[NEW] Embrionary Stem Cells in Brazil

[Ladeira]

Yesterday, the Brazilian Supreme Court accepted the embrionary stem cells research as legal.

 

And again, the Science wins... and I can't understand why all those religious groups can't figure out that we're not killing people, just saving them from death.

 

More one point to Brazil

[ecoli]

The issue is in the united states, is whether the government should be funding stem cell research. It can be freely pursued in the private sector.

[Ladeira]

I understand.. here he government were giving financial support to those researchs, including with blastocysts, but it wasn't legal nor illegal. So, they 'got together' to discuss this topic. I guess it was like 6 (YES) x 5 (NO).

[Pangloss]

we're not killing people, just saving them from death.

 

Therein lies the rub. That's a moral choice, not an inherently obvious fact. Once you add a little moral ambiguity into the mix, human nature takes over and some will agree while others oppose. Always.

[Ladeira]

Yeah... I understand you.

But sometime those moral questions must disappear... or we'll be going through this doubted way forever.

[arnoldschwartz]

 

And again, the Science wins... and I can't understand why all those religious groups can't figure out that

 

Its becuase the media portrays science in such a negative light. Bad news sells and if something was portrayed as positive not many people will care but if they highlight the negatvies people will sit back and take note

[lucaspa]

Yesterday, the Brazilian Supreme Court accepted the embrionary stem cells research as legal.

 

And again, the Science wins... and I can't understand why all those religious groups can't figure out that we're not killing people, just saving them from death.

 

This isn't about "science" winning. We are all agreed that some science ethically should not be done. For instance, everyone agrees that doing science to find a more lethal, airborne strain of Ebola is unethical.

 

What we have is an ethical debate, not a "scientific" one. Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) possibly can cure some diseases. Whether we ought to use them to cure diseases is an ethical decision.

 

So, what we have to do is look at the ethical positions being stated.

 

1. The 5 day old blastocysts used as sources of ES cells are not "people" in the ethical, legal sense. Therefore there are no ethical issues to harvesting those cells.

 

2. The 5 day old blastocysts are people. However, it is permissible to sacrifice one person to save many. Therefore it is ethical to "kill" these people in order to save thousands/millions with eventually fatal diseases. This is the actual ethical argument used by ES cell researchers. Notice that there is an unstated position about ES cells: ES cells and only ES cells can do the job. No other stem cell -- such as adult stem cells -- can do the jobs proposed for ES cells.

 

3. Being a person starts at the moment of conception. Therefore harvesting ES cells is killing someone. The potential benefit of doing so is not worth the death of the person.

 

What you have to decide is which ethical position you have. Then you can begin rationally looking at the merits and flaws of the other ethical positions. This is an ethical debate. However, notice that position #2 has a hidden scientific statement in it: the limits on the potential of adult stem cells.

[john5746]

What you have to decide is which ethical position you have. Then you can begin rationally looking at the merits and flaws of the other ethical positions. This is an ethical debate. However, notice that position #2 has a hidden scientific statement in it: the limits on the potential of adult stem cells.

 

I guess that is the argument of some for #2, but isn't it more about keeping options on the table? Just as with energy, the more options you have the more likely you will have success. So ES might be the only, the best or the worst option. It might be the only or best option for a finite period of time. Research needs to be done to find out - which #3 rules out.

 

So I think the only argument is: Is it ethical to try?

[lucaspa]

So I think the only argument is: Is it ethical to try?

 

That's the same argument. Remember, the question is: is it ethical for scientists to work with human ES cells? That's "try". The ethical argument for trying is the possibility of curing human disease. But, in order to try with human ES cells, you have to destroy a blastocyst. If you consider that a person (#3), then it isn't ethical to try. Just as it wasn't ethical for Nazi scientists to try to find tolerance to various gasses by exposing Jewish prisoners to them and having them die. We don't consider it ethical to deliberately kill a person in the course of scientific research.

 

Perhaps you meant to apply your argument narrowly to just #2 and the objection that adult stem cells would be able to do what ES cells do:

So ES might be the only, the best or the worst option. It might be the only or best option for a finite period of time. Research needs to be done to find out - which #3 rules out.

 

However, that is not a counter to #3. Many of the people arguing #3 do not allow the exception to save the lives of thousands. For them, you have to directly challenge the underlying assumption that a fertilized ovum is a person.

 

However, another counter to your argument is that research can be done to test the potential of ES cells in general to treat diseases. Remember, there are no restrictions on obtaining ES cells from animals and there are animal models of diseases. Therefore the potential of ES cells to cure diseases can be tested in animals even if there is a human ban. You might then use that research to support ethical argument #2.

 

However, if you search the literature, you find something very strange. There are thousands of papers using adult stem cells to treat diseases in animals -- including many clinical trials in humans. There are less than 20 papers using ES cells to treat diseases in animal models and these are in only a few fields: cardiac regeneration, spinal cord regeneration, and some hematological work. All three offer hundreds of papers using adult stem cells, including at least 5 human clinical trials in the cardiac area.

 

So what we have for adherents to argument #2 is that the argument is all hype and isn't based on data! A flaw in the argument is that you can legitimately ask: where are all these miracle cures in the animal models scientists require before they can move to human trials?

 

I guess that is the argument of some for #2,

 

It's the argument of the ES cell community. They implicitly agreed to the premise of #3 but used the ethical positions 1) the embryos would be discarded anyway (leftover from in vitro fertilization) and 2) that ES cells would save thousands of lives.

 

The first one took a hit when the ES cell community decided that they needed ES cells from the same individual to avoid immune rejection. That led them to somatic nuclear cell transfer (cloning) but with the knowledge that the blastocyst was being created only to have ES cells harvested. To those adhering to #3, that meant killing a person. Of course, there were other ethical concerns raised -- the source of the ova to do the cloning. Not nearly enough ova around for all the potential patients using ES cell therapy.

 

Many in the ES cell community think the ethical issues have been circumvented by induced pluripotent cells (iPS), where ES cells are generated by transducing 4 genes into adult cells. BTW, a recent paper used iPS cells to cure a mouse model of sickle cell anemia. So the iPS people started out early showing the efficacy of iPS cells on particular diseases. They didn't rely on just hype like the ES cell people did.

Edited July 2, 2008 by lucaspa