Stem Cell breakthrough

[FlaSoxxJim]

Congratulations, South Korea, on so quickly leaving us in the dust.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=772272

 

Honestly, does anybody think that the high and mighty opponents of embryonic stem cell research would opt against availing themselves of any of the future biomedical therapies that emerge from this work on moral grounds if it means life or death for them or their loved ones?

 

After all, we saw how fast Nancy Reagan became an advocate once enlightened self interest took hold.

[TheBigHurt35]

Congratulations, South Korea, on so quickly leaving us in the dust.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=772272

 

Honestly, does anybody think that the high and mighty opponents of embryonic stem cell research would opt against availing themselves of any of the future biomedical therapies that emerge from this work on moral grounds if it means life or death for them or their loved ones?

 

After all, we saw how fast Nancy Reagan became an advocate once enlightened self interest took hold.

 

I disagree with those who oppose embryonic stem cell research. As long as embryos aren't created specifically for this research, I see no problem with using them for scientific work (it's better than destroying them).

[FlaSoxxJim]

I disagree with those who oppose embryonic stem cell research.  As long as embryos aren't created specifically for this research, I see no problem with using them for scientific work (it's better than destroying them).

Agreed on using surplus embryos for clinics to further the research. I personally do not find the Korean cloning approach morally intractable either, but I'll grant that is a more heated debate.

 

If we are to accept the opponents' assertion that sacrificing surplus embryos from a fertility clinic is essentially murder, then how do they deflect the counter assertion that leaving the embryos frozen on a shelf is essentially an undeserved lifetime prison sentence? That being the case, they should be railing against fertility clinics. Instead infertile holy rollers keep lining up to get a fistfull of eggs artificially implanted (which, curiously seems to fly directly in the face of God's will which was apparently for these people not to have kids) and doom another fistfull to eternity in the freezer.

Edited May 19, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[Soxy]

Agreed.  And if we are to accept the opponents' assertion that sacrificing surplus embryos from a fertility clinic is essentially murder, then how do they deflect the counter assertion that leaving the embryos frozen on a shelf is essentially an undeserved lifetime prison sentence?  That being the case, they should be railing against fertility clinics.  Instead infertile holy rollers keep lining up to get a fistfull of eggs artificially implanted (which, curiously seems to fly directly in the face of God's will which was apparently for these people not to have kids) and doom another fistfull to eternity in the freezer.

Is the Catholic church against fertility treatments? I can't remember (since I'm not Catholic) the Vatican position....

 

Anyway, Congrats to S. Korea! I, honestly and truly, look forward to all of the exciting medical break throughs that stem cell research will give us.....

[TheBigHurt35]

I, honestly and truly, look forward to all of the exciting medical break throughs that stem cell research will give us.....

 

Stem cell research is only part of it...

 

I went to a seminar a couple weeks given by Peter Schultz at Scripps/Novartis, who is doing a lot of biotech work. He's done some very interesting work using these certain types of cells that can be "transformed" into other types of cells (can't remember what they're called). Anyway, he's actually found ways to re-grow large sections of severely-damaged or completely-destroyed tissue in rats. In one experiment, he took a hole-puncher to a rat's ear and, with his therapy, the gaping hole in the ear was completely gone within a few weeks. Freaking incredible...

[FlaSoxxJim]

Is the Catholic church against fertility treatments? I can't remember (since I'm not Catholic) the Vatican position....

 

Anyway, Congrats to S. Korea! I, honestly and truly, look forward to all of the exciting medical break throughs that stem cell research will give us.....

 

 

The Catholic Church officially asserts that all conception and procreation ought to occur as the result of marital sexual intercourse.

 

That said, here's the introductory line of scholarly and less absolute Catholic thought on the subject from a very good review at American Catholic:

 

http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/...97/feature1.asp

 

Some Catholics, familiar with the Church's strong defense of procreation as one of the core meanings of marital lovemaking, tend to assume that the Church must be in favor of any and all medical aids to achieve conception and the birth of a child. Not so. The Catholic viewpoint is at the same time more compassionate and more complex than a simple yea or nay.

 

When asked for a comment about (test tube baby) Louise Brown's birth in 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani--soon to be elected Pope John Paul I--began by congratulating the happy parents and wishing the new baby and her family a healthy and blessed life. He then tactfully noted that there remain moral questions surrounding laboratory-based methods of conception. These new technologies were under study by scholars and a more in-depth moral response would come later, after fuller investigation.

 

In March 1987, almost a decade later, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a lengthy document, Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life), known officially as Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation.

 

Within a month of the Instruction's release, Chicago's Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, known for both pastoral sensitivity and scholarly nuance, delivered a lecture on the Instruction at the University of Chicago. Before engaging in the real though somewhat heady pros and cons of the moral debate, Bernardin paused "to make one point very clear." He said, "I have heard the pain of loving couples, Catholic and non-Catholic, who desperately want the gift of a child. My heart reaches out to them. Theirs is a difficult burden, and I share their pain. We must offer them love, support and understanding. And in the end, after careful and conscientious reflection on this teaching, they must make their own decision."

 

Lots of divergent opinions from various Church figures follow in the complete piece.

Edited May 19, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[FlaSoxxJim]

Stem cell research is only part of it...

 

I went to a seminar a couple weeks given by Peter Schultz at Scripps/Novartis, who is doing a lot of biotech work.  He's done some very interesting work using these certain types of cells that can be "transformed" into other types of cells (can't remember what they're called).  Anyway, he's actually found ways to re-grow large sections of severely-damaged or completely-destroyed tissue in rats.  In one experiment, he took a hole-puncher to a rat's ear and, with his therapy, the gaping hole in the ear was completely gone within a few weeks.  Freaking incredible...

 

Schultz is hardcore, and somebody who really likes to play with the genomic and proteomic Tonka Toys for sure. In addition to that totipotence work, he was a combi-chem pioneer (nevermind for a moment that you and I both know that so far the combinatorial libraries of Big Pharma have yielded squat so far).

 

In answer to his own musing question, "What would life look like if God had worked on the seventh day?", his Novartis Genomics Institute is cooking up bacteria with six nucleotides instead of four and capable of coding for 25 different amino acids instead of the boring old 20 the rest of organic life is stuck with...

 

Wierd Science indeed

[TheBigHurt35]

Schultz is hardcore, and somebody who really likes to play with the genomic and proteomic Tonka Toys for sure.  In addition to that totipotence work, he was a combi-chem pioneer (nevermind for a moment that you and I both know that so far the combinatorial libraries of Big Pharma have yielded squat so far).

 

In answer to his own musing question, "What would life look like if God had worked on the seventh day?", his Novartis Genomics Institute is cooking up bacteria with six nucleotides instead of four and capable of coding for 25 different amino acids instead of the boring old 20 the rest of organic life is stuck with...

 

Wierd Science indeed 

 

Yeah, the first part of Schultz's talk was about his "unnatural" amino acids. He's developed 30 or 40, some of which are specifically designed to do strange things like chelate specific transition-metal ions... really far-out stuff that will probably have little or no use in the development of therapies. Then again, not all science has to cure cancer to be useful (I could use some of his amino acids in my own work).

 

I don't foresee Big Pharma giving up on combi chem yet. The phama companies have also been slowly migrating from small molecule to protein work. I imagine that combi chem would be very useful for the design of synthetic proteins and synthetic antibodies. The therpaies may still be a decade away, but combi chem is barely out of its infancy (relatively speaking).

[FlaSoxxJim]

I don't think there's anything inherently whong with combi-chem other than the fact that it seems like 10 years or so and untold billions of dollars were spent on high throughput screening of these massive libraries of non-rationally designed molecules simply because the technology had advanced to the point that it was possible.

 

Libraries rationally built around active, biologically relevant scaffolds.... that's where it seems things are finally heading, and should have been headed all along.

[Steff]

The Catholic Church officially asserts that all conception and procreation ought to occur as the result of marital sexual intercourse.

 

That said, here's the introductory line of scholarly and less absolute Catholic thought on the subject from a very good review at American Catholic:

 

http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/...97/feature1.asp

Lots of divergent opinions from various Church figures follow in the complete piece.

 

 

But when you go to them for guidance.. they suggest you go see your doctors.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Breaking news: Bush is still an idiot.

 

Bush Condemns S. Korea Stem Cell Research Advances, Says He Would Veto Loosening of U.S. Limits

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=778549

 

Of course the (bipartisan) bill he's threatening to veto has nothing to do with creating or destroying clones. It has to do with utilizing the embryos already in the ertility clinics that couples have abandoned. These are most often discarded as medical waste (isn't that murder too according to the anti-stemm cell research crew?), or they sit unused on a freezer shelf (life prison sentence according to the 'logic' of the detractors).