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.

Sphere: Related Content

Whence This Hysteria?

Dr. Sanity likes to refer to the Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) as displacement: unable to attack Islamic fascism because to do so would violate Tolerance, Multiculturalism, and their anti-jingoism, the Western Left instead turns their ire against George Bush.

But what of these memes:

• American elections are rife with fraud
• Americans soldiers are torturers
  
• Global Warming will kill us
  
• Safe Sex
• Better single parenthood than a bad marriage
  
• Embryonic Stem Cells will save us
• Impeach!

How did these get to be such popular notions on the left?

I have a theory, which like all such theories do, simplifies a complex subject into a simplistic model.

When there is a societal consensus on some topic, such as "Marriage is between a man and a woman" or "Terrorists and those who support them are bad", there is always a tiny splinter group on the left that opposes that consensus.

This group "tells truth to power", standing bravely against the gale-force winds of cultural norms, and disagrees with the consensus. From high moral indignation, or sometimes simply to get attention, the group inserts itself under the fingernails of society.

Then a logically fallacious but no less powerful cultural identification occurs between that splinter group under our fingernails and the Pilgrims, Boston Tea Party braves, homesteaders, and cowboys, the lone individual or tiny group fighting for its beliefs against the odds, an iconic American hero. They believe it, so it must be true.

The group attracts fellow travelers, who often even claim personal danger for holding their idea, pointing to an isolated incident here or there in which someone was 'attacked' for holding the idea, where an 'attack' ranges from being dragged by a moving vehicle to perceiving raised eyebrows at the mall. Whether the target of the attack was targeted specifically because of the issue at hand, or even whether the attack is ever actually carried out, is irrelevant to the cohesive power of the shared feeling of danger.

As the idea spreads, it retains its counter-cultural tag long after it has ceased being "dangerous", and it is in fact advantageous for those who adopt it that others believe they hold it. More and more people hop on the bandwagon, lest they be left out of the movement and seen as backward, or not fully liberal.

If there is sufficient fuel in the form of demagoguery, displacement, or simple partisanship, the idea can take on hysterical (pun intended) proportions. It doesn't take long, unless something else takes its place, for the particular bit of madness to embed itself in the canon of leftist ideology.

And I am given cause now to wonder whether all leftist ideology arrived that way.

Sphere: Related Content

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.

Sphere: Related Content