Here is something from an incandesant intellect, Randall Parker:here is a new article about how adult stem cell can be turned into embryonic stem cell Is this end of the stem cell debate?
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58843
Christian opponents of embryonic stem cell research are celebrating this discovery since the result reduces the advantage of working with embryo-derived cells.
Here’s yet another group opposed to embryonic stem cell research who are hailing this resultToday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins praised the research of Dr. James Thomson and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka. Thomson, the first to grow human embryonic stem cells, and Yamanaka from Japan, published results in the journals Science and Cell, respectively, showing that embryonic-type stem cells can be produced directly from ordinary human skin cells, without first creating or destroying human embryos
They are happy about this result because it probably will make the use of embryonic stem cells unnecessary. But the result also seems to show that the difference between embryonic stem cells and other cells is just different settings on a few genetic switches in the cell. So doesn’t this result make embryonic stem cells seem less magical and less supernatural?Wesley J. Smith, the Discovery Institute’s Senior Fellow in Bioethics and author of Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World, hailed the breakthrough as demonstrating that ethical science is also good science: “Everyone should applaud this tremendous scientific achievement. We now have the very real potential of developing thriving and robust stem cell medicine and scientific research sectors that will bridge, rather than exacerbate, our moral differences over the importance and meaning of human life.”
Emphasis PZ’s…This is insane. The work that led to understanding the way to switch somatic cells into pluripotency required work on embryonic stem cells—the research Bush opposed. That scientists found ways to work around the Bush restrictions does not rebound to the credit of the man who threw up obstacles. This is also not a medical breakthrough at all: it opens the doors for basic research into how cells develop and differentiate (which may, of course, lead to medical advances), but to claim this develops “stem-cell medicine” is exactly wrong.
In a word, no.here is a new article about how adult stem cell can be turned into embryonic stem cell Is this end of the stem cell debate?
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58843
What are you insinuating about the motivations of embryonic stem cell research??In a word, no.
You have to believe that there’s something more to embryonic stem cell research promotion than the “belief” that it will lead to more or different cures than somatic cell research.
I think much of the support of embryonic stem cell research is politically motivated. Not necessarily the researchers themselves, but when we hear rhetoric that says Embryonic stem cell research is the cure-all and that not allowing it is causing hundreds of thousands of people to suffer needlessly, it’s clear that intelligent people are purposefully ignoring facts about somatic stem cell research, to which nobody has moral objections.What are you insinuating about the motivations of embryonic stem cell research??