New turn of events. Germany is trying to push EU into banning federal funding for stem cells. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060720/wl_nm/science_eu_stemcells_dc
There is no way for me to describe my contempt for this nonsense. Medical research is at the top of the list in terms of logical uses for federal funding, along with crime prevention. If a particular type of medical research shows huge potential, it should receive more funding. There is no way for me to describe... The rush to strip out imperfections? What are you talking about? Now I am starting to think that you are sympathetic with these people who refuse medical assistance for their children on the grounds that the condition is God's will and that if God wants the child to live, the child will live. I believe you are one of these people with all my heart. Again, I reserve my greatest contempt for selfish, weak-minded people who would put their own complacency above the needs of others. When a young man or woman gets into a motorbike accident and injures the spinal column, is the desire to treat that person part of 'the rush to strip out imperfections'? The only thing you have said that contains an iota of common sense (you actually haven't even said it, but I know you fear it) is that eugenics are a troublesome aspect of genetic research. That's true, but the solution isn't to stick our heads in the sand and start chanting God's name. We have to deal with it. See?
using your logic should'nt invitro fertilization for couples incapable of conceiving be banned? after all look at all those eggs and embryos that get destroyed in the process!
Democracy doesn't work in realtime. Politicians are democratically elected, and then rule.... Perhaps one day this will change. Government may one day be one collective consciousness, and all governmental decisions will be conducted via POLLS on EliteTrader. Conducted and Administrated by Mahram.
I think these are poor analogies. And to answer your first question, its quite likely. The point is, these discussions span beyond religious fanaticism.
One of the principle reasons why I eliminated Kerry from consideration. And believe me, I was considering him ... ================= An Edwards Outrage By Charles Krauthammer Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A23 After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry. This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable. Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage? First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous. Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it. As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them. Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty. George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them. Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding. In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's. So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure. This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the "plaque" deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase "stem cells" having passed his lips. So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that "people need a fairy tale." Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them. Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale. There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
None of this addresses the problem with your posts in this thread. The problem is that those of your ilk will ban research on religious grounds. That's the problem. I have no idea whether stem cell research will actually result in cures for spinal cord injury. Usually what happens is that medical research results in unexpected benefits, cures and applications that were not originally foreseen. The point is, we have to be doing the research. Of course it is a travesty to say that Reeve would have walked were it not for Bush. However, it will not be a travesty if, in 40 years, a child is cured because of a treatment that resulted from (inevitable) stem cell research, and another parent with a child already lost to the same illness asks 'what if we had not initially banned this research? Maybe my kid would have had a chance at the same cure'.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is THE man, he just authorized a $150 million loan to fund California's stem cell institute. He is not a true republican, just like Bloomberg. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_on_re_us/schwarzenegger_stem_cells
Your posts are borderline retarded. Do you have any idea how many embryos are thrown in the trash? For every in vitro conception there are more than 10 embryos destroyed and that's not taking into account those couples who fail to conceive, these couples can easily throw away 100 embryos! So does this mean you're now against invitro fertilization? Please make an effort to educate yourself before posting your "convictions" based on "feelings". Your "feelings" aren't really your own to begin with, but based on what you've been fed by the right wing controlled media. Instead try reading information based on scientific principles, so you can have "convictions" based on hard scientific facts. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060720/hl_nm/stem_cells_vote_dc Martin also feels strongly about the use of embryonic stem cells for research because Jessi was conceived by in vitro fertilization -- and Martin and her husband decided years ago to discard nine unused embryos because she could not have another child.