Stem Cell Research

[Jae Onasi]

And so does my appendix, but nobody cries murder when appendectomies occur. And yeah, my appendix wasn't going to eventually develop into a full-grown person, but it's every bit as aware as a newly fertilized blastocyst.

So? Does a person lose his status as a human if he's in a coma? Besides, your appendix is a part of you and has your genetic structure. That's not the same thing at all as a baby, who is a separate person from his/her mother and father.

Yet, if you are taking active measures to not get pregnant at every opportunity you are actively working to ensure that your egg (which is half-human) does not receive the opportunity to join with a sperm cell (also half-human) and grow up to experience all of the wonders that life has to offer. It just does not seem rational to believe that a cell goes from not-human to 100% human almost instantly.

 

That's the beauty of a cutoff--at some specific point in time, yes, it goes from not-human to human. When s/he has his or her own unique DNA structure, s/he's no longer my egg or Jimbo's sperm (both of which only have half our DNA anyway (26 singles instead of 26 pairs of chromosomes)). That unborn person has his or her own unique genetic structure separate from either Jimbo or me.

 

How is that definitive cut-off any different than the irrational methods used to define life in a variety of different ways depending on what a given group feels like making it at that time? What should we use? First heartbeat? First movements? First time s/he sucks a thumb? Pees in the womb? Has distinguishable features? Those in favor of killing embryos justify it by saying 'oh, it's not alive until it takes it's first breath.' How very convenient that one doesn't have to worry about the ethics of experimenting on or killing fetuses when one defines life in whatever way they want to justify actions and prevent the guilt. Conception is the only point where we can definitively establish a cutoff between parents' sperm/eggs and a new person who is distinct from them.

[ET Warrior]

We're not talking a blastocyst, we're talking an embryo, unlike your appendix an embryo does have motor functions which indicates a functioning nervous system.

No, actually, this thread is about Stem Cells, not abortion. Stem Cells are harvested from blastocysts.

 

So? Does a person lose his status as a human if he's in a coma?

/sigh

Honestly, there is OBVIOUSLY a difference between a collection of cells that can't be seen without a microscope and a fully developed human who has temporarily lost conscious brain functionality. My question to respond, however, would be if you would consider somebody a human if their brain were removed, destroyed, and their body sustained only by machine.

 

That unborn person has his or her own unique genetic structure separate from either Jimbo or me.

Possibly not strictly on-topic, but a clone of you wouldn't have a unique genetic structure, does that invalidate it's right to development? Does a blastocyst in your body with your DNA put it in the realm of appendix?

 

How is that definitive cut-off any different than the irrational methods used to define life in a variety of different ways depending on what a given group feels like making it at that time?

I don't really see why something like "Neurological activity" is so irrational. The thing that really makes us who we are is our ability to perceive.

[Windu Chi]

So? Does a person lose his status as a human if he's in a coma?

Hell nah!

That's cruel Jae, for anybody who believes that.

And I'm not saying that you believe that.

 

 

 

 

experimenting on or killing fetuses

Experimenting on or killing fetuses, now that's unacceptable, to me.

Conception is the only point where we can definitively establish a cutoff between parents' sperm/eggs and a new person who is distinct from them.

 

This question is still touchy.

[SilentScope001]

I don't really see why something like "Neurological activity" is so irrational. The thing that really makes us who we are is our ability to perceive.

 

Does that mean it's okay to kill an actual baby, not a fetus? Why? That baby cannot perceive anything at all, he's a newborn, and since preception is so important, we can terminate the baby without any moral qualms.

 

Oh, and it's okay to terminate people who are sleeping. Sleeping people cannot preceive anything. All they have are dreams, but really, that's not preceptions of the outside world, so it does not count. They are unaware. So murdering someone who is walking around, that's bad, but as soon as he goes to sleep, I can now terminate with ease! It's not killing if he does not preceive it, as you say so. I just need to do so steathly, so that the person does not recover his ablity to preceive, but as long as he does not preceive anything, he is not human.

 

If he's unconsicuss? If he's antheizied? Well, it's okay to terminate then.

 

Since law should conform to Science, we could decrease the "murder" rate by tensfold, because obivously, it's not murder if the person is unaware it's murder...

Snipped non-contributory comments. Keep it polite, please. --Jae

===

I did not want to intervene in this topic, but I honestly see that statement as being...well, quite strange. Basically, come up with a different reason why the abortion of a fetus is okay, but the murder of a child recently born is not. It seems artibrary that you choose the "ability to preceive" as the key factor to determing if a person is alive or not, and without any justifications, I just feel quite upset.

[ET Warrior]

and without any justifications, I just feel quite upset.

If there is neurological activity going on, then there is some manner of perception taking place. That's all I said.

 

Non-contributory comments removed. Please see your PM. --Jae

[Windu Chi]

Oh, and it's okay to terminate people who are sleeping. Sleeping people cannot preceive anything.

No!

 

If he's unconsicuss? If he's antheizied? Well, it's okay to terminate then.

Hell, no!

 

because obivously, it's not murder if the person is unaware it's murder...

Now, that is ridiculous!

[Totenkopf]

My question..., however, would....you ...consider somebody a human if their brain were removed, destroyed, and their body sustained only by machine.

 

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...... However, if you're asking if somebody could be considered a "viable" human being, then at current levels of medical technology such a person would no longer be "viable", just a carcas (sort of like the embryo after you abort it, btw). Now, if we could grow a new central nervous system to put in place of the old one...then that person would be a "patient".

[Windu Chi]

My question to respond, however, would be if you would consider somebody a human if their brain were removed, destroyed, and their body sustained only by machine.

Now, this is ridiculous, of course they aren't human no more.

[ET Warrior]

Except how is it a strawman? It doesn't appear to be something orchastrated to easily argue against.

An entire post relegated to comparing my post to an advocation for murder of sleeping people isn't designed to be easy to argue against?

 

I rather think it is, although my post which further explains my point seems to have been either deleted by moderation or the server. If the former an explanation via PM would be delightful. If the latter, damn yous Lucas Forums. Damn. Yous.

 

I thought you could see mod comments here, sorry. Check your PM. I edited the previous post. --Jae

[SilentScope001]

An entire post relegated to comparing my post to an advocation for murder of sleeping people isn't designed to be easy to argue against?

 

What I was saying is that you said the term preceive.

 

Perceive (Per*ceive") (?), v. t.

[imp. & p. p. Perceived (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Perceiving.]

[OF. percevoir, perceveir, L. percipere, perceptum; per (see Per-) + capere to take, receive. See Capacious, and cf. Perception.]

 

1. To obtain knowledge of through the senses; to receive impressions from by means of the bodily organs; to take cognizance of the existence, character, or identity of, by means of the senses; to see, hear, or feel; as, to perceive a distant ship; to perceive a discord. Reid.

2. To take intellectual cognizance of; to apprehend by the mind; to be convinced of by direct intuition; to note; to remark; to discern; to see; to understand. "Jesus perceived their wickedness." Matt. xxii. 18. "You may, fair lady, Perceive I speak sincerely." Shak. "Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are still in the dark." Locke.

3. To be affected of influented by. [R.] "The upper regions of the air perceive the collection of the matter of tempests before the air here below." Bacon.

 

To preceive, you must be aware of your surrondings. I was not attempting to use a strawman, instead, I was stating that that definition of "life" is very strange to use, since we can lose our ability to preceive many times. Your definition seems to be a bit inaccurate, and I want to draw that out...It is a more of attempting to rebut your arguments by reducing it to the absurd.

 

You claim that it is all about nerological activity then, and that as long as you have a working brain, you preceive...So, I'll assume what you mean is that if you have an active brain, then that means that the person is "alive", in which case, it would be okay to terminate a child until he is 8 weeks old, because according to wikipedia, by the time a child is 8 week old, he has a brain, and since brains create neurons, the child would be alive by that time.

 

8 weeks (condition at start of fetal stage). The risk of miscarriage decreases sharply at the beginning of the fetal stage.[5] At this point, all major structures, including hands, feet, head, brain, and other organs are present, but they continue to grow, develop, and become more functional.[6]

 

What I really want is just a consitent definition on what is living and what is not that the pro-lifers might agree with. I can provide one that would sastify you and me, but well, I don't like artibrary deadlines. I don't want doctors saying that, "I'm sorry, but you cannot abort this child. If you came in 24 hours ago, then we can abort the fetus, but since you diddly-daddled, the fetus is now offically alive, and therefore, I cannot terminate the fetus. Sorry."

[Nancy Allen``]

I'm not sure if we can keep this particular topic going, but here goes. I think it's quite a valid point to raise, whether or not concience has to do with whether or not something should be allowed to be terminated. We do not kill the living simply because they are not able to, given their present state (sleep for example) sense what's happening around them. IMO laying the strawman claim in this case is a cheap way to debase the arguement rather than confront it and trying to counter what had been put forth. Just because it argues your points doesn't make it a fallacy.

 

As for what Silentscope had said, for a woman to go through her pregnancy and decide at the last minute to have an abortion or something is more than a little rich. I don't think that's even possible, but if the pregnancy is unwanted (rape for example) then I think there are legitimate grounds for termination. On the other hand an unplanned pregnancy caused through negligence a woman should have the baby, and give them up for adoption rather than abortion. That's not to say they can't but if it's their own fault...but that's getting off topic.

 

How about stem cells, ect from death row convicts or something, harvesting what's needed from criminals put to death if that's possible?

[Windu Chi]

 

How about stem cells, ect from death row convicts or something, harvesting what's needed from criminals put to death if that's possible?

Death row convicts, you're funny, Nancy.

 

But I doubt alot people here will diagree with that, since they harvest organs from death row convicts, when death comes to collect it's due.

 

But I think that someone will only be able to collect adult stem cells.

Unless on the rare occasion when women get executed.

[Darth InSidious]

Frankly, the existence of 'death row' is wrong. But that's another topic.

 

At the moment, there's a great deal of upheaval in this area. Personally, I don't think we will necessarily need embryonic stem cells, and I hope the skin-cell research proves true, not just because of my moral standpoint on embryoes, but also because the chance of those cells being rejected is virtually minimal, since they already contain the person's DNA.

[ET Warrior]

To preceive, you must be aware of your surrondings.

No, you mustn't. You just need brain functionality. Even fully anesthetized our brain is working and responding to external stimuli. This is why dreams sometimes incorporate things that are going on around us, and why we wake up if someone yells our name.

 

The ONLY time we lose our ability to perceive completely is a complete loss of brain functionality. Of course at this point you're just arguing semantics with me. The crux of the argument was that neurological activity is a definitive cutoff that wasn't illogical.

 

How about stem cells, ect from death row convicts or something, harvesting what's needed from criminals put to death if that's possible?

I think the problem would be finding enough blastocysts that are on death row. There aren't really problems harvesting adult stem cells, the debate is over embryonic stem cells.

[Jae Onasi]

If there is neurological activity going on, then there is some manner of perception taking place. That's all I said.

 

Actually, that's not accurate. We have afferent and efferent pathways, along with reflex pathways in the neurological system. You certainly can have neurological activity without any perception whatsoever. A number of reflex pathways go through the spinal cord and never go to the brain. You can (and do) have all sorts of signals going out from brain to the body without any perception whatsoever coming into the brain.

 

How would you measure perception in an embryo, anyway? It's hard enough measuring it in people outside the womb.

 

But I doubt alot people here will diagree with that, since they harvest organs from death row convicts,

They can't harvest convicts' organs (at least in the US)--the methods used to put them to death either electrocute or poison the organs, rendering them unusable.

 

On embryonic stem cells in general--if we can get more stem cells from umbilical cord blood and I just read recently from amniotic fluid, why are we even bothering killing embryos? It's a lot easier to get the embryonic stem cells from these other sources, and there are as many easily, if not more, stem cells there than in an embryo.

[Windu Chi]

How would you measure perception in an embryo, anyway? It's hard enough measuring it in people outside the womb.

I think probably some nano circuit, when that tech become available.

 

 

They can't harvest convicts' organs (at least in the US)--the methods used to put them to death either electrocute or poison the organs, rendering them unusable.

They still electrocute people, I thought that was ban, because they said, it was inhumane.

 

Inhumane, which is ridiculous, how some people say that.

Well, some other people will call execution, inhumane.

[Pavlos]

On embryonic stem cells in general--if we can get more stem cells from umbilical cord blood and I just read recently from amniotic fluid, why are we even bothering killing embryos? It's a lot easier to get the embryonic stem cells from these other sources, and there are as many easily, if not more, stem cells there than in an embryo.

 

I'd be quite interested in reading that, Jae; if it is on the web, of course .

[Jae Onasi]

Wake Forest article on amniotic fluid-derived stem cells.

 

Scientific American had a nice article, as did National Geographic. There are lots of articles on it but these seem to have more of the science than the news media puts into theirs.

 

Here's a National Geographic article on harvesting embryonic stem cells without killing the embryo.

 

For source purists: National Geographic and Scientific American are decent secondary sources that typically do a good job of synthesizing and quoting the primary sources and probably work better for the non-science folks here than the primary sources. Feel free to check out the original sources quoted by these.

 

@Windu Chi--introducing something that can alter electrical/chemical signals around a developing embryo/fetus could have some bad effects. There's so much development that's going on as a result of specific biochemical/electrical signals at very specific times that we just don't want to mess with in an embryo. If you alter just 1 cell at a very precise point in an embryo's development, you end up with major defects like missing limbs or organs.

[Pavlos]

Wake Forest article on amniotic fluid-derived stem cells.

 

Scientific American had a nice article, as did National Geographic. There are lots of articles on it but these seem to have more of the science than the news media puts into theirs.

 

Here's a National Geographic article on harvesting embryonic stem cells without killing the embryo.

 

Thanks, Jae, they should prove to be an interesting read .

[GarfieldJL]

They still electrocute people, I thought that was ban, because they said, it was inhumane.

In the United States, capital punishment is only reserved for extreme crimes such as 1st degree murder...

 

Inhumane, which is ridiculous, how some people say that.

Well, some other people will call execution, inhumane.

 

That's a pretty bad example there is a significant difference between executing a murderer and killing an infant, fetus, or embryo. A murderer killed another human being, the infant, fetus, or embryo did not do such a thing.

[Windu Chi]

 

That's a pretty bad example there is a significant difference between executing a murderer and killing an infant, fetus, or embryo. A murderer killed another human being, the infant, fetus, or embryo did not do such a thing.

What in the hell is you talking about, why are assuming I'm okaying bady killing, I said, I was against the damn abortion thing, concerning fetus.

 

@Windu Chi--introducing something that can alter electrical/chemical signals around a developing embryo/fetus could have some bad effects. There's so much development that's going on as a result of specific biochemical/electrical signals at very specific times that we just don't want to mess with in an embryo. If you alter just 1 cell at a very precise point in an embryo's development, you end up with major defects like missing limbs or organs.

 

Yes, there is always difficulties, Jae, but there is always away.

 

I was talking about a nano circuit that the embryo will act like a resistive circuit element, that if there is some neurological signal spectrum, that will register with some help of a computer analog to digital signal converter, as neurological activity.

Of course the embryo's electrical resistance, will have be low enough to alow current to past in whatever the embryo's physical threshold tolerances to voltage levels and current levels, are.

Don't won't too high resistance, or it will heat the embryo up and cook it.

PH=I^2 Reb where PH is the heat dump into the embryo, I is the applied electrical current; and Reb is the embryo's resistance to electrical current.

 

The calculations I did with my Mathcad 11 software:

if: the applied electrical current I=0.20Amp and the the embryo's resistance to electrical current Reb=0.0005ohm or 50 milliohms

the heat dump into the embryo PH=2e-5W or 200 milliwatts.

That might be to high!

So, I will need to know also the specific heat, thermal conductivity and of course it's physical mechanical structure properties, like it's threshold tolerances to pressure and stress.

 

But I will ponder on how this can be done, Jae

[GarfieldJL]

Okay, let me put it this way, at what point in development does one have a soul? Seriously, and infant cannot survive on its own without help from its mother or someone else. Does that mean the infant isn't a person, no it doesn't. One could argue that you're committing murder because embryos have a soul, it doesn't matter that they can't survive on their own yet, cause infants can't either.

[Windu Chi]

Okay, let me put it this way, at what point in development does one have a soul? Seriously, and infant cannot survive on its own without help from its mother or someone else. Does that mean the infant isn't a person, no it doesn't. One could argue that you're committing murder because embryos have a soul, it doesn't matter that they can't survive on their own yet, cause infants can't either.

Well, I'm open-minded GarfieldJL, so I believe animals have souls.

But I'm not really sure how, to figure that out.

I think souls may be compose of pure energy of EM waves, that maybe linked consciously through some kind of hyperspace dimension or couple to the zero-point vacuum energy field, of our universe.

 

But that's me, "thinking outside the box".

[Jae Onasi]

I was talking about a nano circuit that the embryo will act like a resistive circuit element, that if there is some neurological signal spectrum, that will register with some help of a computer analog to digital signal converter, as neurological activity.

Of course the embryo's electrical resistance, will have be low enough to alow current to past in whatever the embryo's physical threshold tolerances to voltage levels and current levels, are.

Don't won't too high resistance, or it will heat the embryo up and cook it.

You'd also mess with the embryo's cell electrophysiology--the resting potential of a cell is around -60mV and can go to +40mV when it's firing/active. If you cause a cell to fire, it might send an inappropriate nerve or cardiac signal (for instance), or make a chemical at the wrong time (or too much or not enough at the right time), any of which would be detrimental to the baby. You don't want to mess with the electrical/biochemical actions in an embryo--if you make a mistake in just one cell in an embryo, it can end up causing major defects later, as I noted above.

I think souls may be compose of pure energy of EM waves

*Jae suddenly hears the song

going through her head....*

[tk102]

Okay, let me put it this way, at what point in development does one have a soul? Seriously, and infant cannot survive on its own without help from its mother or someone else. Does that mean the infant isn't a person, no it doesn't. One could argue that you're committing murder because embryos have a soul, it doesn't matter that they can't survive on their own yet, cause infants can't either.

 

I think ED mentioned something about that on page 2.

 

Before you bring up how its "soul" makes it human - we're dealing with science, not religion...