{"id":3460,"date":"2007-11-20T13:53:36","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T18:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2007\/11\/20\/look-ma-no-embryos\/"},"modified":"2007-11-20T13:53:36","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T18:53:36","slug":"look-ma-no-embryos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2007\/11\/look-ma-no-embryos\/","title":{"rendered":"Look Ma, no embryos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Wesley J. Smith announced
\nthat their would be big stem-cell
\nnews tomorrow and boy was he right<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two different scientific teams have
\n“reprogrammed” skin and other adult
\ncells and reverted them back to a pluripotent stem cell state. (The
\naltered cells are being called “Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” or
\niPS.) One of the researchers was James Thomson–the Wisconsin scientist
\nwho first derived human stem cell lines. As he wrote in SCIENCE (no
\nlink available):<\/p>\n

   
\nThe human iPS cells described here meet
\nthe defining criteria we originally proposed for human ES cells, with
\nthe significant exception that the iPS cells are not derived from
\nembryos.<\/span><\/p>\n



\nYou would hope that if this truly bears
\nout that it will finally put the ethical problems of using embryonic
\nstem-cells behind us.  But then again the whole debate was
\nalways more about ethics than it was about science in the first place.
\n Culture of death advocates were more thrilled at the idea
\ntrying to define human life down then they were about cures in the
\nfirst place.  During the debate they managed to move the goal
\nline of pregnancy from conception to implantation for their purposes.
\n This was quite hypocritical considering that they really
\nthink that human life begins at birth.  You get the feeling
\nESCR advocates might feel about this story the way many Democrats do to
\ngood news in Iraq.<\/span>

\n

\nThough this will turn the debate on
\nit’s head in the first place.  Previously most pro-lifers
\nwould use the fact that  ESCR has resulted in zero cures while
\nadult stem-cells are being used in multiple treatments.  I
\nalways wished that it had been the immorality of using human life for
\nexperimentation that should have been the primary and foremost
\nargument.  The other argument is quite secondary and not
\nreally focused on the real problem.  Though it could be a
\nuseful argument for those who don’t clearly see the beginning of human
\nlife.  Now with the development of having pluripotent
\nstem-cells from an ethical source this argument will certainly fall out
\nof disuse.  Though of course we still have no real idea of
\nwhen if ever these cells will be of practical use. Just how many states
\nwill now rush to fund this new type of research?  Will
\ngovernment leaders now be telling their citizens that they must fund
\nthis or else they we will fall into scientific backwaters as they did
\npreviously?<\/span>

\n

\nIt was good to see the inventor of
\ncloning give up and turn to more promising methods.
\n Previously the research was focused into two area.
\n Human cloning to develop the embryonic cells that would match
\nthe person to be cured and then going on to use these cells to develop
\ncures.  What has just happened is that one area was eliminated
\nwhere now more  time, and energy could be devoted to the other
\nproblem.  So many lies were told by so many to develop
\nso-called reproductive human cloning and again they turned mainly
\ntowards rhetoric and not science to make their case.  They
\nnever wanted to mention that without human cloning ESCR up to that
\npoint had been a dead end that was more likely to result in tumors than
\ncures.  That these cures required human cannibalism of our own
\nclones to be effective.<\/span>

\n

\nThe reality is of course that ESCR
\npromoters will continue to promote it and say that we must continue
\nthis research.  Even if more evidence shows that the new
\ntechnique is equal to stem-cells acquired by human embryo’s I doubt if
\nit will curtail their advocacy.  Once again it will be back to
\nfighting within the public sphere as to whether we  can
\nfinally shut down this human sacrifice on the altars of science.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Wesley J. Smith announced that their would be big stem-cell news tomorrow and boy was he right. Two different scientific teams have “reprogrammed” skin and other adult cells and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pro-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}