Adult Stem Cells Save People; Embryonic Stem Cells, Not So Much

Spanish and British doctors have successfully grown a trachea from a woman's own adult stem cells and replaced her own damaged trachea with it. The team reported their results from the June operation in the Medical Journal Lancet. From the article, emphasis added:

The graft immediately provided the recipient with a functional airway, improved her quality of life, and had a normal appearance and mechanical properties at 4 months. The patient had no anti-donor antibodies and was not on immunosuppressive drugs.

A trachea is not a heart, but the fundamental change in the way twenty-first century medicine will approach first organ failure and then age-related ailments cannot be overstressed.

From The Minority Report and The Independent:

University of Bristol Professor Martin Birchall, who worked with the Spanish team, said, "This is just the beginning. I think it will completely transform the way we think about surgery. In 20 years' time the commonest surgical operations will be regenerative procedures to replace organs and tissues damaged by disease with autologous tissues and organs from the laboratory. We are on the verge of a new age in surgical care."

No children were maimed, harmed, or grown in the lab to be harvested like cattle for the production of this trachea.

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More on Obama, Ayers, and Coburn

At the recent televised debate between Democrat Republican Hillary Clinton (of the New York Clintons) and Obamunist Party nominee Barack Obama, Mr. Obama tried to put his relationship with admitted former (but wistful) terrorist William Ayers.

Obama minimized the connection between the two, but then said something that still bothers me.

He did detestable acts when I was eight years old."

I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, a man who has suggested the death penalty may be appropriate for those who perform abortions.

The first fallacy here is overloading the word "friendly" by claiming that the two relationships are anything alike. Tom Coburn did not launch Obama's career in Illinois politics; William Ayers did.

Obama is trying to establish that the questions of his relationship with Ayers are designed to imply guilt by association, and to a certain extent they are. But no one is saying that Obama is a terrorist because Ayers is or was; they are only saying that Obama shouldn't hang around with Ayers at all.

The biggest problem takes a little thought. Ayers says he set off bombs (and not enough of them, he maintains) to call attention to the war in Viet Nam. Tom Coburn holds an opinion, and no matter what Senator Obama thinks of Coburn's opinion, Coburn has never once planned or set off a bomb to gain attention to his cause. That Senator Obama thinks that the two equivalent means only one thing.

Obama believes that terrorism and discussion are equally tolerable.

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Hillary and Barack Keep Digging

I didn't watch the Clinton/Obama debate last night on ABC. I didn't want to put myself through two hours of tee-ball questions about things that don't matter to me, like who can promise to support the troops with the best form of socialized medicine.

Luckily for me and for you, good reader, others were kind enough to watch and even give a running commentary.

Josh at the Talking Points Memo was unhappy with it:

What I didn't like about the debate, though, was the debate itself. Not only were most of the questions on partisan gotchas and frivolous points. But more importantly the questions upon which the candidates were pressed the most were ones that presumed the correctness of Republican agenda items, sometimes explicitly so -- on taxes, capital gains taxes, gun rights, Iraq, etc.

Josh, that's because those are the questions which are most difficult for the candidates to answer, and most likely to take them off autopilot.

Redstate commenters saw the debate as a window into the character of the two Democrats running for President.

I hope Hillary Clinton stays in the race until the Democratic Party convention in Denver. Though not all of the facts that have come to light about Obama are due to her digging, it's clear that when she puts him in a hole, Obama doesn't know that he can't dig his way out.

When asked about his relationship with former Weather Underground domestic terrorist William Ayers:

Obama after complaining about "manufactured issues," says, "this is what I'm talking about... He lives in my neighborhood, he's a professor of English. Not someone I've accepted endorsement of, it's not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis... (!) He did detestable acts when I was eight years old."

I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, a man who has suggested the death penalty may be appropriate for those who perform abortions.

He's not accepted Ayers' endorsement for President, but he most certainly got down on his hands and knees and accepted it in order to gain entree into Chicago politics.

And what does, "on a regular basis" mean? Obama and Ayers serve on a board together. It seems likely that Obama doesn't regularly attend the board meetings, so perhaps they only get a chance to exchange ideas when he does attend.

But the final quoted sentence above may be a glimmer of Equivalency shining through the Wright- and Harvard-induced fog. Coburn believes children have the same human rights to 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" a minute before birth as they do a minute after. Abortion he therefore considers to be murder, an appropriate punishment for which is the death penalty. But Coburn isn't bombing abortion clinics. In fact, no one has done that for over ten years, and Coburn never has.

But Obama, steeped in the liberal doctrine of means justified by goals, equates Coburn's work within the system with Ayers' attempts to destroy it.

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Stem cells

There are two kinds of stem cells, adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells have proven to be very effective in treating certain ailments. Embryonic stem cells have proven to be very effective mostly at causing cancer. Adult cells taken from the umbilical cord bear resemblance to both kinds, but are really adult cells.

The characteristics that distinguish adult stem cells from embryonic stem cells is that adult stem cells are created by particular parts of the body and have the ability to (divide and) change only into the kinds of cells needed in those parts, while embryonic stem cells are able to change into cells for any part of the body.

All current successful stem cell therapies (actual cures and treatments of disease) are from adult stem cells.

Adult cells are obtainable from bone marrow and from umbilical cord blood.

Currently, embryonic stem cells can only be obtained in two ways: through growing them from an existing batch of embryonic stem cells, or by destroying a blastocyst, an embryo in the first week of pregnancy.

Researchers have found a way to create mouse embryonic cells from mouse adult skin cells. Mouse cells and human cells have different chemistry, however, and so they're still working on it. If it proves successful in humans, this technique could provide a ethics-clean source of embryonic cells. It could also serve as a cover for researchers who, hypothetically, obtain their cells from blastocysts, or on the gray market.

Some people think embryonic stem cell research would eventually lead to all kinds of cures and therapies. Other people counter that such funding would encourage people to have abortions, and they consider abortion to be manslaughter. Both of those positions are reasonable.

While the number of abortions in the US annually, on the order of a million, already dwarfs the need for embryonic stem cells, and the best time to harvest stem cells is in the first week of pregnancy, women with unwanted pregnancies (typically discovered at 2-6 weeks) would be offered and cling to the notion that their abortion would further science. While embryonic stem cells are present in older fetuses, a blastocyst is the preferred source.

And there is, in fact, a ready supply of blastocysts, coming from the practice of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), the making of "test-tube babies". Eggs are retrieved, fertilized, and begin to divide. The resulting blastocysts are inspected before being reimplanted. Those which fail inspection are considered "not viable", and are discarded. In some cases, there are more viable blastocysts than can be implanted. Those which appear viable but are not chosen to be implanted may be frozen, or discarded. It is this tiny number of blastocysts which could be used for research, if we allow them to be used for this purpose.

And if these are allowed to be used for research, it is a certainty that in every case of IVF, more eggs than are needed will be harvested, and as many as possible will be retained for research -- whether the parents know it or not.

There is a probability, however remote, that embryonic stem cell research could yield cures to many diseases. It could extend the life of those living. But the creation of every new line results with certainty in one human death. Until someone can show that the likelihood of curing enough disease and preventing enough sickness is greater than the likelihood of causing additional human death, I think the moratorium on Federal funding of harvesting new embryonic stem cells should stay in place.

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More Lunactivism

In my previous post on lunactivism I should have defined it: activism taking positions which are harmful to a central cause, usually from a desire to appear ideologically consistent.

Most lunactivists are liberals who get sidelined by the search for the approbation of a good cause defended, and fail to sanity check their own actions. Liberals tend to believe that integrity entails always "speaking truth to power" on every issue, where truth is whatever they feel and power is whichever tradition or institution they wish at the moment to destroy. Lunactivism occurs when activists get carried away with excitement over side issues, overreach, or choose the wrong fellow travelers.

My favorite early blogger, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Means: you don't have to conform for the sake of conformity, either in fashion or in substance. And if your zeal for conformance to the logical implications of an ideology puts you someplace doing something that you know is wrong, then you probably ought to reconsider that ideology, or at least your own zeal.

As part of the Law of Unintended Consequences, there is always a backlash against activism of any kind. The activism can be seen to be lunactive if negative consequences exceed the progress toward the intended goal.

Conservatives are also guilty of lunactivism, though on nothing like the same scale. I mention two examples below, and there may be others. Some examples of lunactivism:

Animal Rights

• Wanting to kill the baby animal who loses its mother, because growing up around humans is a fate worse than death.
• Not allowing human predation (so more animals suffer longer)

NAACP

Abortion is the leading cause of African American deaths, yet the NAACP supports it because that's the ideologically correct liberal position.

Anti-War activists

In 2006, opposition to the Iraq war led liberal anti-war activists to support Ned Lamont for Senator in Connecticut, eventually defeating Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. Lieberman, however, is among the most liberal of Democrats on most issues, but happens to support the Iraq war. So the activists spent all of their effort to unseat a popular liberal Senator in a liberal State, a "safe seat", only to have him win the general election as an Independent.

This Spring (2007), Harvard College Democrats displayed on the school quadrangle 3,200 red bandannas "to visually illustrate the sheer magnitude of what Iraq has become", according to a piece in The Crimson.
"Unfortunately for the Dems, their Iraq display in the Quad looks nothing like a memorial for the lost soldiers and civilians in Iraq."

Prior to their installation of the Iraq Awareness Display, the Dems held a Candlelight Vigil at Tercentenary Theater. There were also a number of projects undertaken to physically support the troops (a phrase we invoke, but often don’t act upon), including a donation drive they co-sponsored with the Harvard Republican Club and ROTC. In other words, the Iraq Awareness Project was a series of solidly forward-thinking events. But the display–well that’s a prime example of how progressives lose focus at Harvard.

When Confronted By Contrary Opinion

Students at college campuses from Columbia to Berkeley have begun raising such a fuss against anyone who disagrees with the leftward agenda that they silence any contrary voice, often with violence and the explicit denial of the right to free speech.

The Sicko

By gushing over the wonders of the Cuban health care system, Michael M0ore undercuts his own message by choosing a tyrant as a fellow traveler. Viewers will draw the implication that America must emulate Cuba's totalitarianism if it is to achieve good health care.

Multiculturalism

Multiculty is an inherently contradictory dogma, which says that all cultures are to be valued and preserved, even ones which deny basic human rights. This principle trumps religious freedom, free speech, women's rights, and just about everything else when it comes to Islam. Liberals ignore the hatred pouring from the mosques, as well as the fact that Islam and liberal ideology simply do not mix.

As the Vanishing American put i:

Somehow liberal Christians and secular liberals and leftists alike believe that anyone who suffers or is 'oppressed' even if by their own fault is automatically to be exalted. This is what is at the core of the leftist/liberal reverence for the 'Other', the stranger, the outcast, the invader.

AIDS and Abstinence

Gay Pride and liberal correctness mean that abstinence is anathema. Even though abstinence education has proven effective against the spread of AIDS, activists will have nothing of it.

Fox News

Debates: Fox has a bigger audience than any other cable news outlet, and boycotting them only hurts the candidates in their efforts to become known.

O'Reilly boycott: Bill O'Reilly is not a conservative. He's a populist who explicitly distances himself from many conservative positions. Yet lunactivists are staging a boycott. Why? Could it be because O'Reilly points out the disproportionate and controlling influence of Moveon.org and George Soros on the Democratic Party?

Global Warming

The "Climate Crisis" and the Union of Concerned Scientists:

The UCS doesn't understand that their advocacy, following as it does a pattern of liberal orthodoxy, detracts from the authority their voice would otherwise have. People notice the pattern, and think "Oh, it's them again."

Vigilante Killing of Abortionists

Though it hasn't happened for about 10 years, right-wing anti-abortionists have murdered doctors who perform abortions. Again, this is taking ideology to the extreme, committing acts that are wrong and justifying them by the logical implications of ideology. The backlash against these killings continues today, typically in an application of the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy ("And what of you?").

Traitors and Criminals

Finally, as Becker points out at Redstate.com, it is a misuse of language to call anti-war politicians "traitors". Contrarily, saying that the Iraq war is illegal and that the Administration is "criminal" is equally wrong. That kind of hyperbole does more harm than good. "Treason" and "criminal" have specific meanings, and throwing these words around without carefully considering those definitions is crying wolf. It allows the object of the name-calling to generalize and blur the lines, so that in the future some real traitor or criminal may go unpunished.

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The Gauntlet is Thrown

I agree with haystack. Click the title to go to Redstate and see it all.

I have been told being left alone to live my life with as little Governmental intrusion as possible was my right until the Government deemed it necessary to intrude just the same; from marriage being redefined to satisfy a constituency to citizenship being redefined to satisfy a constituency to allowing unborn babies to be killed to satisfy a constituency to allowing criminals who have come here to profit from my generosity be called "Americans" to satisfy a constituency to giving more of my hard-earned money to "Americans" who are deemed more in need than I to satisfy a constituency to being told I am allowed to defend myself with a gun that I am not allowed to have to satisfy a constituency.

How often do we read things and say, "I wish I'd said that!" because it is what we were just thinking? He concludes:

Attention political parties. The party is over...you get no money from me, and you are all open game.

Attention America, you are being had and you are losing your heritage, your history, your past, and a future you are already being deprived of.

Attention Politicians. I will do everything in my power to get you fired...can you say term limits and recall?

Attention US Government. You will be forced to give me back my country, or arrest me before I go too far.

I have your shield arm, sir.

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The Happy Chains of Individualism

After the 2006 elections, I posted a list of what I want from my government and its leaders, summarizing with:

I want leaders who encourage individualism in self reliance, self control, self defense, and self expression.

America is a nation founded on the principles of limited government. It was a new and radical plan, successful thus far only because it has relied on one fundamental truth: a free people who know that they are responsible for their own well-being and who have an ownership stake in their country will work harder and fight harder than a people who are mere subjects to the will of the State or a King. They will be free to exercise their creativity, and creativity harnessed to unity is unstoppable.

An implicit foundation for the above is individualism, and its four bases as stated above - self reliance, self control, self defense, and self expression - must be the province of each citizen if the nation is to endure. Yet only the last, self expression, seems to have popular currency. Nationhood itself is under attack, as those loyal to transnational groups see internationalism as the way out of strife among nations.

There are some today who, like Marx a century and a half ago, see the world in terms of a struggle among groups. Individuals, to the collectivists, are only valued as parts of the groups to which they belong. Their reliance is on the group, their control is an exercise in group leadership, their defense a shared struggle against the other groups, and their self expression is valued only to the extent that it promotes group values. Collectivists give lip service to the value of each individual, soon belied by the systematic eradication of any action or thought which strays from those approved by the group.

The self reliant culture of the young expanding America has become a culture of adolescent porcine uncertainty over whether to suckle from the teat or to gorge at the trough of government.

In some not-too-distant future, if we allow the flame of individualism to be extinguished by the pall of collectivism, we will know why: people became less willing to rely on themselves alone to achieve their dreams.

For it is insufficient to demand the right to free expression while at once demanding that someone else supply for us our needs and protect us from all misfortune. The Nanny is the Tyrant's wicked stepmother: we cede to the government the power to protect us from bad luck, and then from poor decisions, and then from all risk, until finally we must ask government for permission to do things which it ought not dare take control.

Virtue as an ideal, and the many virtues that were formerly upheld as prerequisites for respectability, has been replaced by the ideal of Fame. We see the famous and infamous as icons of success, the example we would be wise to follow. Glamor, not wisdom, is seen as the benchmark of a life well lived.

Ignoring virtue leads to a lack of self control. Unable then to control ourselves, we either find it frightening to undertake our own defense or we wickedly enjoy the condition that others cannot defend themselves. In either case, the government steps in to separate the wolves from the sheep, and finds itself with ever more wolves, and ever more sheep.

At the bottom of every social ill is a failure of individuals to rely on their own ability, to control themselves, to defend themselves and those for whom they care, and to insist that their government step aside. Undo the individualist foundation and the nation will fall, because a collectivist people, loyal to their groups, will have neither a stake in the nation nor the will to defend it.

If an ideology comes along that violates any of the four principles, it shows itself to be incompatible with all of them, and Americans should stand against it.

But if individuals are free to care for themselves, to succeed or fail, to defend themselves and to speak the words they choose, they will take on the bonds of loyalty, which are the strongest bonds of all.

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Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embryonic stem cell research presents an easy expected value problem. An expected value problem is one for which two or more values or outcomes are weighed, when each has a likelihood of occurring. Expected value problems are solved by converting all variables to the same unit of measurement and multiplying each outcome by its likelihood.

Comparing only like terms, we have:

Decision = Prob(life-threatening diseases cured)(number of cured people) - (1)(number of embryo lives destroyed in research)

... where Prob(X) represents the likelihood of X occurring, on a scale from 0 to 1.

So we're being asked to balance the hypothetical cure against the definite death. Roll the dice that some person could be cured by taking the life of another, without that other's consent.

The doctor is correct. When the probability of a cure for some life-threatening disease gets high enough, the number of lives saved will outweigh, in a grisly fashion, the number of lives destroyed to save them.

I ignore the easy straw man argument, that embryonic stem cells have the "potential" to keep aging actresses on screen longer and prolong the careers of aging athletes. But what of old age generally? What if embryonic stem cells hold the fountain of youth?

It's the same expected value. To do the research to find out whether such is possible, human beings have to die.

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Libertarian SoCons

Over at Classical Values, Eric had a fine post (as if he ever has anything else) before the November elections about Bill Clinton's characterization of the Republican Party as enthralled by the demonized Social Conservatives.

I think there are a lot of libertarian-leaning social conservatives, as odd as it sounds. We understand the clean-room simplicity of libertarian principles, but also that the tidiness falls down in the face of modern reality. There are also a number of issues, namely abortion and drugs, on which social conservatives largely disagree with libertarians.

Americans, by and large, like to think of themselves a favoring small government, personal liberty, and the rest. But the devil in the details here is defining "small" and "liberty". Given the question, e.g., "Should people be able to control what goes into their own bodies?", most people will say yes. But ask them about PCP or Vallium, and they'll start in about endangering others or the protecting the li'l chil'rens. Oh, and don't touch my farm subsidy.

The issue of abortion falls squarely on the question of when life begins, or rather, when the 'fetus', a collection of cells inside a woman, becomes a 'baby', a human being entitled to legal protection. I believe that moment is the instant of conception, but I understand some people disagree. When pro-choice libertarians can see the unborn child as a person whose rights need to be defended, they become pro-life libertarians.

The War on Drugs baffles me. Why the government should care who ingests or injects what, I don't understand. I think I'll cover what people do when they're on drugs, addiction, and other issuesf an upcoming post (unless the black helicopters prevent it).

A big problem for the Libertarians is Islamic terrorism. The Libertarian philosophy, being a creature of Western lineage, doesn't have room for jihad. Libertarianism can't abide by efforts to root out terrorism with privacy-crowding methods, nor with taking the fight to the terrorist's home turf. Libertarians are left with the plan of sitting around waiting for some jihadist loser to blow himself up.

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