politics and religion
my first blog on politics and religion since the kick-off of my new, more ambitious blogging endeavor was a hard one to decide upon... there are so many issues that have arisen in the last few months since i've blogged last and so many more weeks ahead to talk about them...
i, as most of you who would be reading this know, live in michigan... that's the semi-progressive, rust belt, auto-industry-driven state that happens to look like a couple of mittens (thank you glaciers) in the northeastern midwest. what is less known is probably the fact that i am dying of terminal degenerative brain cancer... ok so i'm not really dying of brain cancer, but if was i would be glad that my state has the foresight to expand human embryonic stem cell research and hopefully find treatments for and even, dare i say it, cure some of the most wicked and costly (in the way of human life) diseases... diseases that are not prevented through good diet and exercise (like diabetes and heart diseases), that aren't "punishment diseases" for bad behaviors (i.e. stds and emphysema)... diseases that rip hundreds of thousands away from loved ones each year either through death (like cancer), memory loss (like alzheimer's), or through loss of function (like m.s. or m.d.).
i make no apologies for my defence of scientific progression for the actual greater good, especially when it is incurred at little of no social cost for significant improvement of human existence.
100 million americans suffer from diseases that could potentially be treated or even cured by stem cell research and this year alone 565,650 people have died from cancer. there is a need and there is a solution on the horizon.
why... you might ask... are stem cells so important to this "solution"?
stem cells are a type of cell that can renew themselves through mitotic cell division and have the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types (i.e. blood, organ, nerve tissue). stem cells are found in most multi-cellular organisms and have two functions in adult organisms:
1. act as a repair system for the body (i.e. breaking a bone and the bone regrowing) and
2. maintain the natural turnover of regenerative organs like the blood and skin
the cells that do this are a type of cell called the "adult stem cell." there is another type of stem cell, which of course is the controversy causer... the embryonic stem cell. now these cells are similar in many ways in that they are not of any particular type of body cell but can be grown into a variety of functioning cells...like blood, bone, skin, ect... however they vary in 1 distinct way. the adult stem cells can only develop into a limited number of cell types, where as embryonic stem cells have the potential to become any cell type... an attribute of stem cells referred to as potency. the rub of course, is when harvesting stem cells from an embryo the 50 to 150 cell embryo is destroyed.
believe what you will about life at conception but the loss of 150 cells to save even a fraction of the 100 million people who suffer from these degenerative diseases seems worthwhile.
i found these arguments against embryonic stem cell research on a web site claiming the fight against embryonic stem cell researchers is over because of new sciences that allow researchers to create stem cells with similar properties to embryonic stem cells from skin cells... which i will no refute.
argument: "1) The moral objection is obvious. Human embryonic stem cells are obtained by killing a five-day-old living human embryo and extracting the cells from within that tiny forming body. For many, this moral objection is totally governing"
response: ok...i put this argument first because, not only was it the first on the web site but it is the only realistic argument against this research...yes if you believe in "life at conception", killing an embryo is killing a baby... however the embryo's used to harvest stem cells are saved from destruction to serve a purpose...the practice you need to worry about then is 'in vitro' fertilization not stem cell research... all of the stem cell strands currently being used in research (and in my opinion the only ones that should be used) are would-be-discarded embryos from fertility clinics, helping the god-fearing pro-lifer's with tilted cervix's, inconsistent ovaries, and weak sperm have the gun-toting right-wing offspring they've always wanted.
it's hard for me to consider what is simply a sac of 100 nondescript cells that could have just as easily been created in a test tube and an incubator (that's right... there is no "body" to speak of) "life"... even if the basic components for life are there. and even then, isn't it worth a single "life" (that has no emotional connection to anyone) to save the lives of people who have families and children and parents and sisters and brothers and friends and lovers.
argument: "2) These cells are foreign tissue if implanted in a human. The embryo has a different DNA and cells extracted from this tiny body will probably be rejected by the recipient body, just as a transplanted kidney would be. The counter argument has been that these are so primitive that they will not be rejected is a fact not proven."
response: This is the stupidest argument against stem cells ever... because i've never heard of a successful kidney transplant.
argument: "3) These cells placed in animal bodies frequently form tumors. They tend to grow uncontrollably into many different cellular types, which may be malignant and fatal to the recipient. Their response has been that there must be an answer for this if only research continues. And so the clamor for using your tax money for further research on embryonic stem cells continues."
response: there must be an answer for this if only research continues... it would be ignorant to assume that if you study what something happens you might find out why or at least how it happens... sarcasm implied... oh and no federal u.s. tax dollars go to stem cell research and is 96% privately funded.
the final argument... and quite possibly the stupidest of all the arguments i could not find worded in a short enough quote to put in my blog. it is the "no cures have yet been developed from embryonic stem cells."
argument: basically the argument is this... that no cures have been found from embryonic stem cells yet, and any cure that could come from this is decades away from development. there is more promise in "adult stem cells" that have already cured multiple blood, bone, and muscle disorders, especially now since research is being done to create stem cells from adult stem cells to create non-regenerative tissue like brain and nerve tissue (like embryonic stem cells can).
response: ok, the adult stem cells have proven more productive thus far in curing diseases... i will admit this... this, however, may be because we discovered the "stem cell" in 1908 and have only recently started looking into the potential of embryo stem cells. not only that, but the fact alone that the stem cell with less "potency" can treat and cure what adult stem cells have treated and cured gives much more support to the idea that the more potent embryonic stem cell can truly impact more serious conditions. and in response to the latter point of the adult generated "embryo-like stem cells": the research is great and necessary, but the effectiveness and longevity of current resulting stem cells is low and with continued effort this may be a way around the embryo problem, but wouldn't it be better to develop the use for the cells at the same time as to not set us back another ten years.
i think it's pretty irresponsible let people die for a 150 cells that would have been thrown away anyway... some people might call me a baby killer, at least i won't have 100 million people's suffering on my head
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