Exactly. I don't like the idea of creating embryos for pure reserch, but if they're gonna be destryoed anyway, then you might as well use them anyway.Those embryos will die anyway, too. They don't make it past two weeks - that's hardly killing babies.
Everyone is eventually going to die. So can I have your spleen?Originally Posted by DarkLadyNyara
Even if the embryos are being created initially for other purposes, at the end of the day it is still being used as an organ farm. And while right now it's limited to embryos a could of hours or maybe a few days old, things do tend to progress, so perhaps 50 or so years from now, it might seem perfectly resonable to create a human clone of yourself for body parts. I just think it's wrong to take bodyparts from a living human being who was given no choice in the matter and who will die as a result of the procedure. Calling it an embryo changes none of that. It is still a *human* embryo, and it is being used as a donor of body parts without any consent and those doing so know darn well that the human embryo *will* die as a result.
If it were a born human baby and another coutry were doing this, it would be considered the worst human rights abuse probably since the fall of the Soviets or the Nazis. to me at least if I wouldn't do it to a person who was born and while looking them in the face, it shouldn't be done at all.
I'll admit to you that I see human life as beginning at conception. So I am biased on the matter. I take the "human until proven nonhuman" approach, meaning that until I'm convinced beyond any doubt that at a particular point the embryo is not human, it is a human and has at least as many rights as anybody here.
so would you say the morning after pill is wrong?
yes I would.
well that's good gnostic yevon. the amount of people that would have answered no to that question is stunning while still holding your views.
so while this thread is almost over with and past it's use.
tell me. if to end life at any stage wrong? is to prevent it also wrong? (contraception). i jus like to know how thse things work with people of certain views. thanks for your time
For me it isn't wrong to prevent a prgnancy, just wrong to abort or otherwise kill the baby after it is concieved. However, for many people (In my area they are mostly Catholic) it is just as wrong to prevent a conception as it is to end a pregnancy. I respect such people, I just disagree with them.
beating a dead horse...
No, not all cells can be derived from adult stem cells.Unless I'm vastly mistaken(it has been well over two years since my last biology class), ALL cells can be derived from adult stem cells(by definition), as long as you have all of the different kinds of adult stem cells.
The most relevant example lies in the brain. There are two areas in the brain that continue to produce neurons during adulthood: the sub-ependymal zone (SEZ) and the sub-granular zone (SGZ). The neurons generated in the SEZ travel along the rostral migratory stream bound for the olfactory bulb where there is a modest amount of neuronal turn-over (read: there are neurons dying that need to be replaced--unlike most other areas of the brain). Those generated in the SGZ are bound for the granular zone of the hippocampus (they have a much shorter "trip" to take). There are some interesting theories out there detailing why the SGZ would need to produce more neurons, but at this point there is little empirical support for said theories.
[to summarize the bulk of them: the hippocampus has been demonstrated to be necessary for encoding new declarative memories--for an interesting case study, check out the hippocampectomy patient H.M., and it is thought that these new neurons might be needed as someone acquires more knowledge/information/mental pornographic images/etc.]
But it is important to remember that the neurons produced in these areas are not generic neurons that could simply be placed anywhere in the brain. They are intended to fill a very small subset of restricted areas in the brain. So you couldn't take some adult stem cells from the SEZ, place them in primary motor cortex, and expect them to differentiate into Betz neurons, or put them in the cerebellum and expect them to differentiate into basket neurons, and so on.
The take home message here is that neuronal adult stem cells are probably not incredibly useful throughout the brain (though this is not to say they are not at all useful, just rather restricted in meaningful application). I'm also not saying that other adult stem cells aren't useful.
If you have moral objections to using embryos as a source for embryonic stem cells, that's you're prerogative. However, don't blindly claim that adult stem cells (and you can go ahead and lump umbilical cord stem cells into this group--the only real distinction is that all other types of stem cells are pluripotent or multipotent, and NOT totipotent) are just as "useful" as ES cells (because that's just wrong, not to mention uninformed).
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