Good news for everyone except Republican consultants who like to use the stem cell research issue to rile up their base of fundamentalist conservative Christian supporters:
Human skin cells have been reprogrammed by two groups of scientists to mimic embryonic stem cells with the potential to become any tissue in the body.
The breakthrough promises a plentiful new source of cells for use in research into new treatments for many diseases.
Crucially, it could mean that such research is no longer dependent on using cells from human embryos, which has proved highly controversial.
Now, if we can just get all those good Christian couples to adopt more “snowflake babies” so the unused embryos won’t just be tossed out with the local fertility clinic’s medical waste each day, the world will be all better again. Maybe God will even call off the drought across the South. Ya never know, as the NY Lottery constantly advises me …
New rightwing meme: dermabrasion kills millions of innocent individuals.
Okay, you made a funny. I laughed and laughed.
Still I think you are on to something, which I suspect the right wing God uber alles types will hang on to.
Oh my god! Skin is a person! Hurry, outlaw dandruff shampoo. And plastic surgeons are killing zillions of potential babies!
And horror of horrors!
All those little Korean girls doing manicures in the strip malls of American, they are BABY KILLERS!
Call Dobson and Perkins, this must be stopped!
I can’t help it!
http://www.cafepress.com/hauksdottir.187562486
I’ve always been enchanted by snowflakes: years of cutting paper, photographing ice textures, playing with ice crystal software.
:sigh:
So, while I’m upset that little white babies and Rummie’s memos have the snowflake label, it does make people aware of how beautiful water can be if it the molecules are arranged just right.
Anyway, don’t look if you don’t like puns.
Carolly
Autologous stem cell therapy has been in use for some time. It is ignored because if your own cells are used in your treatment there is no pharmaceutical patent and no profit opportunity.
These stories appear frequently. My favorite was the one about using liposuctioned fat cells. It’s all about reinforcing the sacredness of zygotes.
Neither of the contentions — that “life begins at fertilization,” and that “potential human life is fully a human life” — withstand scrutiny.
If either the ovum or sperm is dead there can be no life. So, quite clearly, life does not begin at fertilization but rather, earlier. And I’m not even addressing the possibilities that have emerged with the discovery of stem cells and snowflakes, which make the realm of possible life more expansive.
The “potential human life” argument always had problems, since it equated the rights of a zygote with a human being. It also opened a Pandora’s box by defending the “potential” instead of the “actual.” I agree with the right-wing Christians that a zygote is a “potential” human life, but its “potential” nature clearly distinguishes it as not a fully fledged life, which therefore could justify treating it differently.
I’d find the pro-life argument more credible if they advocated vegetarianism, but it seems that the only life pro-lifers find sacred is in the womb of other women.
A better question would be why preserving life at its nascent stage is important even while supporting that life once it is born is not. Isn’t alleviating suffering important? Shouldn’t a “pro-life” position entail doing something for those who are clearly alive, such as supporting a social welfare system?
What I’ve discovered about the “pro-life” position is that it has little to do with supporting life and a lot to do with authoritarianism. Rather than supporting life, the point is to punish those who hold heterodox beliefs.