azura28

I have no health problems and I can only imagine how losing your eyesight would scare you. None of us should take good health for granted. If we have good health, we better not be judging someone because they are for this stem cell research to save their eyesight, and/or basically their lives.

drb14

I believe that is the thing: Nobody has PROVEN that ASCs are as or more beneficial, or potentially beneficial, than embrionic SCs, at least as far as I'm aware. Therefore, research is needed.

If it can be proven that ASCs are as/more effective than their controversial counterparts, great. Then lets use them.

In the meantime, I say we try to, oh, I don't know, cure/treat (inseart whatever problem disease you wish here) or the OP's problem by whatever promising means we can.

Lerxst

I wasn't trying to quarrel with you or pass judgment, I'm just trying to sincerely get the other side of this argument as well as learn as I go. Obviously we have some different points of view on things (I like my steaks and chicken breasts and such), but I think the common ground here is that stem cell research is a good thing. We just have different views on the type of stem cells?

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Lerxst

Isn't disease an unhealthy "mutation" or disorder? Are we really messing with nature if we only trying to correct these abnormalities? Are injuries considered natural? And by trying to repair them and return a healthy quality of life are we really messing with nature?

I guess my thought is that we aren't trying to make these stem cells do something they aren't meant to do. We are just trying to position them to do their thing in a potentially life saving fashion.

Make sense?

1069

For that, they'd need a mother, and they haven't got one.
These are excess embryos created as byproducts of IVF.
That's in-vitro fertilization, a common procedure used in the US and other industrialized nations to assist infertile couples in having biological children.
Doctors extract eggs from the ovaries of the patient, fertilize them with the sperm of her partner (or whomever) in a petri dish, thereby creating zygotes, and then artificially inseminate the woman with one of these zygotes- generally, the most viable one.
Others are frozen and saved as "spares", for future IVF attempts.
Once IVF is successful, the excess zygotes are discarded, except in rare cases where they are "stored" by the biological parents, at their own expense, in an embryo storage facility such as Snowflakes. These embryos are unwanted, but "adoptable". Another, unrelated couple or female can "adopt" an embryo, have it inseminated into her uterus, and gestate it to term. The woman will then give birth to a child who is not biologically related to her, but who will be- legally- "her" child.
This has actually happened, on occasion; at last count, sixteen children had been born from "adopted" frozen embryos.

However, hundreds of thousands of embryos are currently frozen in storage in the US alone, and that's only a small fraction of the millions of embryos actually created each year in pursuit of IVF; the vast majority are simply discarded.

This whole "embryo adoption" business is a little sketchy, anyhow; vast amounts of taxpayer money fund these Christian-based "frozen embryo adoption/storage" facilities.
It's a controversial issue. Many feel it's merely a ploy, a sort of sham business set up to receive of millions of dollars of tax-payer money. Bush has allocated a great deal of federal money to Snowflakes, Inc and its ilk.

link

Increasing numbers of IVF procedures are performed each year; it is becoming increasingly popular as more medical insurance carriers cover the procedure, and as more women over 40 wish to have children (or have more children) and find that their fertility is compromised by their advanced age, and they're quickly running out of time.

It is impossible to extract just one egg from a woman's ovary; the process takes about a dozen.
All are fertilized; one, two, three, or more may be used depending upon the number of IVF attempts before implantation is successful, or the woman gives up, whichever comes first.
The remainder of the embryos are excess.

So anyway. There's our endless supply of embryonic stem cells right there.
No one is creating embryos in labs simply for the purpose of extracting stem cells from them.
Creating them from what? Embryos are created from sperm and ova.
Do you think any woman would be willing to donate eggs to such an endeavor, even if a man was willing to donate the sperm (egg donation/ extraction is an invasive procedure, akin to minor surgery. Also, eggs are finite. Women do not have an endless supply. When the last egg is gone: hello, menopause).

This is a myth, Bones and DarkWizard. I don't know who told it to you.

These embryos are slated to be discarded anyway; they are merely byproducts of fertility procedures. At best, at best, their fate is to languish frozen in storage, suspended in liquid nitrogen, until they are eventually discarded at some future time.

Unwanted, motherless embryos, at the current time, are a commodity our nation has in overabundance.

Nobody is suggesting "creating" them for research; we're merely suggesting utilizing this resource that we already have, in virtually endless supply.

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DarkWizard12

First, let me say, it has been scientifically proven that ASC have the same cababilities then ESC, and there are a LOT more of ASC than ESC.

On a side not, the article also states that there are ways to harvest ESC without the destruction of an embryo. So, instead of killing embryos and ******* off a lot of right-wingers, why not get your ESC's peacefully. You get your cures, the world gets another taxpayer *wink wink* and, everyone wins. cool hmm?

Goldenboy219

Come on, you cant thwart research with wiki. In cases of common knowledge, who cares, but basing an entire debate that is supposed to be entrenched in research, wiki doesnt cut it...

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DarkWizard12

why? The information from wiki has always been accurate. But, I guess, as long is it doesn't agree with you, its wrong, right?

mikhail

Ive just very a very intresting short lecture on regenitive stem cell research.

TED | Talks | Alan Russell: Why can't we grow new body parts? (video)

It rather depressing America doesent seem to wanna push for it hard enough this really seems like the most promising area in science.

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jfuh

They're not lying though. Given what we do know about embryonic stem cells what has been said is absolutely true. What is not yet a realization is the materialization of this. It's not a possibility it's a matter of when. I think that far more research is needed and the more we are pushing with saying "nothing has been yielded yet" it will only promote short cut science that is not solid.

Well.... that's a much more complicated matter than that is not subject to debate but personal sentiments. However, the science is not what is being manipulated, it's from the manipulation that the science is understood.

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