hi everyone,
I'm sorry if I sounded just a tad pessimistic... but to tell the
truth I WAS pretty choked... there are a lot of people who should
have a lot at stake here!!
Dr. Raj spent some time with his posting and it barely created a
ripple....
I have not given up. Far from it. I was trying to fan a small flame
amongst the readers of this list...
regards ....... murray
On 30 Mar 2003 at 13:18, Murray Charters wrote:
Hi Raj,
This is a great response.
Too bad it will not appear in The San Jose Mercury News, CA...
Too bad it will not appear on the front page of every National paper
in North America...
Too bad because in spite of all efforts to influence Parliament in
Canada, tomorrow marks Third Reading of Bill C-13 An Act Respecting
Assisted Human Reproductive Technologies and Related Research.
Too bad because in their frenzy to ban Reproductive Cloning, the well
intentioned Parliamentarians are also going to ban ALL forms of
Therapeutic Cloning and, in the process, CRIMINALIZE all forms of
research in Therapeutic Cloning.
We did not ask that they open the door wide to anything and
everything.
We simply asked that they leave a well guarded, well regulated, door
for our scientists to potentially perform research into regenerative
medicine.
Research into cures for Cancer, for heart disease, for diabetes, for
Alzheimers, and yes, for Parkinson's.
In their zeal to stop the Raeliens and all others of that ilk,
Parliament is instead going to BRICK the research doorway forever
SHUT, and pat themselves on the back.
We put up a website and thought we might garner the support of
thousands of like minded Canadians who would stand up and be counted.
see:
http://www.TherapeuticCloning.ca
We were wrong. Too few visited the site, read the LETTER to the
Health Minister, signed it electronically, forwarded the URL etc.
We thought it was a simple process whose time had come.
Wrong again! Apathy reigns!
The site is still active and I encourage anyone who listened and read
this far, to visit the site and read the LETTER etc.
Too bad they won't .... murray
On 30 Mar 2003 at 14:22, Brightline wrote:
Hi! Murray:
This is a very interesting posting.
``Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics''
argument is
very unreasonable for the following reasons:
1. The embryos would have been destroyed any way. I do not see
any
moral or ethical problems in using the cells from the embryos that
are
never destined to be implanted in a womans womb or becme a full
fledged
human being by any other means.
I would like to give Dr. Fitzgerald a good example to think
about:
The philosophy behind using the stem cells from the embryos
destined
to be discarded is very similar, if not identical, to the idea
behind organ
donation. The government recommends and encourages donating your
organs,
or even your wholebodies for medical research, when and if you die
accidentally or otherwise (since our body is going to be destroyed
without
any further use, one way or the other, just burried and let to
disintegrate
or cremated), so it can be transplanted into a needy individual,
without
which he/she can not live; e.g., kidney, liver, heart , lung etc., or
used
for medical research. There seems to be no ethical problem in such
cases.
When one wants use the stem cells from an embryo to be discarded,
these
people begin to talk about ethical and moral issues.
The organ donor willingly donates the organ.
The only difference between organ donation for transplantation
and stem
cell harvest from the unused embryos is that we did not get the
consent from
the embryos.
However, we also did not get their consent to destory them. Did
we?
2. When does a life originates? This is a wrong question to
ask. A
living cell comes from another living cell. Biologically speaking,
life is
a continuous process. Once dead it is gone. That is how extinction
of
living organisms occurs.
Everybody defines the process of fertilization as the beginning
of life.
Again this is a wrong statement. Both the sperm and the egg are
living
cells too!
Fertilization, whether this happens in vitro or otherwise, is the
beginning of the life of a new individual.
" Life begins at fertilization, when the ``genetic code is complete
and
operative,'' according to the group. That means that the embryos are
not
just clusters of cells but ``are the tiniest of human beings.''
We all agree that the life of a new individual starts at
fertilization.
But, the birth control pills block successful implantation of the
fertilized embryonic cell (a new embryonic human being has already
sarted
his/her journey towards development) by inducing a process
equivalent to
abortion. Just think of how many millions of ladies are taking
birth
control pills. A modern woman on the average goes through 500
menstural
cyles in her life. Except a couple or a handful of the products of
fertilization, every other fertilized human embryo is routinely
killed
because of the pills. Where were these ethicist when the BC pills
became an
everyday thing? Except the Catholic Church, nobody else even thinks
about
this issue at all. How many of these ethicists do use birth control
pills?
How come killing the early human embryo by birth control pills is
ethical?
Let us be honest. Don't you sense some degree of hypocrisy here?
3. If killing a human embryo is not ethical, then even in vitro
fertilizatioin should be considered non-ethhical, because one
produces
several embryos out of which only one is implanted and the rest are
left to
die! We can literally kill these would be human beings, but we
cannot make
use of the cells for helping another indvidual to lead a healthy
life? I
cannot understand why this is not as ethical as donating an organ for
helping another life to proceed, when one dies.
Assuming one half of the human population of 10 billions, if 5
billion
females all give rise to roughly even half of their reproductve
potential,
with in one generation there would not be enough room to accommodate
all
these human beings on this earth! That is the way Nature works.
Nature
always over produces the young of the species simply to make sure at
least a
few of them would survive and become adults to be able to reproduce
the
species. Every living specie does that starting from plants to
humans,
that is Nature's rule.
4. FitzGerald says a truly global dialogue is needed on embryonic
stem
cell research, since research done in the United States, Sweden or
elsewhere has a potential worldwide impact.
I simply do not see the necessity for or usefulness in a global
dialogue
on this issue. There shall be always opposing views on every issue.
Different societies (countires) are going to take different
decisions. No
unanimous agreement will result on such important issues. Not one
country
is going to prevent the decision on such importnt issues taken by
another
country, by conudcting deliberatons on a global scale. The recent
events
in the United Nations would serve as an example.
5. ``The potential for embryonic stem cells is really
fantastic,'' said
Hamberger, who has ties to two Swedish companies involved with stem
cells,
Cell Therapeutics Scandinavia and Vitrolife.
This is the concensus of all the scientists in the world. Every
review
on stem cell applications in regeneratve medicine concludes that
embryonic
stem cells have a broad spectrum of developmental and differentiation
potential than adult stem cells. The Therapeutic stem cell cloning
after
somatic cell nuclear transplantation is the best compromise to induce
patient-specific embryonic stem cells without involging the process
of
fertilization and will potentially avoid immune rejection of
"transplanted"
cells. The regeneration based therapy of debilitating diseases,
several
inherited diseases and other patological situations will help almost
75% of
the humanity within a decade or two. But, we should know a lot more
about
these stem cells before we can attempt at curing diseases. Questions
like
how they maintain themselves as stem cells for severl generations and
how do
they differentate into different cell types (there are above 200
different
cell types in a human body) need to be answered. The studies on both
adult
stem cells and SCNT-derived embryonic stem cells (therapeutic
cloning) are
in their infancy. We cannot kill such studies in their embryonic
stges with
total disregard to the enrmous promise they hold out to the
betterment of
humanity. We are morally and ethically bund to explore these new
avenues
of makkin g human life better for the same of people that are surring
as we
spenmd our time arguing about obvious things.
I do not see any ethics or morality in such indiscrimminate
banning of
stem cell research.
We all agree it is ethically and morally wrong to clone a human
being.
We should all have a global discussion on how one can safegaurd
against such
irresponsible act. Both the adult stem cell research and the
studies on
SCNT-embryonic cells should be allowed to proceed without any delay,
while
we put severe restrictions n stem cell research with strict
guidelines
attached with severfe penalties and safegaurds against "mad
Scientists" who
might be tempted to clone a human being either for money, thrill or
cheap
publicity.
Raj
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