stem cell research

[gambit]

Well, I've been steering clear of this topic until I felt I could add something new or relevant to the discussion, and from the looks of it, I would be reiterating arguments that have been said already.

So instead, I'm going to throw a couple of points into the ring and let everyone make of it as they will. These aren't opinions, just new points of discussion.

1) With the talk about stem cells not having a choice in the matter for research, I'm reminded of the people the Nazis experimented on in the concentration camps. They did not have a choice in the matter, yet physicians today still wrestle with using the data gathered from the Nazi experimentations. From Wikipedia:

The modern body of medical knowledge about how the human body reacts to freezing to the point of death is based almost exclusively on these Nazi experiments. This, together with the recent use of data from Nazi research into the effects of phosgene gas, has proved controversial and presents an ethical dilemma for modern physicians who do not agree with the methods used to obtain these data.

Thoughts?


2) This is a passage from the book The President of Good & Evil by noted philosopher, Peter Singer. In his book he mostly argues President Bush and his policies from a philosophical stand point, and one of the issues he touches is stem cell research. This paragraph is a factual one, not an argument one way or the other, about miscarriages--mostly ones that women never know about. I follow it with a question he poses for discussion.

Every year in the United States, millions of embryos die. Each of them had the unique genetic potential of an individual human being. These embryos do not die in laboratories, nor in abortion clinics, nor after women have taken RU486, the "abortion pill." They die as part of a natural process that has, as far as we know, been going on as long as there have been human beings. Some scientists estimate that for every embryo that becomes a child, four fertilized eggs fail to make it. Others think that the ratio is closer to one lost fertilized egg for every child born. Even on the lower estimate, more than three million embryos die annually in the United States from natural causes. These are embryos that have failed to implant in the woman's uterus. They are released with her menstrual bleeding. In most cases the woman never even knows that she conceived.

Should we feel that this loss of embryos is a terrible thing, a kind of ongoing holocaust? If each human embryo is "something precious to be protected," then surely this is how we should feel.

Thoughts?

[BeautifulBurnout]

Sorry! Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean to put a downer on the thread (man). Only that I am just about all discussed out on pro-choice and thought "oh no not again" when it started going in that direction.

Yes, it is interesting to explore everyone's views and yes this is an amazing subject to be discussing and apologies for appearing ratty.

I will just revert to my first post which is, if the foetuses are going to be lost anyway, at least let their "lives" produce something good. Or something.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Originally Posted by gambit

2) This is a passage from the book The President of Good & Evil by noted philosopher, Peter Singer.

Man the irony just keeps getting bigger and thicker, no?

[Deckard]

Originally Posted by Cacophony

that was the purpose of the thread. not to "win" or convert anyone, but to discuss the merits of each side of the argument and perhaps see something new.

Agreed. Something like this, it's a very, well, philosophical issue. There will never be the elusive right answer that convinces everyone outright. If only it was that easy! At most, some of the points raised make us (certainly make me) think about things in a slightly new way. That's certainly how I've reached my current position, and that's far from set in stone. Finding the paradoxes are all part of the fun. I find ethical issues surrounding life, death, even speciesism and animal rights - to be fascinating.

[Deckard]

BB, you didn't appear ratty.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Every year in the United States, millions of embryos die. Each of them had the unique genetic potential of an individual human being. These embryos do not die in laboratories, nor in abortion clinics, nor after women have taken RU486, the "abortion pill." They die as part of a natural process that has, as far as we know, been going on as long as there have been human beings. Some scientists estimate that for every embryo that becomes a child, four fertilized eggs fail to make it. Others think that the ratio is closer to one lost fertilized egg for every child born. Even on the lower estimate, more than three million embryos die annually in the United States from natural causes. These are embryos that have failed to implant in the woman's uterus. They are released with her menstrual bleeding. In most cases the woman never even knows that she conceived.

Should we feel that this loss of embryos is a terrible thing, a kind of ongoing holocaust? If each human embryo is "something precious to be protected," then surely this is how we should feel.

You see, now you have got me on this one. I had a miscarriage 15 yrs ago at 12 weeks gestation. If somehow the doctors had "retrieved" this foetus, a foetus that I loved and wanted, and if doctors then asked me whether I would agree to stem cell research, I really have no idea what I would have responded. So now that has opened a whole can of worms as far as my position on stem-cell research. Surely I can't mean "yeah, it's fine for every other woman's rejected foetuses, but not for mine" can I?

On the other hand, if I had not wanted that pregnancy, would I have felt differently about it? I can see thinking too hard about this is liable to give me a headache.

In terms of "is every loss of embryo an ongoing holocaust" my answer would have to be an emphatic no, though. Miscarriages are usually for a good reason that have nothing to do with any actions of the mother and everything to do with the foetus not being viable for whatever reason and the uterus rejecting it.

[gambit]

I'm pretty we're talking about embryos and not fetuses in that passage. I don't know if you could perform stem cell research with a fetus; I assume it's only with a embryo.

Also, I'm sorry to hear about that, BB. *hug*

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by gambit

I'm pretty we're talking about embryos and not fetuses in that passage. I don't know if you could perform stem cell research with a fetus; I assume it's only with a embryo.

Also, I'm sorry to hear about that, BB. *hug*

Aw thanks.

Actually yeah, I am confusing foetus and embryo cos I guess I dunno at what stage one morphs into the other? I don't know whether stem-cell can be performed on a foetus or not, frankly. Although isn't there something about stem-cells being available from in umbilical cords? Or am I completely barking up the wrong tree? I am really not informed enough on this subject to comment sensibly, so I should get onto wikipedia and check it out a bit more first.

[Sean]

What an interesting thread. I have to say that posts like the one from Cacophony surprised me by presenting an argument against stem cell research that I had never heard, and that frankly, makes a lot of sense to me. I personally don't share your subjective conclusions when it gets into the issue of "cannibalism", and I appreciate Deckard and BB representing the view that I agree with very clearly, but I believe I have to agree with your conclusions about public financing, Cacophony.

And now onto this post by bryantm3:

Originally Posted by bryantm3

Deckard, your argument is just as or more circular than mine. You keep going back to 'well, sperm and unfertilized eggs are sacred because they could potentially make life like an embryo could', but you completely ignore or throw away the fact that an embryo is alive with an existentialistic 'what is life anyway?' argument.

well, let's consult dictionary.com and wikipedia. these are both fairly secular resources.

dictionary.com:
life
   /laɪf/
noun, plural lives  /laɪvz/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [lahyvz]
adjective
–noun
1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

While the dictionary.com definition seems pretty cut and dry, I believe it's slightly misleading. Apparently, human eggs are capable of parthenogenic activation, which is basically the activation and development of the egg absent fertilization by sperm. Beyond that, there are cellular biologists who currently consider anything that is a cell to be "alive", which would include egg and sperm. And let's not ignore our evolutionary origins, which in recent years, we've traced all the way back to Choanoflagellates - sperm-like single-celled organisms that are the "evolutionary link between single-celled and multi-celled organisms". And finally, if you stop and imagine a hypothetical scenario or two keeping Choanoflagellates in mind, it's hard to imagine not referring to a sperm as being alive. Imagine a Mars rover analyzing some soil and discovering a sperm. Aside from being completely freaked out, would we not conclude that this was a form of life? A little, wiggly, single-celled organism flopping around on another planet?

So I believe Deckard's point stands, which is that the argument of exactly when the parts necessary to create a human life actually become a human life simply can't be won. A sperm and an egg are arguably living entities whose sole purposes are to join together to create a complete, human chromosomal complement (the point at which you assert the human life begins), but we could then go on to debate whether or not this small cluster of unformed cells that has no fingers, toes, limbs, brains, organs, nerve endings, thoughts, emotions, etc, actually constitutes a "human" life any more than the sperm and the egg do as two halves of the human chromosomal complement. After all, whether it's incomplete chromosomes, an incomplete nervous system, or an incomplete body, it's simply incomplete. So as has been noted, this is an un-winnable debate because the only conclusions we can reach based on our current scientific knowledge are purely subjective.

Originally Posted by bryantm3

now, let's look at the definition of circular reasoning.

Circular Reasoning – supporting a premise with the premise rather than a conclusion.

Circular reasoning is an attempt to support a statement by simply repeating the statement in different or stronger terms. In this fallacy, the reason given is nothing more than a restatement of the conclusion that poses as the reason for the conclusion. To say, “You should exercise because it’s good for you” is really saying, “You should exercise because you should exercise.”

It shares much with the false authority fallacy because we accept these statements based solely on the fact that someone else claims it to be so. Often, we feel we can trust another person so much that we often accept his claims without testing the logic. This is called blind trust, and it is very dangerous. We might as well just talk in circles.

I actually don't see Deckard employing circular reasoning here. All he's saying is that based on what we know definitively through science, there is no clear conclusion about exactly when a human life begins. Simply noting the limits of our knowledge as a species is not circular logic, it's a conclusion based on fact.

That of course doesn't mean that we can't all hold our personal beliefs on the subject. After all, that's where scientific discovery originates - with a hypothesis. And as I mentioned earlier, this thread has been very eye-opening for me thanks to the varied positions and reasoning people have on it all.

[cacophony]

Originally Posted by gambit

1) With the talk about stem cells not having a choice in the matter for research, I'm reminded of the people the Nazis experimented on in the concentration camps. They did not have a choice in the matter, yet physicians today still wrestle with using the data gathered from the Nazi experimentations. From Wikipedia:

Thoughts?

well the thing is, no one is arguing for the continuation and public funding of nazi research practices. the knowledge gained from suffering isn't necessarily tainted in and of itself. hell, the spread of pandemic diseases is what gave us our modern understanding of hygiene and sanitation. the question is whether you deliberately and willfully allow for the practice of induced death or suffering in an effort to derive new scientific data. like establishing new concentration camps to run similar experiments. or unleashing a pandemic disease in order to study its effects.

Originally Posted by gambit

Every year in the United States, millions of embryos die. Each of them had the unique genetic potential of an individual human being. These embryos do not die in laboratories, nor in abortion clinics, nor after women have taken RU486, the "abortion pill." They die as part of a natural process that has, as far as we know, been going on as long as there have been human beings. Some scientists estimate that for every embryo that becomes a child, four fertilized eggs fail to make it. Others think that the ratio is closer to one lost fertilized egg for every child born. Even on the lower estimate, more than three million embryos die annually in the United States from natural causes. These are embryos that have failed to implant in the woman's uterus. They are released with her menstrual bleeding. In most cases the woman never even knows that she conceived.

Should we feel that this loss of embryos is a terrible thing, a kind of ongoing holocaust? If each human embryo is "something precious to be protected," then surely this is how we should feel.

Thoughts?

again, natural termination is entirely different from induced termination. scores of people die every day from natual causes. that's not an argument to euthanize without consent and use the cadavers for research.