Dec 16 2006
Meat Processing Of Babies
The human race is at a critical crossroads right now. We are going to decide what kinds of creatures we will be for all time. And key to that decision is whether we kill young humans so that old and ill humans can pretend they are extending their life. The Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) fakery has tried to argue that humans do not come from humans, but from non-human intermediary form. In this way they have convinced a lot of smart people (but uneducated in the ways of biological fact) that it is OK to destroy these mythical non-humans. The peddlers of this mythical fountain of youth that flows from these non-humans do so to make a lot of money selling their snake oil remedies.
Problem is, there comes a time when there are not enough disposable humans to meet the needs of a massive aging popoulation willing to do anything to stay alive. And that time has now come, apparently as new born babies may have been ‘harvested’ in order to process their bodies for the supposed elixir of life:
Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.
Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them.
Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world.
There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases.
But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.
There is a thriving industry out there peddling this fake miracle. You can find ESCR clinics all over the US which sell ESC injections. They won’t do anything for you and your body will simply destroy these invading cells. But they are hawked as a cure by the most disreputable kinds of greedy bastards you can ever imagine. Embryo’s are human beings. Scientific fact. If you think scientific fact is a matter of opinion only then jump off a 100 story building and we will debate the matter gravity. The average person does not understand the difference between fact and research. For example, we know the earth orbits the sun. We don’t know how the earth was formed. We know embryo’s of any species are of that species and not part of either parent (DNA tests will prove this without any doubt).
We don’t know how or even if ESCR will produce a cure for anything. We do know the ESCR has never produced a cure for anything. The killing of these innocent, unprotected human beings is the sign of things to come if we continue to let desparation and greed drive the debate of who we are as a species. How the world reacts to this is a matter of the ages.
It’s horrific.
There are many good people, often but by no means always, Christians in eastern Europe… but damn, there are a lot of souless selfish bastards.
Is it remnants of the godlessness of Communism or is that too kind? Is it merely the evil that lurks ready to seize a human heart and to do what it takes to keep heart beating and flesh young come what may to someone else?
It is crass lack respect for the lives and well-being of anyone but themselves. In other words, total selfishness.
Christoph, the Eastern cultures, including Russian, have always had a lower regard for life than the West. Add to that the anti-religious attitudes of Communism, and the money that people will pay for this latter-day snake oil, and you have a recipe for moral disaster.
What bugs me is that AJ is one of the few people who has paid attention to the basics of immune system rejection…..that if you pump somebody full of embryonic stem cells, his body will reject them. What is needed is a source of stem cells with the same genetic pattern as the patient….either through inserting the patient’s DNA into an existing stem cell (in which case existing lines will do for raw material), or by tricking existing cells into reversing the process of diffentiation (in which case my pot-belly becomes a spare parts locker).
It’s no more than high-school biology…..but seems to be beyond the wits of so many people.
Take a good look at this: George Soros’ and the Oligarchs’ Ukraine : coming to our shores much sooner than you think !
This is hitting near the bottom of the slippery slope of rampant abortion, partial birth abortion and playing god in the womb. We, let me correct that, some of us have lost all respect for human life. I’m not taking any of the blame for this garbage anymore. Some young girls today would drop a baby in a dumpster before they would leave it at a hospital door. This is what happens when we fail to protect the most innocent and defenseless among us. Even animals know better than that.
And the worst part of it here in California is that the idiot liberals in this state voted for a THREE BILLION dollar program for Embryonic Stem Cell Research. In a state that is cash strapped and drowning in the expense of paying for millions of illegal immigrants, they voted three BILLION dollars for this junk science. Not one dollar of that is allowed to go to Adult Stem Cell Research which has shown so much promise and positive results. This whole incicent was the result of the abortion lobby pushing it’s junk science because they feared any rights given to an embryo would endanger their precious baby killing. It was also fraudulently used as a political weapon to win a senate seat in Missouri.
I’ve always said that the next shoe to fall would be “Retroactive Abortion”. This comes pretty damn close if not actually being there.
Sick.
That report was so over the top outrageous and false — I’m expecting it to be loudly withdrawn by the BBC following great scientific outcry. I know plenty of people who do stem cell research and there is absolutely no reason to for these people to do what is described in this article. All the research uses only cells, never “body parts” , especially from humans and most especially from children.
I’m not as familiar with pro-life groups outside the US but I do know that subjects like animal testing in drug research and biotech foods are targets of much stronger protests in the UK, for instance, than in the US. I’ll not be at all surprised if this BBC article derives from the same sort of immoral and hysterical behavior by these vigilante type groups (or some medical nutcases that aren’t even remotely connected to the sorts of stem cell research that we’ve all read about).
In all honesty this is a standard form of propaganda used by pro-life groups to influence the public.. ie, misrepresent/lie to the public using terms like “babies,” “embryos,” “body parts,” “organ harvesting,” etc… because these are powerful concepts that people will readliy understand and react emotionally to, never mind that this is a blatantly false and dishonest story that harms innocent scientists and the public who would benefit from their research.
Jerry,
I have a BS in biology and have done scientific research. The harvesting of stem cells from embryos kills the human being. Why would you care what age it is if it is OK to destroy it for its body parts? Isn’t that why people want the stem cells – so they can grow new body parts? I know for a fact you have little understanding of science so I am not surprised you find the fact of the words disturbing because they may actually be right.
An embryo is a human being Jerry. Just like you were at one time. Be grateful no one took your stem cells and made it impossible for you to live your life.
Innocent Scientists? Anyone who is involved in ESCR could not in a million years be called innocent. He, as a scientist, knows full well he is killing a human being. These people have no heart. They see nothing but what they want. And like everything else in life its about money. Save your innocent remarks for the babies that are deprived of life. They are the only innocent ones in this fiasco.
AJ, since we’re measuring up I have a PhD and did research generally in genetics and neuroscience for 20 years (though now I’m on to less concrete things), so your insight into my background is lousy as is your presentation of this subject.
Leaving me aside, I had a chance to do stem cells in a major lab 10 years ago but didn’t want to – even in animals – for vaguely moral reasons (but figured someone else could if they wanted), I can’t conceive of how you can imagine scientists would want to do the sort of things described in this article to babies – it’s crazy thinking that’s on par with believing the government is behind 911. So I’ll spend some time on the cranky/loony thoughts you’ve just mentioned:
– “The harvesting of stem cells from embryos kills the human being. ” (Here you underscore that an embryo is a human being, this typically leads to later problems where the term embryo is misused.) Well of course no one knows the real answer to this as scientists feel very strongly about not doing these experiments in humans. In other animals it’s been known for some time that not all cells from the early embryo are necessary for normal development, the animals survive (one question I don’t know is how good the survival rate would be ). This is classic developmental biology and lead to the ideas that embryonic cells are multipotent (are not restricted in the sorts of tissues they can form) but through development cells become restricted to specific tissue fates. Recently there has been research showing that adult tissues contain “stem cells” (ASCs) that can replace cells fo that tissue type and well a cells of other tissue types – this happens to be the problem, a mixture of cell types are almost always produced and this won’t work for any sort of therapy (sticking what amounts to cancer cells into the brain of a Parkinson’s patient actually wouldn’t appeal to most people).
– “Why would you care what age it is if it is OK to destroy it for its body parts?” Leaving aside the heinous notion that scientists want to dismember babies for body parts, one serious issue in this debate is that early embryos (groups of cells that look remarkably like soccer balls) are multipotent, these are the famous “embryonic stem cells” (ESCs), so there is an age issue that is important in this sense and also a dishonest and misleading notion that actual body parts (arms, legs, etc…) are what scientists are interested in. I will return to the “OK to destroy it” issue further below.
– “Isn’t that why people want the stem cells – so they can grow new body parts?” What scientists are interested in is using ASCs and ESCs to make muscle cells for dystrophy patients, nerve cells for people with strokes and degenerative diseases of the nervous system etc… not whole brains or muscles, but cells that could be injected into damaged areas, but as I mentioned before even doing this isn’t possible presently. One pretty successful approach as I understand it has been to grow sheets of skin cells that can be transplanted onto burn patients, I’d say those patients are very happy to have this opportunity.
– “Be grateful no one took your stem cells and made it impossible for you to live your life.” Now this is where pro-life advocates begin to get really manipulative. There are many frozen human embryos out there left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF) which some people (not just scientists) have suggested could be used for stem cell research. This has provoked an outcry from pro-life groups, who rightly claim these are human embryos and will produce people if only given the opportunity and adopted (and there apparently are people who and now adults who have been adopted in this way). Between the pro-life groups and the pro-research groups there’s also what I’ll describe as a widely varied and mostly private opinions about what do to with these embryos (as an adopted scientist who does not want to work with ESCs I inhabit this territory.
– But what really bugs me is when pro-life groups take their “Save the Embryo” crusade and broadly apply it to things that really aren’t embryos. One problem with cell transplants like I described above is that everyone is unique, thanks to genetics everyone’s genome is different from everyone else’s, and even in identicle twins development’s effects on expression of the genome produces different people from the moment of birth – so transplanted cells from someone else’s IVF embryo would be rejected by a patient’s immune system. A solution to this problem is to use ASCs from the patient: the genomes are identicle, and no embryos are involved – what luck! But the pro-life crowd would say that even these uses involve an “embryo:”
” when any human cell has the potential via SCNT to become an embryo, that our old moral and biological distinctions no longer make much sense”
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/14/merrill.htm
The author here is saying that “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (SCNT) produced immune-matched stem cells are embryos, oh the abject immorality of scientists! [As an aside, SCNT take a nucleus from one of your cells, say a skin cell, and transfers it into another cell where your genetic information is used to create more cells – which would not be rejected by your body.] Thomas Merrill, the outraged author who decides all SCNT must produce “embryos,” was specifically referring to the use of SCNT on eggs – which would be donated by a wife, sister, or another woman – thus producing something that really isn’t an “embryo”… a clone cell, which isn’t a unique individual, which isn’t fertilized, and which will never be able to produce an adult human being (judging from animal experiments which are incredibly inefficient).
Mr. Merrill and similar pro-life advocates simply cannot be constrained to protecting real embryos, they must exert their moral outrage on all cells produced by SCNT, and proclaim all “cloning” as evil:
“the product of cloning is indisputably a human embryo; using it for stem cell research presents all the same moral quandaries as destroying human embryos made through in vitro fertilization”
So if ASCs from muscle are particularly good for producing more muscle for a dystrophic patient, using SCNT is wrong wrong wrong because these ASCs cloned with the patient’s genome are EMBRYOS. Same goes for any other use of SCNT for producing stem cells, neurons, blood cell lineages, retinal cells… all these obviously beneficial used of SCNT are wrong evil immoral creation of new embryos in the eyes of Mr. Merrill and his oh so moral and dimwitted followers.
That is another reason why you are also wrong again AJ.
AJ
I don’t know if it is my computer or what but when I access your site the posts stop on 12/13/06. I have to hit home to get current posts.
I posted a fairly long response to AJ in this thread, maybe I broke it!
Barbara, please wait for my long post, this BBC article is hideous but my opinions about stem cells might not be as extreme as you might imagine.
AJ,
” How the world reacts to this is a matter of the ages.”- Thoughtful words!
We need to reach and engage people of good will who haven’t thought very hard about it.
As you have noted, conception is the transforming moment, when we become a unique human individual. After that, everything is growth and death. So, we don’t just gradually become human. Any attempt to introduce another point in the individual’s timeline, for becoming human or ceasing to be human, is purely arbitrary and endangers the physically and mentally handicapped as well as the young and elderly that don’t make the “cutoff.”
The forced theft of body cells or parts, at the “donor’s” expense, is nothing short of “human trafficking.”
As you suggest, this is a singular point in human history and our choice will determine our dignity among the species.
Jerry, they might or might not be extreme, but they are wrong.
“but my opinions about stem cells might not be as extreme as you might imagine.”
We’ll see what your long post says when it gets posted
Jerry, I find this sensational story suspicious, too.
Jerry,
Well I am wrong about your background, but I must say it doesn\’t shine through at times. So your whole point is these atrocities are unthinkable and somehow a doctorate or a PhD gaurantees a good soul…..
Interesting theory. But Embronic Stem Cells and fetal stem cells are injected all the time to gullible people. So even with a PhD you have trouble grasping the scientific fact that an human embryo is a unique human being? When a boy is conceived does his embryo not have male DNA and is completely different in his genetic make up?
Want to know why your PhD doesn\’t come through? You confused a soccer ball with a life. Let\’s just say that a PhD doesn\’t equate to wisdom, or even knowledge. It is simply a sign someone took a lot of course and passed some tests. Jerry, it is people like you who dismiss what you don\’t want to face or feel like it is too inconvenient. You were once a soccer ball too, but….
Yes, this is a scary & disturbing scene.
AJ has been on top of it from the start — I agree with everything he’s said on this topic. I think many undersestimate how quick the slippery slope can take shape. Unfortunately, the rising socialistic, anti-religous, secular societies of the west facilitate and ease this very scenario becoming accepted and embedded in our culture. We need more AJ’s to give voice to preclude this from happening.
Jerry,
I respect your choice not to do ESCR. And I offer the following comments:
• “I can’t conceive of how you can imagine scientists would want to do the sort of things described in this article to babies” –
AJ was commenting on a BBC report that was based in part on video footage it received. If true, likely motivation included greed or prestige.
• “it’s been known for some time that not all cells from the early embryo are necessary for normal development, the animals survive” –
Are you suggesting that all embryos will survive the removal of the cells? And is survival the criteria for justifying the “theft” of the cells?
• “groups of cells that look remarkably like soccer balls” –
You seem ambivalent as to whether or not an embryo is a human individual. Could you share with us the point in the life cycle when you think we become “human” or cease being “human?”
• I agree that there are conscientious scientists looking for ethical ways to help the human condition. But not all scientists have the same values or regard for humankind. And they are not above scrutiny.
• “I’d say those patients are very happy to have this opportunity” –
For some, it would depend on whether it came at the expense of another human life. I have known Parkinson’s and ALS victims with such idealism.
• Why is AJ “wrong” in claiming human status for the clump of “cells” that has its own specific DNA, is alive and is in the first stages of a full human being (not a body part)?
• I am not a biologist, but would appreciate a thoughtful reply. I also think that sometimes scientists, like others, can be too close to their work and lose the big picture.
Jerry, I am happy that you got out of the research field, the reason I say that is that reasoning and logical thinking abilities are two main abilities a researcher must possess and you seem to be fairly deficient in both.
Let me be specific:
You said:
(Here you underscore that an embryo is a human being, this typically leads to later problems where the term embryo is misused.)
The fact that the term embryo is misused doesn’t change what an embryo is or when the life of that embryo started. It only means that the person that misused the term was either ignorant of the true meaning or was indifferent as to how he used the term.
Calling a Pepsi a Coke, doesn’t make it a Coke. It, as above, only means that the person calling it that didn’t know the difference or didn’t care about the difference.
You said:
“I had a chance to do stem cells in a major lab 10 years ago but didn’t want to”
The same thing could be said here where you appear to use the term stem cells interchangably for ESC and/or ASC.
You are either aware, or should be, that the careless use, as you did, only adds to the problem. Almost no one opposes the use of ASC but many do oppose the use of ESC, so please differentiate. You are not the only one guilty of this. But it is done mostly by people that approve of ESCR.
You said:
“There are many frozen human embryos out there left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF) which some people (not just scientists) have suggested could be used for stem cell research.”
Do you suppose that if “left over” embryos were okay to use, but making embryos just to use was not, that the number of “left over” embryos would remain exactly the same.
I would propose that “suddenly” all embryos would be “left over” and the number would increase dramatically.
You said:-
“Isn’t that why people want the stem cells – so they can grow new body parts?†What scientists are interested in is using ASCs and ESCs to make muscle cells for dystrophy patients, nerve cells for people with strokes and degenerative diseases of the nervous system etc… not whole brains or muscles, but cells that could be injected into damaged areas, but as I mentioned before even doing this isn’t possible presently. One pretty successful approach as I understand it has been to grow sheets of skin cells that can be transplanted onto burn patients, I’d say those patients are very happy to have this opportunity.”
This whole paragraph is so full of logic errors it almost defies tackling, but are you saying that if you could use stem cells to grow a new hand, you wouldn’t do that? You would only use it for growing nerves and muscles? Isn’t it actually a lot more likely that ASC could do exactly what you propose better than ESC?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to grow a sheet of skin cells from Adult skin cell precursors than from undifferentiated stem cells? Logical?
You said:
“The author here is saying that “somatic cell nuclear transfer†(SCNT) produced immune-matched stem cells are embryos,”
As I said above, the ignorance of that author in calling that produced cell an embryo, does not make it an embryo.
All that really says is that there is ignorance on both sides.
and the last example, you said:
“So if ASCs from muscle are particularly good for producing more muscle for a dystrophic patient, using SCNT is wrong wrong wrong because these ASCs cloned with the patient’s genome are EMBRYOS.”
What?
I’m sure just me copying that here makes you realize your faulty reasoning.
Re-read that. I’m quite sure you don’t even believe what you said there.
I’m not going to say anything about your intelligence, because I don’t know you. But you have clearly demonstrated your reasoning ability, or more accurately the lack of it.
Most PhDs I know got them because they couldn’t get a job with just a BS.
Here is something I’ve wondered about. If a person has a heart transplant. Does the heart continue to test orig DNA or is it gradually replaced with new cells with the person’s DNA? Would all the cells eventually be replaced by the persons’s DNA? Never heard this discussed.
Well, Left by for Enforcement (?), your experience is at odds with what I’ve seen – BA/BS people are in great demand as the pay is so terrible, the work so labor intensive, and the tendency of US student to major in science so low. In fact biotech organisations are pushing the idea of special biotech Associate degrees just to fill their needs, and Masters biotechnology programs are also growing around the country so that the industry doesn’t have to pay PhD salaries for the labor MSs could do.
So, on with the slog:
“It, as above, only means that the person calling it that didn’t know the difference or didn’t care about the difference.” And that’s the point you won’t accept, the pro-life groups deliberately mislead the public, not just Mr. Merrill, using “embryo” wrongly because of the emotional impact.
“where you appear to use the term stem cells interchangably for ESC and/or ASC” But I think you misunderstand my argument, not that it is confused. I’m not mixing up ASCs and ESCs, I’m trying to show that pro-life groups want to ban all cloning, not just when eggs are used. If you doubt this try getting a pro-life person, leader or follower, to support cloning.
“I would propose that “suddenly†all embryos would be “left over†and the number would increase dramatically.” I think you realize that I don’t fully support working with embryos, but you might imagine I have a hard time thinking IVF couples or doctors would do this.
“This whole paragraph is so full of logic errors it almost defies tackling” I don’t think so, you’ll have to detail this.
The idea of “growing a hand is pretty much science fiction as a hand contains muscle bone skin nerves etc… though there was an interesting paper from the Salk Institute recently about this involving a gene called wnt. You’re also assuming that I’m a ESC advocate, I actually agree that ASCs might be a better way to get at particular tissues but the observations are that these still produce mixed cell populations of many tissue types (I’m not sure if the skin graft are actually made from a patient’s ASCs or something like HFFs).
“As I said above, the ignorance of that author in calling that produced cell an embryo, does not make it an embryo. All that really says is that there is ignorance on both sides.” This returns to my point that it really isn’t just this author.
“What? I’m sure just me copying that here makes you realize your faulty reasoning.” It isn’t faulty reasoning, I’m saying that the pro-life groups would prohibit all SCNT because it is “cloning. As I said, just try to get someone in one of these groups to support cloning, it isn’t an accident that Mr. Merrill talks this way. If SCNT could be used with someone else’s ASCs the transplant problems I discussed could be avoided, but pro-life authoritarians want to ban all cloning because embryo-like life forms would be produced.
============================================
The Maker:
“Are you suggesting that all embryos will survive the removal of the cells? And is survival the criteria for justifying the “theft†of the cells?” It is totally unknown in humans because no will do the experiments. I think I’ve made clear that I’m uncomfortable with using human embryos for research.
“You seem ambivalent as to whether or not an embryo is a human individual.” I was actually trying to highlight here how code words like “embryo’ and “body parts” are misleading and used for their emotional impact.
“But not all scientists have the same values or regard for humankind. And they are not above scrutiny.” Scientists are pretty much like everyone else, they don’t kill babies or fly airplanes into buildings. I have no problem with oversight but I wouldn’t like the public being mislead by oversight groups.
“For some, it would depend on whether it came at the expense of another human life.” But there are a wide variety of opinions from well intentioned people that should be weighed equally.
“Why is AJ “wrong†in claiming human status for the clump of “cells†that has its own specific DNA, is alive and is in the first stages of a full human being (not a body part)?” Well, “Meat Processing of Babies,” for example, is far from my understanding of what stem cell scientists are actually doing, as I’ve described.
============================================
Barbara:
“Innocent Scientists? Anyone who is involved in ESCR could not in a million years be called innocent.” At that point I was trying to say that it is wrong to paint scientist with this sort of “body part” hysteria, the scientists are entirely innocent of those sorts of charges and they shouldn’t be made IMO. About ESCR, I am uncomforable with it but there are a wide variety of well meaning moral positions about this.