A commenter on the weekend asked where was the stem cell discussion? Well, ask and ye shall receive, maybe.
TOP British footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies as a potential future treatment for their own injuries, The Sunday Times reports.
Five professional footballers are known to have frozen cells from the umbilical cord blood of their babies, which could be used to treat cartilage and ligament problems, it said.“We decided to store our new baby’s stem cells for possible therapeutic reasons, both for our children and possibly for myself,” The Sunday Times quoted an anonymous Premier League soccer player. “If you’re prone to injury, it can mean the end of your career, so having your stem cells – a repair kit, if you like – on hand makes sense.”
Meanwhile,
In Australia, Health Minister Tony Abbott is scaremongering by promoting the idea that therapeutic stem cell cloning will lead to human cloning, says the deputy chairwoman of the Lockhart committee.
Professor Loane Skene said neither Mr Abbott nor any federal cabinet minister had approached her or other members of the committee, whose report could lead to a parliamentary conscience vote.
[...]Professor Skene said: “If I were invited to talk to him, I would say that reproductive cloning, which is making a person who is genetically identical to an existing person, is prohibited by legislation.
“He must know that and I think that it is scaremongering (to suggest otherwise).
The positions of various parliamentarians on therapeutic stem cell cloning (TSCC) issues raise from raise from bizarre Abbottian visions of human-animal hybrids to concerns about the negative possibilities of reproductive cloning and more rational concerns about ensuring an ethical oversight system for a new and controversial science.
Abbot suffered a severe rebuff in the RU-486 debate. He’s made his position clear on TSCC: just like he didn’t trust pregnant women he doesn’t trust bioscientists either. He doesn’t appear so willing to have opposition to TSCC be an all-Abbott agenda though, being content to have other socially conservative politicians hit the microphone circuit.
The third leg of current stem cell news is the new technique for extracting stem cells from embryos with destroying the embryo. Although many of the socially conservative critics were cautiously optimistic while awaiting further information about the innovation, the Vatican has come out against:
VATICAN CITY: The Vatican’s top official on bioethical questions has criticised a new method of making stem cells that does not destroy embryos, calling it a “manipulation” that did not address the church’s ethical concerns.
Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, who heads Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, said in an interview with Vatican Radio the way of making stem cells devised by scientists at Advanced Cell, based in Alameda, California, remains an in-vitro form of reproduction.
“And that, from a point of view that is not only Catholic, but from a point of view of bioethic reasons, is a negative factor.”
The Vatican’s position against IVF is due to the way that the process depends on producing more embryos than are required in order to choose the best formed for implantation. Most of the embryos produced in IVF are never implanted, and while they may remain frozen for some time, they are eventually disposed of. The Vatican is quite right to point out that the new process does nothing to stop the overproduction of embryos in IVF that will never become babies, although obviously their strict position on IVF is well outside mainstream acceptance of the procedure.
So, three stem cell stories for you all to chew on.
The Mad Monk is very ‘catholic’ when it comes to issues such as ‘stem cells’. His catholicism however does not extend to opposing the invasion of Iraq. A selective catholic, at best.
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I was just reading about Bush’s “flip-flop” on this issue at Mother Jones. Maybe he and the Pope have been talking…
The vatican might be right about overproduction, but this new process could survive on existing embryos.
In the stem cell, abortion and RU-486 debates, we see the anti-intellectual side of religion in Australia, and this demonstrates how certain MPs are tending towards theocracy.
I think you have confused several issues here which perhaps may not be related to the Lockhart Review (I am only ploughing through it now).
The first article seems to relate to stem cells sourced from umbilical cords – not the issue.
While Abbott’s comments are a bit bizarre and intemperate at times so that it’s hard to work out what he’s on about, it seems his beef is with somatic cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning) and there are some serious ethical issues there. Having said that Abbott may have an argument which is ironically backed up by the Lockhart Review. Let me finish that and think about it some more.
The third issue, the announcement of a new technique which does not “destroy” the embryo is post Lockhart (I need to check timelines, Lockhart’s review was published Dec 05) and is not the issue here, although some may consider that lends some weight to some arguments for/against SCNT etc.
A suggestion: if you want to have a discussion on something, best to define your terms and your scope – and when it comes to serious issues with grave ethical and moral concerns – best to do better than just throw out three random stories for people to spit out a reflexive response.
Well, that was only moderately patronising, saint. Do you want to pat me on the head as well?
Is the Lockhart Review the only permissible lens through which we can examine stem cell issues?
Bloody hell, Saint.
“So, three stem cell stories for you all to chew on.”
What does that last sentence mean, if not “three separate stories”. It was a round-up of interesting stories and developments, not a bloody philosophical treatise.
A suggestion: if you don’t have anything useful to contribute to a thread, then go away and come back when you do.
I must confess that I don’t see what the controversy is really, truly, actually all about. Let me get this straight. So some scientists want to take some cells from a person, and mix them with some other cells of the same person – with, as I understand it, (although I may be wrong – open to correction here people), absolutely zero, zilch, zip, nada, NO chance of it ever developing into anything that might even resemble a fully grown function human being (like Tony Abbott, perhaps? Damn. Forgot he ain’t fully grown or functioning) – in the hope the scientists can then get some cells out of whatever eventually develops in order to be able to repair organs etc in the person that the cells were originally taken from? Please. Someone. Anyone. Can you please tell me exactly why there is an ethical problem with the proposition. Or have I completely and totally and absolutely misunderstood what the proponents of therapuetic cloning are all about and what it involves. Or, perchance, has Tony Abbott?
Cheers…
The big controversy is over harvesting stem cells from embryos, Mick. Anna’s put up a really good post going into a fair amount of detail about the various ethical arguments tonight. [link]
OK. Thanks tig. That’s fine. But does it involve an actual real embryo, or does this new proposition just need a bunch of cells, one or more of which may have been a pre-cursor to an embryo? Even if it does involve the creation of an embryo, I still don’t see what all the fuss about. Nature is terribly profligate with potential humans – most sperm are ejaculated into – well into something, most eggs are menstruated away, many, if not most fertilised eggs – zygotes – spontaneously abort or fail to implant in the uterus. So we humans want to tap into some of this stream… go for it if it will lead to further medical progress..
Cheers..
Yes, the new embryonic stem cell extraction procedure does still involve an actual embryo, and there’s the theoretical possibility that it may end up taking enough cells to produce a clone.
But yes, Mick: I’m with you on the bewilderment when the death of zygote-stage embyos happens naturally within the womb every single day, and implantation is the exception rather than the norm.
I posted here several weeks ago that the Rhythm Method works because it kills off zygotes. Catholics are hypocrites when it comes to compassion for zygotes.