Silly piece about the Nazi experiments related to stem-cell research.

Get a life. Blastocysts aren't babies.

By the way, I am a REAL Florida Cracker, 3rd generation.

Buzz
Tampa, FL

I'm not sure I follow you here, Donnah. There was no wide ethical moratorium on using/i> the data from evil Nazi experiments, and I'm unclear if that's what you are implying. The data was used, which was entirely separate from endorsing the research itself.

On the flip side, if you're talking about the Nazi researchers themselves ("I'm sure those researchers felt they were doing the right thing to further science and possibly save lives."), I'm fairly certain that that sentiment doesn't apply to throwing Jews in a freezer for 3 days, or hitting them with mustard gas, just to observe what happens to the human body.

Furthermore, considering that embryos do not think, emote or even feel pain, and that thousands of them are currently being washed down drains, your analogy breaks down even further. I'd think that you need to start vocally opposing fertilization treatments in addition to ESR. I don't agree with this position, but I do admire its consistency and logic.

But ethics are important. Which is why Im sure that you'll employ yours at some point within the next twenty years, if some sort of cure for a terrible disease suffered by you or your loved ones can be achieved via therapeutic cloning of their own tissue.

The point may be moot if adult stem cells can be modified to behave like embryonic stem cells, but it also might not. That's something to think about as well.

PS - No, I'm not talking down to you, just mirroring the tone of the post to make a rhetorical point.

Buzz, are you sure you're not just an ill-mannered little Yankee boy?
And since you felt the need to bring it up -- I'm 5th-generation Floridian.

Now let's find a County square. You know what to do.

Bill- I'm an old lady, so you may not remember this, but when I was a young woman there was an enormous hullaballoo about scientists using that data. It was a huge topic of discussion, and has stuck with me as an example of an ethical problem.
Nah, I'm not talking about the Nazi scientists who did the actual experiments, I'm referring to modern-day scientists and researchers using the knowledge the old data contains.
Believe me, it was and is by no means just OK to use the data. That was the debate back then "We're not endorsing the research methods, just using the data" versus "It's poison, leave it alone."

Data doesn't feel pain either. It's just information.

Yep, ethics are important. You can respect that some people find this issue disturbing? Without their being retarded for thinking that way? ;)

If my love one needed a heart and couldn't get one, I might even look around at people I don't care for and think how nice it would be to take one of theirs. You'd do all sorts of things for your family- that doesn't automatically make it ethical.

It's all stuff to think about.

Calling a fertilized human embryo, or many of them, specifically, "blastocytes," will get you past the question on an undergraduate biology exam but it does nothing to address this important issue...

That stem cell research poses the most promise with the type of stem cells found in human placenta, not in/from "blastocytes." So the issue is approaching nonsense, biologically, for the mostly liberal insistence that we just have to have 'stem cells' from fertilized human embryos if we're ever going to cure Alzheimers, all that.

We don't even KNOW with any certainty or even any general suggestion that we MIGHT "cure Alzheimers" by ANY research using ANY stem cells, much less why the mania as to those from fertilized human embryos...when, as long ago as ten years, most medical research were eager to obtain stem cells from human placenta and were no longer so interested in those from fertilized human embryos.

So, today's overheat about the latter makes little, at best tenuous, "sense" where the actual issues of research in these areas. Donna's reference to Nazi experimentations with human life is actually pretty accurate, given that the whole push for the wrong type of stem cells defies even science itself. Instead, it's some sort of ethical statement that's being insisted upon: "we would only throw them out so therefore we MUST use them for scientific research."

Even the reasoning is nonsensical, as if one justifies the other, or makes the other logical, or even that they're related in any sense of things. No, it's more a case of an ethical insistence as to what is "human" and what is not, and even IF human, whehter what should be done, well, just because.

I used to think that if I was a blastocyte and about to be thrown out, that I'd rather be "used" to establish something else, but I've since learned a bit more about the research process with stem cells and it isn't that disposable blastocytes will accomplish much, but will only be disposed of by one of a few sources instead of the first, after they've landed whatever gain along with the cells (meaning, it's not those types of stem cells that are being sought by research for research, but are being sought for financial gain and THEN discarded). Since there's no clear evidence that ANY type of stem cells will reveal much of any "cures" for whatever, additionally, it's all speculative...and it's more a case of what lines we should draw now where human life is concerned, versus what ethical regard we will abandon. The stem-cell-of-the-non-useful-kind folks just want to push the ethical line farther, much as did, also, the Nazis.

But, Buzz Kelly, can you wrestle a gator? THAT's the issue as far as I can see. Maybe also if you know where to and how to find swamp salad. And have a cypress knee lamp here or there.

I once rode a horse for three days across Polk County and never once saw a road, so there.

Suzie-We always cooked a big washtub full of swamp cabbage out in the yard for get-togethers.
What wasn't fun was dad dragging my butt down to the river to gather stuff.
Ol' Buzz looks to be a hit and run, in any case.

I'm just not liking that people who are opposed to embryonic research get talked about so poorly. If Albert Schweizer showed up nowadays he'd get razzed to death.