Andy’s whereIstand Blog

I’m totally stoked for us going to Mars - not just for the fantastical prospects of exploring and perhaps colonizing another planet, but also for all the sweet technological advancement it will mean for this planet. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that junk, but it truly seems like nothing propelled our technological achievements like Kennedy’s promise of putting us on the moon. All the stuff that had to be invented ex nihilo to get a man to walk on a celestial body by the end of the sixties meant the birth of real computer and robotics industries, and countless other pathways of research we’ve gone down. We need more of those idealistic goals, seeming figments of fancy that drive us to make our fiction reality:

NASA’s latest mission to Mars could eclipse all previous ones if it can get into orbit on Friday.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will study the Martian atmosphere and surface, and will probe underground in search of past and present water.

"I think that this mission will re-write the science books on Mars," [MRO Project Manager Jim] Graf said.

"Every time that we send different spacecraft to Mars they teach and poke at the planet — its atmosphere, at the surface and, in our case, under the surface and they solve mysteries," he said.

This is the closest to pure science we can get. The new energy sources that might comes from this alone would be worth it, but unfortunately enough to keep many big energy lobbyist against NASA for years to come.

This has been Andy D.

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• [open thread]

Apparently the English have made the decisions where we cannot:

British scientists are seeking permission to create hybrid embryos in the lab by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs. If granted consent, the team will use the embryos to produce stem cells that carry genetic defects, in the hope that studying them will help understand the complex mechanisms behind incurable human diseases.

The proposal drew strong criticism from opponents to embryo research who yesterday challenged the ethics of the research and branded the work repugnant.

 

Or will not at least. In this case the researchers are making the call, and I’m fine with that. Actually I’m fine with any kind of hybridic mutant freakshow that may help us cure some of the most heinous neurological disorders of our species, preferably in time to save Michael J Fox’s magic.

I really like how rabbits are used because of their randiness and baby-making prowess;

"The fertility of rabbits is legendary," said Prof Shaw. "The most important thing is that with animal eggs, we have a much better chance of generating stem cells and if we wait for human eggs, it’s going to be maybe a decade before we can do this. If we can use animal eggs, we could maybe have stem cells within one or two years," he added.

Scientists use eggs in research to create cloned embryos, from which they harvest stem cells. By producing stem cells that carry the genetic defects of diseases, researchers believe they will be able to unravel how a cell’s molecular machinery goes wrong, potentially leading to new cures for disease. But the research is progressing slowly, hampered by a severe shortage of "spare" eggs donated by couples undergoing fertility treatment.

Hey we put pig and baboon parts in people as it is, I figure the religious right cannot object as much when the potential for human life doesn’t even exist at all, so much as the potential for a were-rabbit, Wallace and Gromit-style.

Prof Shaw’s team will need a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority before they are allowed to pursue the research. "As with all research involving human embryos, the research team would have to show that the research is both necessary and desirable, and that any embryo created could not be allowed to develop for longer than 14 days or be implanted in a woman," said Dr Chris O’Toole, head of research regulation at the HFEA.

If the researchers are granted consent, they will not be the first to fuse human cells with rabbit eggs. In 2003, Huizhen Sheng at Shanghai Second Medical University published work in which she claimed to have extracted stem cells from hybrid embryos made from rabbit eggs.

And still the Chinese are light years ahead of us. Bully for them. Magic as Communism has fallen.

This has been Andy D Cottontail.

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• Who should decide whether embryonic stem cells may be used for medical research?

I think the federal government will have to be the final say on this issue, even if I disagree with how this incarnation of the federal government is handling the whole thing. This is really the only forum in which the people can speak on the issue of stem cell research, through their votes. Big Pharma doesn’t listen so much to those concerned exactly because the immediate implications for the research isn’t so "life style-oriented" as Donovan rightly puts it. This is unfortunate because eventually, stem cell research could be the fountain of youth as far as I can see. Not that I particularly want to be a one hundred and fifty year old eating stem cells through an IV to survive forever, but this technology has implications that could cure some horrible and debilitating diseases so that, while we may not all become immortal, we can all at least spend the time we have un-crippled by non-communicable disorders like Alzheimer’s, diabetes and MS.

I’d like to believe that doctors and researchers are up to the task of taking on this kind of research, but they are indeed in a business, and this type of research is long and potentially unprofitable in its early stages. Oh yeah, and then there is the moral/ethical conundrum some see with the whole thing.

Oh definitions! So is this about defining life? The moral majority and their whims peering through the federal government, or the bottom-line minded big pharm CEOs, who to trust? Well obviously neither are be wonderful. But I always go with the many over the few to make the big decisions, because the many can change their minds a lot easier, and for different reasons than the few, the business men. Not that the reasons are better, but if it’s between turning a profit and a genuine care for people and their medical health, then I go for the latter. This is unfair too - obviously some were willing to do the research since some has indeed been done, or started at least, but part of that was on the government’s tab. I wish this would continue. I share Nick’s concern with the entrusting of stem cell research with big pharm companies by pulling govt. funding from the masses of researchers. Of course I’m more concerned with the legal restrictions put in place and those that may still come.

Yeah, definitions. Defining life may not be the work of either the government nor the researchers, but the people of the nation are restricted in their voices and their capacity to have a dialogue on life and stem cells’ place in it.

What is potential?

Maybe this isn’t a good post for all these vague rhetorical questions put forth seemingly at random and maybe I’m missing some huge points completely. I think it’s important for this issue to be in the public discourse - these are the types of things we have to keep discussing and arguing over and fighting for.

It would be most interesting to see how definitions for life from this topic interplays with those in the Abortion topic. What is an abortion, when is there potential for it? What is the role of the mother in this potential - the stem cell research embryos never have a mother, are never in utero, and those involved in abortions also lack mothers, at least those that are willing, for different reasons.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• nick
• Donovan
• Who should decide whether embryonic stem cells may be used for medical research?