Embryonic Stem-Cell Research

[Tubal-Cain]

Tell me how do we error on the side of caution, one day, one week, one month?

By finding the latest time after conception at which there is no doubt that the embryo/fetus has no awareness at all.

And who gets to decide that feeling pain is a prerequisite for being human?

We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration. We, collectively, have to make the choices.

[Tubal-Cain]

Dope me up on Codine and stab me in the face. I won't feel a thing.

It still does not give you the right to stab me.

Nor have I made the claim that doing so would give me such a right. Under such a scenario you would still have awareness and desires.

[Scarletprayers]

Tell me how do we error on the side of caution, one day, one week, one month?

By finding the latest time after conception at which there is no doubt that the embryo/fetus has no awareness at all.

And who gets to decide that feeling pain is a prerequisite for being human?

We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration. We, collectively, have to make the choices.

Well as part of the "collective" I vote they are human the second the sperm hits the egg.

[Tubal-Cain]

Well as part of the "collective" I vote they are human the second the sperm hits the egg.

You should have read my post more carefully where I wrote: "We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration."

[Scarletprayers]

Well as part of the "collective" I vote they are human the second the sperm hits the egg.

You should have read my post more carefully where I wrote: "We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration."

OH excuse me, then they deserve moral consideration as soon as the sperm hits the egg.

[Kabowd]

By the way, there are more than 70 illnesses/diseases which are currently being treated by stem-cells harvested from non-embryonic sources. There is ZERO need for embryonic stem cells. We need to focus our attention on funding research to develop other ways (such as through umbilical chords, bone marrow and adult stem cells) so that we can improve life without having to destroy life in the process.

There is no proof that stem cell can cure anything.

Type I diabetics live without insulin in stem cell experiment

The Associated Press

April 10, 2007

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil have ditched their insulin shots and need no other medication thanks to a risky, but promising treatment with their own stem cells -- apparently the first time such a feat has been accomplished.

Though too early to call it a cure, the procedure has enabled the young people, who have Type I diabetes, to live insulin-free so far, some as long as three years. The treatment involves stem cell transplants from the patients' own blood.

"It's the first time in the history of Type 1 diabetes where people have gone with no treatment whatsoever ... no medications at all, with normal blood sugars," said study co-author Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University's medical school in Chicago, Illinois.

While the procedure can be potentially life-threatening, none of the 15 patients in the study died or suffered lasting side effects. But it didn't work for two of them.

Larger, more rigorous studies are needed to determine whether stem cell transplants could become standard treatment for people with the disease once called juvenile diabetes. It is less common than Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity.

The hazards of stem cell transplantation also raise questions about whether the study should have included children. One patient was as young as 14.

Dr. Lainie Ross, a medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said the researchers should have studied adults first before exposing young teens to the potential harms of stem cell transplant, which include infertility and late-onset cancers.

In addition, Ross said that the study should have had a comparison group to make sure the treatment was indeed better than standard diabetes care.

Burt, who wrote the study protocol, said the research was done in Brazil because U.S. doctors were not interested in the approach. The study was approved by ethics committees in Brazil, he said, adding that he personally believes it was appropriate to do the research in children as well as adults, as long as the Brazilian ethics panels approved.

Burt and other diabetes experts called the results an important step forward.

'Very promising time'

"It's the threshold of a very promising time for the field," said Dr. Jay Skyler of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami.

Skyler wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study, saying the results are likely to stimulate research that may lead to methods of preventing or reversing Type I diabetes.

"These are exciting results. They look impressive," said Dr. Gordon Weir of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Still, Weir cautioned that more studies are needed to make sure the treatment works and is safe. "It's really too early to suggest to people that this is a cure," he said.

The patients involved were ages 14 to 31 and had newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes. An estimated 12 million to 24 million people worldwide -- including 1 to 2 million in the United States -- have this form of diabetes, which is typically diagnosed in children or young adults. An autoimmune disease, it occurs when the body attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

Insulin is needed to regulate blood sugar levels, which when too high, can lead to heart disease, blindness, nerve problems and kidney damage.

Burt said the stem cell transplant is designed to stop the body's immune attack on the pancreas.

A study published last year described a different kind of experimental transplant, using pancreas cells from donated cadavers, that enabled a few diabetics to give up insulin shots. But that requires lifelong use of anti-rejection medicine, which isn't needed by the Brazil patients since the stem cells were their own.

The 15 diabetics were treated at a bone marrow center at the University of Sao Paulo.

All had newly diagnosed diabetes, and their insulin-producing cells had not been destroyed.

That timing is key, Burt said. "If you wait too long," he said, "you've exceeded the body's ability to repair itself."

The procedure involves stimulating the body to produce new stem cells and harvesting them from the patient's blood. Next comes several days of high-dose chemotherapy, which virtually shuts down the patient's immune system and stops destruction of the few remaining insulin-producing cells in the body. This requires hospitalization and potent drugs to fend off infection. The harvested stem cells, when injected back into the body, build a new healthier immune system that does not attack the insulin-producing cells.

Patients were hospitalized for about three weeks. Many had side effects including nausea, vomiting and hair loss. One developed pneumonia, the only severe complication.

Doctors changed the drug regimen after the treatment failed in the first patient, who ended up needing more insulin than before the study. Another patient also relapsed.

The remaining 13 "live a normal life without taking insulin," said study co-author Dr. Julio Voltarelli of the University of Sao Paulo. "They all went back to their lives."

The patients enrolled in the study at different times so the length of time they've been insulin-free also differs.

Burt has had some success using the same procedure in 170 patients with other autoimmune diseases, including lupus and multiple sclerosis; one patient with an autoimmune form of blindness can now see, Burt said.

"The body has tremendous potential to repair," he said.

The study was partly funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Genzyme Corp. and a maker of blood sugar monitoring products.

[CellShade]

Ah, so humans that are vegetables or suffer from mental deficiencies aren't worthy of being considered for moral considerations.

Mental deficiencies rarely, if ever, take away desires. If one were in such a vegetablized state where they were without desires then, yes, by themselves they would no longer be worthy of moral consideration. However, the desires of others (e.g., loved ones or friends) would still factor into moral questions.

A human deserves moral consideration at the point it has the ability to be a human. Thus, when an egg and sperm are fertilized. Man is in the image of God, thus cannot be set on the same moral plain as animals.

I'm not placing man and animal on identical moral planes, but both deserve moral consideration. Unless you believe animals can be abused indiscriminately your moral theory needs to be able to account for both human rights and animal rights.

After your comment regarding people in veggie state, I would like to officially call you a nazi, and an immoral person.

Because a person cannot do anything or think anything, doesn;t take away that the person is alive.

By the way, there are more than 70 illnesses/diseases which are currently being treated by stem-cells harvested from non-embryonic sources. There is ZERO need for embryonic stem cells. We need to focus our attention on funding research to develop other ways (such as through umbilical chords, bone marrow and adult stem cells) so that we can improve life without having to destroy life in the process.

There is no proof that stem cell can cure anything.

Agrees completely.

[CaritateDei]

Well as part of the "collective" I vote they are human the second the sperm hits the egg.

You should have read my post more carefully where I wrote: "We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration."

OH excuse me, then they deserve moral consideration as soon as the sperm hits the egg.

[CaritateDei]

Vis a vis Romans 3:8, we should not do evil to bring about a good.

A human being...whether fully developed or not, is not a possession to control, but a PERSON to love unconditionally.

The real mother in the Solomon story was the one giving the child up so that the child might live.

On the same token, when we say that embryos are to be discarded anyway...what are we saying?

Jack the Ripper was regarded as a SICK and TWISTED individual because his mindset was that he would kill the prostitutes. Why not slash them to pieces? Why not take a knife and remove their outer organs completely to keep as souvenirs?

The whole practice is morally bankrupt. We preach about the promises it has to cure diseases...but in the end what we are preaching is purely evil. The embryos should never have been put together in the lab. The entire process goes against God's plan, and what should be a part of human nature.

What have we come to?

[Kansasdad]

Tell me how do we error on the side of caution, one day, one week, one month?

By finding the latest time after conception at which there is no doubt that the embryo/fetus has no awareness at all.

And who gets to decide that feeling pain is a prerequisite for being human?

We aren't discussing who is human, we are discussing when a being deserves moral consideration. We, collectively, have to make the choices.

Earlier on in this thread someone made the comparison to your thinking and the Nazi's. I know you didn't see the connection, but it is right here in this statement. Your position is that the collective gets to decide when a human deserves moral consideration. That is exactly what the Nazi's did. As a collective they decided which humans received moral consideration and which did not. Now you have placed the "mark" at a level which you think is reasonable, but so did the Nazi's . When human value can be measured by some one or some collective we set ourselves on a path of inevitable evil. It is absolutely imperative that all human life be treated as precious, God made, and God owned. We as humans can never determine the moral value of another human. To do so in and of itself is an act of evil. You nor any collective ever have that right.

God Bless,

K.D.