they're in such a financial crunch.

[NellieBly]

The photo of him in the paper hugging the little girl with spina bifida made me sick to my stomach. What parent would allow that schmo to use their sick daughter as a pawm in this is pathetic game?

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by NellieBly

The photo of him in the paper hugging the little girl with spina bifida made me sick to my stomach. What parent would allow that schmo to use their sick daughter as a pawm in this is pathetic game?

who?

[cannon_fodder]

Government sponsored research is not patentable.  The discoveries NASA, the JPL, or a federally funded program find are public domain.  Mostly this money is filtered to 'national laboratories' and universities as research grants.

If a pharmaceutical can take the research and make it into a usable and profitable product - so be it.  Everyone ends up ahead on that game.  The company has a new product and those that are willing to pay for it can utilize it.  Since it is public domain they will not have monopoly pricing ability on the product unless they EXPAND upon the research.  Which is something we want to encourage.

Though, if we wanted to argue for an end to all federally subsidized research you may have a valid point.  There are private companies that can take this on.  But that would be true for nearly every federally funded research program.

[NellieBly]

Bush -- after vetoing the bill he leaned over and hugged a girl with a disease that could possibly be cured with the help of stem cells. It was front page on all the papers this a.m.

[moosedaddy]

My mother has stage 4 breast cancer, she was told last week while at the MD Anderson cancer center in Houston that there is a new stem cell transplant that could cure her and reverse the effects that the cancer has had on her bones, liver, and spleen.

I do not know many of the details but so far the proceedure has a 30% chance of success.

Also remember that there are different stem cell research and I believe only the embryonic stem cell research was vetoed.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

Government sponsored research is not patentable.  The discoveries NASA, the JPL, or a federally funded program find are public domain.  Mostly this money is filtered to 'national laboratories' and universities as research grants.

If a pharmaceutical can take the research and make it into a usable and profitable product - so be it.  Everyone ends up ahead on that game.  The company has a new product and those that are willing to pay for it can utilize it.  Since it is public domain they will not have monopoly pricing ability on the product unless they EXPAND upon the research.  Which is something we want to encourage.

Though, if we wanted to argue for an end to all federally subsidized research you may have a valid point.  There are private companies that can take this on.  But that would be true for nearly every federally funded research program.

Trying to do it as gov't subsidized research has effectively killed it, it's far too controversial.  They should have never sought fed'l funding for it in the first place.  If it's really that viable, you'd think that bio-techs would want all the glory on this.

What will wind up happening is European bio-techs will pick up on it, and perfect it and will reap the benefits, and we will pay a premium.

[guido911]

How many diseases have been cured by embryonic stem cell research? Oh, and why should I, as a taxpayer, be paying for it?

[Wilbur]

There is not one law that bans embryonic stem cell research.  ANY private company can do all the stem cell research they want, all without fear of prosecution.  Any company wishing to take a risk, invest its own capital, thus reaping all the rewards, can jump in anytime they please.

The only thing Bush vetoed was government paying for embryonic stem cell research.

[cannon_fodder]

Wilbur - I thought I was very clear on that point.

quote:Current law forbids federal funding for research on such stem cells

However, it is also true that a research field devoid of federal funding is one that will surely lag behind.  Most private grants are predicated on federal grants first.  A viscous circle perhaps, but true.  In any event, the absence of federal funding condemns a speculative long range research effort to second tier status.

guido911 - again, I was clear: none.  It is speculative long range research.  Mostly, that is what research is.  I went to great lengths to try and explain that.

quote:While stem cells are already used to culture test pharmaceuticals and other applications, there have been no wild breakthroughs in the realm of miracle cures.

The issue about whether federal funding should be available to research at all is entirely separate.  The fact is the feds fund a ton of research, so the issue is why do they not fund this field.  Answer: religion.  Good thing we separate church and state.

[MichaelBates]

Regarding your "given" that adult stem cells are less useful than embryonic stem cells: Are you aware that stem cells from non-embryonic sources are successfully being used to treat more than 70 diseases in humans, and that no therapeutic use has been found for embryonic stem cells? Stem cells from fat cells, amniotic fluid, cord blood, bone marrow, and skin are proving to be far more versatile than once believed, and unlike embryonic stem cells, they don't generate teratomas (literally "monster tumors").

There's really nothing arbitrary or religious about regarding an embryo as human life. It's undeniably human (not a cat or a frog or a daisy), and it's alive.

I suppose it is arbitrary and religious to believe that humans are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Our Declaration of Independence and our 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments discriminate against those who believe that certain classes of humans are subhuman and may therefore be used, abused, enslaved, and dismembered for the sake of some "greater good."

Besides -- we don't need to shred human beings to get pluripotent stem cells. From TCSDaily earlier this week:

quote:Will a Disruptive Technology Mothball Therapeutic Cloning?     

By Michael Cook  
19 Jun 2007

The global grandees of therapeutic cloning recently gathered in sun-soaked Cairns, the gateway to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, for their annual conference. They have serious strategic issues to deal with along with their scientific papers and posters: persuading governments to open their wallets, ensuring that the Bush Administration's restrictions on their work are lifted, allaying the public's qualms about creating embryos solely for research.

But hovering over the buzz of morning coffee has been a dark cloud: as governments everywhere promote it, is therapeutic cloning going to be mothballed before it has produced a single cure?

Only a few days ago an article in the leading journal Nature brought amazing news. A Japanese team at Kyoto University has discovered how to reprogram skin cells so that they "dedifferentiate" into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. From this they can be morphed, theoretically, into any cell in the body, a property called pluripotency. It could be the Holy Grail of stem cell science: a technique that is both feasible and unambiguously ethical.

"Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I've never worked with either," says Shinya Yamanaka. The first instalment of his research appeared a year ago -- and was greeted with polite scepticism by his colleagues. At the time they were mesmerised by dreams of cloning embryos and dissecting them for their stem cells.

The previous head of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, had even dismissed reprogramming as quixotic. "If there are scientists who morally oppose [embryonic] stem cell research and want to devote their energies to uncovering alternatives, that's fine," said Goldstein. "But in no way, shape, or form should we ask the scientific community and patient community to wait to see if these new alternatives will work." Now, however, ten years after Dolly, not one scientist anywhere using a cloned human embryo has created a stem cell line. Not one. And a Japanese Don Quixote has.

This is mainstream research, not an eccentric theory from a Romanian naturopathy journal. Yamanaka's work has been confirmed by two other teams affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles -- both of them headed by ardent supporters of embryonic stem cell research.

They say that the reprogrammed cells meet all the tests of pluripotent cells -- they form colonies, propagate continuously and form cancerous growths called teratomas, as well as producing chimaeras. "Its unbelievable, just amazing," says Hans Schöler, a German stem cell expert. "For me, it's like Dolly. It's that type of an accomplishment."

What Yamanaka did was to take a mouse skin cell and introduce into it four proteins which trigger the expression of other genes to make it pluripotent. "It's easy. There's no trick, no magic," he says. Now the race is on to apply the technique to human cells. "We are working very hard -- day and night," says Yamanaka.

Even the Australian doyen of therapeutic cloning, Alan Trounson, of Monash University, is enthusiastic. "It would change the way we see things quite dramatically," he says. He plans to start experiments "tomorrow".

Will this disruptive technology open up ethical avenues in the promising field of stem cell research, avenues which do not involve turning women into battery hens for their eggs and destroying embryos?

At the moment, the stem cell grandees, like all establishment figures, have no plans to change their tune. One of the stars of the Cairns conference, MIT's Rudolph Jaenisch, told Nature that therapeutic cloning remains "absolutely necessary."

Executives from embryonic stem cell companies were not optimistic about the new technique either. Because it involves tinkering with the genome, it could be dangerous, warned Thomas B. Okarma, of Geron, the leading private company in the field. Getting approval from regulatory authorities would therefore become far more complicated. What else could he say? No doubt manufacturers of vacuum tubes muttered about serious flaws in semiconductors when they first appeared on the market.

With an ethical solution looking quite plausible, the pressure will be on scientists to explain why therapeutic cloning deserves to be legalised and funded. Two years ago, Dr Janet D. Rowley, an Australian working in the US who is an implacable foe of the Bush Administration's policy, dismissed ethical solutions like Yamanaka's. "We have extremely limited research dollars, and to use them to study these alternatives is wrong," she declared. "That money should be available for actual research." But now stem cells derived from embryos are starting to look like dead-end "alternatives."

Don't expect supporters of embryonic stem cell research to respond rationally, not in the short term, at least. The other day, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel told the US House of Representatives as he voted to overturn the Bush policy: "It is ironic that every time we vote on this legislation, all of a sudden there is a major scientific discovery that basically says, 'You don't have to do [embryonic] stem cell research.' "

Connect the dots, Mr Emanuel. Maybe you don't have to.

Michael Cook is editor of the international bioethics newsletter BioEdge.

[MichaelC]

quote:Originally posted by MichaelBates

Besides -- we don't need to shred human beings to get pluripotent stem cells.

Abortion has been here well before this stem cell debate, and will be here long after your ideology passes into history.

[cannon_fodder]

Michael:

I did not argue that other stem cell lines are not useful. I suppose I should have phrased it "scientists state embryonic stem cells hold the most potential."    I was abundantly clear that no medical breakthrough have occurred with embryonic stem cells and have further clarified that position above.  

Likewise, I am aware that other stem cell lines have useful purposes and did not negate their usefulness.  Since that line of research is able to receive federal funding, it makes sense that the research would be further progressed.  Allow 7 years of federally funded research on stem cells and find useful purposes for those. If scientists expectations are realized, the gains would quickly surpass the 70 uses for other cell lines and many more people would be helped.

Human Cells are not Special:

As I have stated ad nauseum, there is nothing special about a cell being "human" nor alive.  I plucked an errant hair from my arm yesterday, managing to remove the hair follicle.  It was composed of living cells and it was human (not dog nor cat), and was alive - should I have treated it with religous reverence? Clearly not, merely being a human cell that is alive is not the threshold used to grant special treatment.

Are you proposing constitutional rights for all human cells?  That is the logical flow of your argument.  1) Emryos are living human cells  2) Humans are protected by the constitution.  3)  Embryos should be protected.  That same logic could support constitutional rights for hair follicles, undeniably human and alive (hair follicles are human cells, humans are protected, hair follicles should be protected).  I do not imagine that was actually your line of thought, but the statements about the constitution was misplaced.  

If you would like to debate the threshold for constitutional protection I would be happy to search for my statement on that topic in these forums. However, if your argument is "because I believe my god..." then there is no point as I cannot argue with imaginary friends nor other peoples gods.

There is nothing arbitrary nor religous about believing humans are endowed with inalienable rights. The belief that a god gave us those rights is, of course, religous.  However, an argument in support of those rights exists outside of a religous context.  Religion is not a reason to dismiss an idea, but it is often a weak argument to support one as it only appeals to those who share your faith.

I did not state that we should "shred human beings:"

Never once did I advocate the shredding of human beings for the harvest of stem cells.  I simply stated that the most common source of them was aborted or culled embryos (ignoring the begged question that embryos are humans).  If another source of equal worth is available, then there is even less reason for the ban to be in place.

You ignored a major argument:

You ignored the entire argument regarding the wasting of the aborted embryo.  Banning stem cell research does not stop abortion, allowing it would not encourage abortion.  Are these dead embryos better utilized in an incinerator or trying to preserve other lives?

Overall, your statement support my argument:

You correctly pointed out that what scientists consider to be the less useful stem cells have already made huge contributions to science with the help of federal funding.  Imagine the strides that could be achieved in the areas in which science sees more promise.  Likewise, you pointed out that new lines can be harvested without the destruction of embryos.  So even if we continue to toss embryos into incinerators there is no reason to continue the current ban on research.