A view of the Fetal Stem Cell debate from one who suffers from a disease that proponents can claim to "cure" with fetal stem cells


The is a fresh view of the Stem Cell issue from one who supposedly has the most to lose from rejecting fetal stem cell research, one who suffers from an illness that may be "cured" by this research.

His is only one of many voices of people in his situation that cry out for sanity and reason in opposing fetal stem cell research. There are many other areas of stem cell reserach that are not morally corrupt, like that of adult stem cell research or placental stem cell research. There have been many cures and therapies found because of this type of research, but, so far, and likely in the future, tumors have only been the consistent result of fetal stem cell research.

Shouldn't we put more money into adult and placental stem cell research before we try and justify killing unformed, unborn, but yet human, people?

Article pasted below can be found at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gelernter5aug05,0,2017059.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

It is pasted here according to "Fair Use".

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Crossing the stem cell line

Why would anyone oppose Bill Frist's new position? Because Americans can't let human life be created just to use it and then kill it.

DAVID GELERNTER

I WOULD LOVE TO JOIN Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and many other conservatives who have decided to support federal funding for wide-ranging research in a hugely promising new area — embryonic stem cells. I'd love to, but I can't.

Stem cells can be made to generate nearly any type of human tissue, including types that might cure disease and save lives. They are taken from human embryos that are destroyed in the process. But the results might help alleviate horrific human suffering.

In 2001, the Bush administration sponsored legislation to allow federal funding of stem cell research. But funded research was restricted to the stem cell colonies in existence at that time. Frist and others would expand funding to cover new stem cell lines created from frozen embryos left over from fertility treatments, embryos that would otherwise be discarded. (It's possible that new techniques could yield stem cells without destroying embryos, but those techniques are still experimental.)

Why would anyone oppose Frist's new position? Because embryos are potential infants just as infants are potential adults. The human embryo is a tightly closed bud that will bloom one day if we let it. The difference between bud and blossom is only luck and time. If it seems OK to destroy embryos but not full-term fetuses, that's only because embryos look less human. The distinction rests not on justice but on squeamishness.

But this isn't my reason for opposing expanded stem cell funding. I am willing, in principle, to lean on a distinction that is made in the Talmud between "potential" life (such as embryos) and actual life outside the womb. Both must be protected; but actual life ranks higher. If there were nothing more to consider, I'd be willing to use doomed embryos to search for lifesaving new technologies. Reality often forces us to choose between imperfect alternatives.

But to go down that road, I must be able to trust the American public to draw a line and forbid science to step over it.

The doomed frozen embryos Frist is eyeing were created with no thought of mining them for stem cells. But the obvious next step might be to let scientists breed embryos specifically for research, or buy them from dealers. To support Frist, you must be sure that Americans will never permit these ghastly next steps.

Why "ghastly"? Because we can never permit the creation of human life with the intent of using and then killing it. We have no right to construct a world in which two kinds of human embryo exist, one immeasurably precious and the other designed to be cut up for parts. We'd be turning "all men are created equal" into the ugliest kind of lie. (The Talmud, for its part, never allows potential life to be destroyed without a specific, powerful reason.)

Can we trust the American public to forbid the creation of disposable human life? Can we trust ourselves to forbid the premeditated destruction of weak and helpless potential human beings?

No, and the Terri Schiavo case proves it. Schiavo was weak, helpless, gravely brain-damaged, "dimly wakeful," unable to feed herself — but not dying. Her parents loved her, and she (they believed) continued to love them.

Yet various courts ruled at her husband's request that her life wasn't worth living. And so her caregivers were ordered to stop feeding her. "Even a chip of ice to relieve the pain of a parched mouth and throat was judicially prohibited," wrote Dr. Paul McHugh in Commentary magazine, "and local sheriffs were alerted to prevent it." She died slowly of dehydration. Surveys suggested that the American public didn't care to interfere, and disapproved of politicians who tried to.

CAN THIS same public be trusted to tell the biomedical establishment "this far and no further"? Of course not. When hard moral judgments were required, whatever the "experts" said was good enough for us. We refused to interfere and draw a line. And so we have no right to allow science to set off down this road.

I have permanent, debilitating injuries that stem cell research might conceivably help. But rejecting research that might help you personally is dirt-easy compared to rejecting research that might help a suffering family member. When Americans campaign for unrestricted stem cell research out of despairing love, I can't blame them any more than I can blame Terri Schiavo's parents for pleading for their daughter's life.

How much do our moral scruples really matter to us in the end? An agonizing question.

But I can't line up with Frist, much as I would like to.

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Stem Cells Found in Placentas, no unborn people need to die to preform this research

The article pasted below reveals that stem cells with as much pluripotency (ability to form any cell) as embryonic cells have been found in the placenta. This is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that MUCH more research needs to be done before we start sacrficing unborn people in the name of reasearch.

These stem cells, in addition to adult derived stem cells, hold much more promise than using embryonic stem cells which so far have only proven valuable in creating..... tumors (they create tumors consistently and have yet to produce any research of any value).

The article pasted below can be found at http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2005-08-05T133123Z_01_N05496409_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-SCIENCE-CELLS-DC.XML Pasted here according to "Fair Use"

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By Maggie Fox, Health and Science CorrespondentWASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Scientists looking for easier and less-controversial alternatives to stem cells from human embryos said on Friday they found a potential source in placentas saved during childbirth.

They described primitive cells found in a part of the placenta called the amnion, which they coaxed into forming a variety of cell types and which look very similar to sought-after embryonic stem cells.

With 4 million children born in the United States each year, placentas could provide a ready source of the cells, the team at the University of Pittsburgh said. It is not yet certain that the cells they found are true stem cells, said Stephen Strom, who worked on the study. But they carry two important genes, called Oct 4 and nanog, which so far have only been seen on embryonic stem cells.

"We were just blown away when we found those two genes expressed in those cells," Strom said in a telephone interview.

"The presence of these two genes suggests these cells are pluripotent, which means they should be able to form any cell type in the body.

"Stem cells are the body's master cells. So-called adult stem cells are found in the tissue and blood are a source for renewing cells. Embryonic stem cells are found in days-old embryos. While powerful, their use is controversial because some people, President Bush among them, believe destroying an embryo is immoral and unethical.

Supporters of embryonic stem-cell research say it may provide an important path to a new field called regenerative medicine, in which diseases ranging from juvenile diabetes to paralysis could be cured using transplants of carefully cultivated stem cells.

There are moves in Congress to expand funding of embryonic stem cell research, in case it proves to be the best way forward, but also counter-measures to further restrict it.

GETTING AROUND POLITICS

Mindful of the controversy, Strom's team looked for other sources of stem cells."We looked and we found them. The politics is important," Strom said.

Writing in the journal Stem Cells, Strom and colleagues said they looked in a part of the placenta called the amnion -- the outer membrane of the amniotic sac. The placenta is the interface between mother and fetus during gestation, and is produced by the embryo. The embryo and later fetus floats inside the sac of amniotic fluid.

Other teams of researchers, notably Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University in North Carolina, have found stem cells resembling embryonic cells in amniotic fluid, but research is still early and it is not known how useful those would be.

Strom says his cells are different are different from the ones the Wake Forest team found, and they may not be true stem cells because they did not form tumors in his experiments, as a true stem cell would.

Strom said the cells he worked with also do not appear to be immortal, meaning they die out after a while in the lab, unlike true stem cells. Strom's team tested the cells in lab dishes, incubating them in variousc ompounds, and got them to form into what looked like heart cells, nerve cells, liver cells and pancreatic cells.

Strom's lab works specifically on liver transplants and he hopes to develop the cells to use them instead of donated liver. Pancreatic cells would be important because they could be used to treat diabetes.

The university has licensed the technology to a company called Stemnion,LLC, and the researchers are shareholders and will receive license fees aspart of the agreement.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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More About the Defense Bill That is Going To be vetoed because of John Warner's anti-torture amendment

Here is some more insight into the whole torture/abuse scandal and how it relates to the defense spending bill that the republican leadership has stalled in congress.

Again, it is the height of hypocrisy for the administration to proclaim that they stand up for "human rights", but when pressed for action, their true colors show, that of subterfuge, deceit and dishonesty.

The article pasted here can be found at
http://www.observer.com/opinions_conason.asp Pasted here according to "Fair Use".

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Officers and Veterans Defy Bush's Neocons
By Joe Conason

Among the most durable stereotypes of American political culture is that military officers secretly yearn for authoritarian rule and blind brutality, especially if they happen to be from the South, while civilian officials and intellectuals supposedly cherish our constitutional order.

Those old liberal clichés have been proven false in the struggle to curtail the lawless misconduct symbolized by Abu Ghraib. We now know that the most reliable defenders of the Constitution are lifetime military officers—bolstered by a trio of Southern conservative Senators who also happen to be decorated veterans.

They have been pushing back against the neoconservative academics and experts whose advice led to torture scandals and the abrogation of civil and human rights. In an effort to restore the honor of the armed forces and prevent future abuses, Senators John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have proposed amendments to the Defense Authorization Act that would institute standards for the treatment of military detainees. Having loyally muted their criticism during last year’s election season, the three Republican Senators are again voicing demands for candor and reform.

The White House responded with a blatant threat conveyed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather than accept sane restraints on future abuse, the President would veto the annual defense bill. With the administration’s credibility badly diminished, the Senate Republican leadership postponed a vote on the defense bill until September.

Meanwhile, however, the dispute between the Republican rebels and the White House has revealed similar dissension within the military. Those fissures were exposed when Senator Graham released declassified memoranda written by top Judge Advocate General officers. Pried loose from thePentagon by the Senator, those memos show that in early 2003, ranking J.A.G. officers from every service branch tried to warn against interrogation methods that violate the human and legal rights of prisoners in U.S. military detention facilities.

Every American who cares about our troops, our security and our international prestige should know why the J.A.G.’s were so deeply concerned about the direction taken by the Bush administration.

In essence, the J.A.G. officers worried about the effect on the military of policies that encouraged torture and other interrogation practices prohibited under U.S. and international law. Doing so endangered American troops, who could be prosecuted in U.S. or international courts—and undermined their own protection against enemy abuses. The J.A.G. officers could barely conceal their astonishment that the Bush administration would consider discarding decades of training and tradition for the sake of dubiously effective interrogation methods.

“Treating [the] detainees inconsistently with the [Geneva] Conventions arguably ‘lowers the bar’ for the treatment of U.S. POWs in future conflicts,” wrote Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack Rives. “How will this affect their treatment when incarcerated abroad and our ability to call others to account for their treatment?” asked Navy Rear Adm. Michael Lohr.

The “implementation of questionable techniques will very likely establish a new baseline for acceptable practice in this area,” wrote Army Gen.Michael Romig, “putting our service personnel at far greater risk and vitiating many of the POW/detainee safeguards the U.S. has worked hard to establish over the past five decades.

”Somehow, those concerns appear to have made little impression on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his advisors. But then, as Marine Corps Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler noted dryly in his own dissenting memo, those zealous lawyers promoting torture in the Justice Department and the White House “do not represent the services; thus, understandably, concern for service members is not reflected in their opinion.”

More broadly, the J.A.G. officers were troubled by the implications for the military and the nation of the high-handed attitude exemplified by the Bush advisors. What kind of country would the United States become if we allowed our military officers to behave like criminals? What kind of country would we become if we accepted the dangerous theory, promoted by the Pentagon civilians, that in wartime a President can issue whatever orders he may choose, regardless of U.S. and international law?

We have yet to confront the full consequences of that theory, as applied in U.S. military detention facilities. At the moment, the Pentagon and the White House are withholding photos and videos that reportedly document abuses even graver than what we’ve already seen, despite a court order demanding their release.

The warnings of the J.A.G. officers were prescient indeed. Someday, when historians consider how this President and his associates sought to overturn American values, traditions and statutes in pursuit of absolute power, they will praise the officers and politicians who resisted those illegitimate maneuvers