Embryonic stem cells:
ES cells are pluripotent. This means they are able to differentiate into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm. These include each of the more than 220 cell types in the adult body. Pluripotency distinguishes ES cells from multipotent progenitor cells found in the adult; these only form a limited number of cell types.
I’m sure you know what this means. ES cells have a wondrous potential to treat or even cure some very debilitating, paralyzing, or fatal diseases and conditions. At this moment, there are millions of men, women and children who are alive and breathing that suffer from one of a number of these diseases. Their lives are torturous, painful, and barely worth living. It seems rather ridiculous then that we don’t fund or expand our research with embryonic stem cells. It fact, it is extremely ridiculous.
The uncritical religious, who’s decisions and beliefs require faith (a principle that has no evidence to back it up) to exist, do everything they can to stop embryonic stem cell research. Why, you ask? The reason is surprisingly absurd.
The religious think that life begins at some point before the embryo, and that destroying an embryo for the stem cells is killing a life. These very same people will turn around and fully support the death penalty keep in mind! For some reason, they are obsessed with controlling people and their choices, and therefor wish to remain on the side of the argument that lacks reason and evidence.
Let us consider some facts, shall we?
1) Embryos consist of 50 to 150 cells IN TOTAL. They are nothing but a collection of microscopic cells that you could count with your eye. At this stage, the embryo is known as a blastocyte, which forms 4 to 5 days after fertilization. In fact, some scientists don’t consider a blastocyte and embryo. You have to understand that there is NO human qualities in a blastocyte. It is literally a simple collection of cells that can be counted by the human eye. 2) Embryos abort naturally ALL THE TIME. In fact, more than half of all embryos die naturally. Embryo destruction is actually the norm, rather than the exception. So that puts an enormous hole in the religious or faith-based idea that embryos are lives that should not be knowingly killed. 220 million embryos die a year naturally, that is more than any other cause of death that we know of. Keep in mind that; Cancer, in all its forms, kills 7.6 million people per year, In six years, the Second World War killed around 60 million people…
We don’t defend an embryo’s right to free speech, because it cannot speak, in fact, it cannot do anything. It has no neurological system, no consciousness, no thoughts, no mind, no brain… no nothing. Yet some would ascribe more rights to it than a black man on death row. This is the ultimate contradiction of the religious right in the United States. Infuriatingly stupid, isn’t it?
There are certain moral questions that are common, that test one’s true morals. For example, consider the train that is flying out of control at break neck speeds. If it continues on its current track, it will fly off of a cliff a la Back to the Future Part III and kill everyone on board; men, women, children… embryos. But you are standing at a switch on the track, and you can switch the track to safely divert the train away from the cliff, however, there is a man tied to the diverted track. If you flip the switch, you kill the one man tied to the track but save the hundreds of passengers on board.
This is not meant to be an easy decision, but no one would call you immoral if you were to flip the switch.
The point is, we have millions of people today who are alive, breathing, have nervous systems, thoughts, dreams, the right to free speech and so on, who suffer and are at risk of death. Trying to save the life of a group of cells over these living breathing human beings is like not switching the track to save the one man tied to the diverted track. In fact, it is much worse. It is as if instead of another man tied to the track, it was a cockroach, and you saved the roach at the expense of everyone on the train.
So how come we don’t consider all 220 million naturally destroyed embryos loss of human life? Because it isn’t loss of human life. You cannot die if you were never born.
If Christians really cared about the lives of children, we’d see a stronger push for decreasing infant mortality in developing worlds. But we don’t see that. We see anti-homosexual bills, sodomy laws, and fighting Islam.
Obviously the potential for life is not the same as life itself, because then every time we wore a condom, every time we used spermacide, every time we went to the sperm bank, every time we masturbated, we would be killing hundreds of millions of people. Does this sound right to you? No. Of course not. An embryo is not a life, a zygote is not a life, a fetus is not a life. Potential life is not life, hence the word “potential”. You don’t put people in jail before they commit the crime.
But MisterE, why not cut the controversy and just stick with adult stem cells? Well, adult stem cells may not have the potential the embryonic stem cells have. We of course need to do more research on this, but science is under the impression at the moment that adult stem cells are unlikely to be nearly as useful as embryonic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells are obtained from human embryos. They have the capacity to turn into any cell type in the body. Adult stem cells have been found in some mature human tissues, including the brain and bone marrow. There is a scientific debate over whether their ability to become specialized is limited to their tissue of origin, or whether they can turn into other types of tissue.
Adult stem cells have proven their value to medicine. For example, bone marrow transplants are routinely used to treat some cancers and blood diseases. But it’s unlikely that bone marrow stem cells can replace all of the different types of cells that are damaged by disease. Embryonic stem cells are the only ones that are likely to do that.
You have to understand that science does not recognize most, if any religious tenants as fact. But science is where we get our medicine, our help, our computers and advancements and so on… so its obviously the area of reality that we can be sure is real. We have no scientific definition for a human life, and obviously, it has to start somewhere. Since ethereal ideas such as spirits and life creation by a deity are extremely unlikely, we avoid them as explanations. To define a human life, we can only turn to science for the answer, and if science doesn’t have an answer then there may be no answer.
If you look at it purely from a scientific and natural perspective, we are mammals. We are simply organisms that live on this planet that have evolved some very fancy brains. However, a mammal can only live when separated from its chromosomal donor, physiologically. As long as it is a part of the mother, it cannot survive as its own entity, and perhaps remains simply a part of the mother. A human fetus doesn’t develop a nervous system and a brain-stem until very late in the game, and even then it is uncertain whether or not they can comprehend or understand pain, for they are not yet alive. They are being made, like bread in an oven. The question can then become: “Does life start when consciousness starts”? Again, science does not yet have a theory that tells us the precise moment consciousness begins. It is entirely feasible that someday we may find that moment, for it is becoming increasingly clear that consciousness is merely the result of incomprehensible numbers of neural connections in our brains. Without neural connections like that, are we conscious? Are apes conscious? Are cockroaches conscious?
These are all very interesting questions that science may or may not some day answer (and will adhere to script scientific scrutiny so it can be considered fact, unlike religious tenants that can withstand no scrutiny and have no supporting evidence). In the meantime, we are sure (to a statistically significant degree) that an embryo cannot feel pain, is not a human life, and should not be considered so over the well beings and mortality of those we KNOW to be alive.
Enjoy.
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