whether you use a petri dish, or any other sort of artificial womb

BTW, on the day that a petri dish gives birth, you can bring that argument. Until then, it’s fantastic bullsh*t, driven not by science, but by your ideology. Suck on that for a while.

There’s no such thing as an artificial womb.

Oh well, look: of course I’m not saying that your version of “morality” is “right” or “wrong.” Only that it is entirely arbitrary and self-serving.

No, what you’re saying is that you can’t answer the question. And my interest isn’t self serving because my daughter is already dead. I’d just like for the next people to step into those shoes to have an answer that we didn’t have.

Your God tells you that making a baby for the express purpose of killing it is just a little bit “immoral.”

Actually, I think that’s your God talking and that’s between you and Him. Because I’m not talking about that at all.

I know this science stuff is awfully complicated for you purely theological types.

No, I’m really not theological at all. And I’ve been volunteering with the NCI for the last 7 years because of the science, not religion.

But everyone over the age of five years old has always referred to a certain act as “making babies,” even thought you can’t actually SEE the baby for some time after that act is performed.

Yeah, that act is f*cking, and it generally isn’t performed in a lab, except after hours. Which is what we’re talking about with embryos created for IVF.

Now, I’m not going to traumatize you with any details about that act itself. But suffice it to say that once you start playing with the act of making babies – whether you use a petri dish, or any other sort of artificial womb – then you can no longer keep trusting those Voices inside your head who define “morality” for you.

You couldn’t possibly traumatize me, but you’re doing a fine job of ignoring reality and screeching.

But if you will, since you just failed to, please explain why destroying IVF embryos outright is more moral that saving lives with them, through science.

I think you mean “never to be born babies”.
Pablo on November 21, 2007 at 4:40 AM

I can’t speak for what the voices inside your head are telling you, but no. Of course if I MEANT to weasel-word, then I would have done so. It’s not like rationalization takes some huge amount of effort.

The ones that have never been inside of a woman, nor gestated for a minute. But sure, it’s way more moral to throw them in an incinerator. It must be, right? How is that, by the way?
Pablo on November 21, 2007 at 4:40 AM

Oh, crap; I knew this was going to devolve into a purely theological argument at some point. Oh well, look: of course I’m not saying that your version of “morality” is “right” or “wrong.” Only that it is entirely arbitrary and self-serving.

Your God tells you that making a baby for the express purpose of killing it is just a little bit “immoral.” But then He says that making a baby for the express purpose of scientific experimentation is perfectly “moral” after less than one minute of gestation. Or maybe four months, or nine months, or whatever; because maybe today your God told you that a new number would suddenly become “evil.”

I know this science stuff is awfully complicated for you purely theological types. But everyone over the age of five years old has always referred to a certain act as “making babies,” even thought you can’t actually SEE the baby for some time after that act is performed.

Now, I’m not going to traumatize you with any details about that act itself. But suffice it to say that once you start playing with the act of making babies – whether you use a petri dish, or any other sort of artificial womb – then you can no longer keep trusting those Voices inside your head who define “morality” for you. Because you’ve stopped worshipping your God, and you’ve started trying to BE your God. And there is absolutely no way that anything good can ever come out of that.

So, of course, even if the skin-derived stem cells are different from baby-derived stem cells, they’re as likely as not to end up yielding BETTER results.

And yet, the source of the excitement surrounding this breakthrough is that they’re so much the same. Pluripotency is why. In this field of research, cells that you can coax into becoming any type of tissue are that Unholy Grail. Unless of course you’re dying of something they can fix, or are in the business of saving the lives of such people, in which case they’re pretty freaking awesome. Or you’re just selfish. Unless they’re this new version, in which case it might be OK for you to live.

It’s because these freaks are too emotionally invested in thinking of the corpses of unborn babies as some sort of Unholy Grail.

I think you mean “never to be born babies”. You know, the ones that have never existed outside of a petri dish. The ones that have never been inside of a woman, nor gestated for a minute. But sure, it’s way more moral to throw them in an incinerator. It must be, right? How is that, by the way?

“By any means we test them they are the same as embryonic stem cells,” Dr. Thomson says.

He and Dr. Yamanaka caution, though, that they still must confirm that the reprogrammed human skin cells really are the same as stem cells they get from embryos. And while those studies are underway, Dr. Thomson and others say, it would be premature to abandon research with stem cells taken from human embryos.
What a leftist tool he is, huh? Baby killing nazi bastard….

Pablo on November 20, 2007 at 8:55 PM

Why in the Hell do they have to be exactly the same? This is called RESEARCH; what that means is that we don’t know what results we’ll get from working on either type of stem cell. So, of course, even if the skin-derived stem cells are different from baby-derived stem cells, they’re as likely as not to end up yielding BETTER results.

These things are forced to convert – which is halfway to the goal you’re looking for. When you have a potential goldmine like that, what kind of idiot would keep fixating on naturally occurring cells that are a step BACKWARD from that?

But it sounds like this ghoul never even stopped for a second to consider the obvious. It’s because these freaks are too emotionally invested in thinking of the corpses of unborn babies as some sort of Unholy Grail.

Liberal orthodoxy and scientific research are mutually exclusive; open-mindedness and reason are two qualities that liberals entirely lack.

I think this is great news, although I think the battle over embryonic stem cells is far from over. The pro-embryonic stem-cell forces, embarrassed by this comeuppance, will invent some sort of BS reason why embryonic stem cell research is all the more important, and will get some greedy politicians and enough gullible people in the public to believe said BS reason.

Yeah, like James Thomson, the lead researcher on the Wisconsin end of this project:

“By any means we test them they are the same as embryonic stem cells,” Dr. Thomson says.

He and Dr. Yamanaka caution, though, that they still must confirm that the reprogrammed human skin cells really are the same as stem cells they get from embryos. And while those studies are underway, Dr. Thomson and others say, it would be premature to abandon research with stem cells taken from human embryos.

What a leftist tool he is, huh? Baby killing nazi bastard….

Because President Bush wisely placed limitations on one scientific path, scientists needed to come up with another route to the same goal. It now sounds like they found it.

Japan doesn’t operate under those restrictions, nor does the rest of the world, including privately funded US reaearchers. Those apply only to NIH research funding. Nice conjecture, but it’s wrong.

In fact, it’s almost a mirror image of what we often hear from the left. All things do not flow from George Bush, good or bad. Medically and scientifically, the really big deal here is that this is an autologous process which will eliminate problems with rejection.

Or at least that’s what I’ve been hearing for several years now.

Bravo to Dr. Yamanaka and Co. I love science.

The left wont be happy until we set up farms for tissue harvesting.

Don’t eat the soylent green!

Anyone know how long, precisely, they’ve been working in this vein? The Times’s report refers to the work as “laborious” but I can’t find any dates in either their story or WaPo’s.

All along, adult stem cells and other alternatives to harvesting embryos, were the only things promising… which was half of the objection to embryonic stem cell research. LIARS promised cures for diseases, etc. right around the corner if we’d just let them get a taste of those sweet embryos, but there was no scientific basis for such wildly optimistic thinking.

See this list from July, of promising studies being done on adult stem cells, and UNpromising studies being done on embryonic stem cells:
http://creationsafaris.com/crev200707.htm#20070719a

***********

Now, here’s the important thing to remember – The “embryonic” debate will not end here, and you’ll see that the goals of those who push it are anything but noble. I promise you. Just remember I said it. Everyone is treating this day like it can be an end to the fight over embryonic stem cells, but that’s because they’re assuming there was an honest debate to begin with and the “scientists” were just trying to find the best way, but that’s simply not the case.

What I find fascinating about this — indeed, what I find fascinating about the role of technology generally (I’ve long wanted to write a big think piece on this) — is how necessity is not only the mother of invention, it’s the father of immorality.

Wait, shouldn’t that be “…the father of MORALITY?”

It was Bush’s edict that drove the development of this life-saving (or to put it more precisely: murder-preventing) technique.

I would say the father of immorality is not necessity, but expediency. If you have absolutely no choice but to kill someone, it’s self-defense; but if you kill someone for the sake of convenience, then that is an atrocity.

In recent years, the heavy and brutish hand of the government has been used more and more often to excuse and even support social decay. What we see here is something rare in this day and age: public morality actually being engendered by the only corporeal force in the Universe capable of such a feat: the law.

I mean, they did this with skin cells. The skin is the largest organ any animal has. Collecting 50,000 skin cells from a human is a joke. Of couse, I imagine the skin cells would have to be alive for this to work, so it might hurt a bit.

Do you think that the embryonic stem cell crowd will be satisfied, or will they want to continue researching with embryonic stem cells?

Probably not, since the objectification of human life is one of the Left’s goals. Make life a “thing” to be traded, instead of a gift.

Enjoy this good news, but don’t let that stop you from continuing the fight. This isn’t the war, it’s just one battle.