No More Stem Cell Arguments?
From Slate:
Scientists may have figured out how to make stem cells without embryos.
Old trick: Put a nucleus from a skin cell into a gutted human egg, and let the egg’s processes turn it into an embryo, thereby producing embryonic stem cells (ESCs).
New trick: Identify the relevant processes and apply them directly to the cell, turning it into an ESC with no egg or embryo required. Pro-lifers approve the new method.
Remaining hurdles:
- We’ve only done this in mice; it might be harder in humans.
- We did it with viral genetic engineering; we need to find a safer method.
- Some of the genes that worked also caused cancer in many of the mice; we need to find other genes.
Optimistic view: We’ll solve all these problems and fulfill the promise of stem-cell therapy.
Realistic view: We don’t need to solve the safety problems to achieve what stem cells are really about: facilitating disease research.
While I never saw anything wrong with harvesting embryos for stem cells, now that a good alternative appears promising, we should probably stop doing it. After all, it would be great if the social harm caused by abortion opponents didn’t spill over into curing diseases.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Better yet, let the researchers do both and allow them to decide which method is most effective.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
First of all, there is no law limiting the use of embryonic stem cell use. The law limits federal taxpayer dollars used for said use.
The use of embryonic stem cell use is not very promising to begin with otherwise there would be plenty of private money flowing into research. Much of the wins in stem cell research have come via adult stem cells. Cancer patients, for instance, can have their own stem cells harvested prior to treatment and re-injected post-treatment to speed the recovery. Try this with embryonic cells and they’ll be rejected.
June 11th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Of course there is no social harm in killing unborn babies, it is only those damn pro-lifers that cause social harm. How dare they think it is immoral to one who cannot speak, vote or contribute to political campaigns to possibly save one who can? Who the Hell do they think they are?
June 11th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
That should read “immoral to kill one…..”
June 11th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
This is a crock of the most succulent bullshit. Most medical research, and most scientific endeavors in general, do NOT have a promising or guaranteed outcome–whether controversial like SCR or not. Which explains why most scientific success stories are NOT the result of market forces.
Much of the wins in stem cell research have come via adult stem cells.
Funny, you never hear scientists who actually do this sort of research saying “geeze this isn’t promising.” The fact is that A) SCR holds a lot of promise regardless of what idiocy you regurgitate from AM radio and B) you idiots are bitching about the so called destruction of embryos that are flushed down the toilet anyway.
Patently untrue. Ignores the fact the potential that embryonic cells possess.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/talkingpoints/2007/04/stem_cell_senate.html
The “adult cells show more promise” myth is a right wing talking point that lacks any scientific basis. Ravenwood, you should be ashamed of yourself for uncritically parroting that bullshit nonsense. Sad how people will unthinkingly mimic whatever the rightwing noise machine blathers just because it makes them feel good…
The reality is in fact diammetrically the opposite, as the scientists who actually study this sort of thing will tell you.
The right wing anti science global warming is a joke evolution isn’t real and stem cells are just babies that can’t advance medical research cabal is really funny when it gets crankin.
The plain reality is that the public sector supports all sorts of scientific and medical research that would never happen or see the light of day if simple market forces were the only motivator. We don’t trust hospital construction, highway construction, school construction, or military construction to the market for the same reason that we can’t leave all medical and scientific research to the vagaries of the market. You don’t hear a peep from the RW machine about tons of things that public money supports, but we’re supposed to listen to you anti science goons because you’re deluded into thinking embryonic cells are little baby humans? Damn, that’s just fucked.
You’ve got to be a grade A idiot to be thinking that. Period.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
The idea that adults SCs show more promise is fatally flawed.
Scientists do NOT think we should avoid embryonic SC research or that it doesn’t hold substantial promise.
Anti ESCR arguments really fall into two easily dispensed with camps. The first is that familiar “hey why doesn’t the private sector pay for it” nonsense. The obvious problem there is that the public should be able to vote for publicly funded medical research if it wants to (and it does), and what’s more, there’s already all sorts of publicly funded research that the RW noise machine hardly notices. The plain reality is that all sorts of important scientific advances have come from publicly funded research and NOT market forces. The public already funds, as it should, all sorts of important scientific endeavors, and I’d argue the honus is on opponents to demonstrate why it shouldn’t re: ESCR.
The second is the “you’re destroying a baby” or some variant thereof. Sigh…the plain reality is that we dispense with millions of embryos every year. Unless you want to argue that in vitro, which allows people to bring life into this world, is evil (and you’d have to be neanderthal spear wielding moron to do so), I can’t see how you can argue that saving lives with something that is otherwise dispensed with is anything but a morally good thing.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Stem cells aren’t particularly useful for disease research alone. Diseased tissue tends to be something we have too much of, and in most cases an in vitro sample is fairly easy to collect. There are exceptions, such as brain tissue, but getting that to develop in vitro the same as it does in vivo has not been especially successful.
For disease treatments, sure. Having a pile of heart tissue doesn’t really help you understand heart disease more, but giving someone fresh heart tissue can change their quality of life by a massive degree. While there are some conditions that won’t benefit, such as most autoimmune conditions, a good number of diseases can be treated or cured with replacement tissue.
This process isn’t really new — I remember reading about fat and skin cells being turned into pluripotent and multipotent cells at least three years ago, think I still have the Science News — so I don’t know why you or Slate are just hearing about it now. Simply because it produces varying multipotent cells rather than totipotent cells, it is less likely to experience the Tetsuo problem (uncontrolled differentiation), and has thus gotten more attention. It’s just plain more likely to work, in the opinion of companies willing to put their money on the line, and I can’t quite seem to question that level of commitment without just cause.
It helps that, to avoid host versus graft disease in any stem cell procedure, you need stem cells that match or nearly match your genetic code and physical condition. Dedifferentiated cells are a lot simpler and easier to grow than whole clones.
The pot-shot against anti-abortion advocates is just childish. ‘Damn them, and their freedom of speech that I don’t like?’
June 11th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Sebastion, your link has some pretty notable issues.
For starters, despite claiming that “Researchers have already used embryonic stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries” as well as listing other studies… but none of these have been done in humans, and most of the research has shown significant unsolved problems significantly slowing any future adaptations — the Tetsuo problem again.
Again, no treatment, while stem cell research from adult stem cells or preexisting lines both have lead to successful treatments.
And we know how well that’s done for hospitals — hence why public hospitals with medicare and emergency rooms are doing so very well — highways, and schools — isn’t it a right-wing talking point to show that privitization has worked well here. (I think the , and the reason we limit armies to the federal government is similar to the reasons we might limit federal research funding:
[quote]The public already funds, as it should, all sorts of important scientific endeavors, and I’d argue the honus is on opponents to demonstrate why it shouldn’t re: ESCR.[/quote]
Sigh. The plain reality is that we dispense with thousands of Iraqi lives/billions of tons of CO2 every year…
See the flaw, here?
I mean, hell, at least anti-abortion advocates tend to actually oppose multi-implant IVF or anything else that tends to result in embryos destroyed for simplicity.
Being a soulless animal, I really don’t have much of a card in this aspect of the game — my concern about stem cell research has been only against the cloning aspect — but can I ask the difference? Heap of sand against a single grain and all.
June 12th, 2007 at 12:12 am
“The pot-shot against anti-abortion advocates is just childish. ‘Damn them, and their freedom of speech that I don’t like?’”
People like to point to the first amendment to justify all sorts of idiotic speech, and they’re right only so far as to say the government shouldn’t censor their views. They can spout all sorts of moronic nonsense without government coming down on them. By the same token, the rest of us can call them on spouting nonsense. When I point out that anti-abortion folks have done a lot of harm in American society, I’m not decrying their freedom of speech. I’m merely noting that the effects of their actions are bad. If you listen to them, we end up going down a bad road.
To dismiss this view as childish railing against freedom of speech is to miss the point.
June 12th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Funny how people can never spell my name correctly, even when it’s in print right above what they’re reading. In any event, let’s see if your suggestion about those “issues” holds water (hint: no).
Don’t be so facile. Because the research takes a long time and doesn’t produce results overnight it isn’t worthwhile?
Good luck finding many medical researchers who think that’s a coherent argument. We’ve been working about as long on an HIV vaccine, but strangely you don’t have a problem with that.
Whatever hurdles you posit the existence of (without citation, I might add), we can certainly presume said hurdles won’t be conquered if the RW smear machine keeps adding roadblocks.
No.
The choice is simple and binary. Keep tossing them in the shitter or use them to save lives. Pick one. (Hint: picking the former is a sure fire sign that you’re an idiot.)
Which is why they’re idiots too. My friend has two beautiful little twins that wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for in vitro. You want to tell me that’s in ANY way an evil thing?
Fuck that. Most of the embryos produced are NOT suitable for implantation and will NEVER be little baby humans. Again, the honus is on YOU to explain why embryonic tissue that stands ZERO chance of ever being a walking talking human being should head for the toilet instead of the research lab.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Brutal Hugger
I haven’t seen much to show that as the obvious result. The basic argument is far from logically or legally flawed — if we accept the premise that fetuses are protected lives, there are a vast number of situations where preexisting law allows state governments to violate the right to privacy of medical procedures. There doesn’t even need to be the assumption of some innate religious force here, so I think that the “you got your religion in my policy debate” aspect is a bit of a red herring. We don’t have to accept the basic premise, but unless someone invents a life-o-meter, that’s a policy debate. None of these seems to have an inherent result of a ‘bad road’.
Sebastion
But it bugs you so very much! : )
No. All research takes a long time and doesn’t produce results overnight. On the other hand, your link suggests that there have been successful treatments with humans. Combined with a dead link, that’s pretty misleading, particularly since the research it’s trying to point out involved rat subjects and was of fairly limited long-term success in a large portion of the rats.
I’d say that’s a big issue.
Which is why they’re idiots too. My friend has two beautiful little twins that wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for in vitro. You want to tell me that’s in ANY way an evil thing?
Well, if I had discussed just IVF, that would have been a logical conclusion. However, since I didn’t, and I assume you’re at least as passable with English as I am (hopefully better), you’ll note the “multi-implant” qualifier. Multi-implant IVF is the implantation of multiple potential fertilized egg at the same time, distinct from alternatives which use only one fertilized egg. Multi-implant methods have higher risks to the mother, waste a very valuable resource (viable donor eggs are not exactly cheap or easy to come by), and results in needless destruction of between a handful and dozens of secondary embryos. It’s also been shown to result in more genetic degradation than even the normally riskier IVF.
I’d consider it a poor medical choice, never mind the ethical aspects, but it still gets a lot of use.
I thought we were nuanced?
Anyway, I’d prefer to have a single individual go down the toilet today, rather than have billions destroyed in the future for a pointlessly complex medical procedure with unnecessary side effects.
Pretty easy choice.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Gattsuru, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned religion in this thread. At any rate, it’s not about people basing bad poilicy on bad fiction. It’s about people basing bad policy on bad facts.
We’ll never have a life-o-meter because the question of when life begins is not a factual inquiry. What we’re arguing over here is the definition of the word “life”, which is a stupid thing to argue about. There’s nothing objective about when life begins. It’s all in our heads.
Even the pro-lifers don’t actually believe their own bullshit about life beginning at conception. It’s not like they hold funerals for miscarriages or fertilized eggs that fail to implant. Even the crazy, rightwing fanatic prolifers understand that there isn’t a life there in quite the same sense that we usually use the term.
There is a continuum from little blob of cells to increasingly complex blob of cells to fetus to baby to child. The question is at what point on the continuum do we ascribe so much value to the blob/fetus/baby/child that protecting it is worth the cost of government forcing women to do things they don’t want to do.
The “premise that fetuses are protected lives” is just magical thinking by people who want to win the policy debate by defining the terms.
And if there’s nothing innate there, the value of that blob of cells is a social construct, which to me is of fairly low value when weighed against the costs of protecting that blob of cells.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:44 am
It’s not even my real name, and it’s bugged me no one spells it right too 🙂
June 12th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Which link?
The ones I was reading make it pretty clear they’re working in lab rodents.
You’re still blathering about limited results blah blah blah. What you’re ignoring is that this is the same trajectory that virtually all medical research takes. Polio wasn’t cured over night either; cancer and herpes and HIV are still being battled constantly. Medical research is a process, not race to a goal. Just like all science.
The problem is that the actual scientists themselves believe the ESCR shows promise. The fact that they haven’t fabricated miracles from thin air in your arbitrary time frame is NOT a compelling argument.
Not everyone is using donated eggs.
Perhaps someday non MIVF methods will come into favor, but MIVF apparently has advantages. Specifically, it greatly increases the chances for successful pregnancy.
You consider it a poor choice? You’re an OBGYN? You care to qualify that opinion? You keep offering up a lot of opinions, but as far as I can tell I’m still the only one linking to what doctors and scientists have to say.
That’s a pretty weak fuckin strawman. That is NOT what the choice is. For starters we’re not destroying billions of individuals. We’re disposing of embryonic material that does NOT have a chance at ever being sentient human life.
What the heck is a “pointlessly complex” procedure? The scientists actually doing the research in question don’t agree with your assessment.
Which makes it an easy choice indeed.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
After all, it would be great if the social harm caused by abortion opponents didn’t spill over into curing diseases.
For you hysterical shriekers, that is the only statement I addressed. It is illogical, factually flawed, misleading and dishonest on several levels. If you can’t see why, there is no need to explain because you would be too deficient to understand.
I make no assumptions on Stem Cell Research at this point.