More Evidence That Embryo/Fetal Farming May Be in Our Biotech Future
Researchers seeking to use cellular treatments to relieve hemophilia have centered on tissues taken from rudimentary spleens of late stage pig embryos. The experimenters used the spleen cells to treat mice, and it appears to have worked. But note that this is not an embryonic stem cell experiment, but rather, research that used cells taken from gestated embryos: "Tissues taken too early, when they are still fairly undifferentiated, may form tumors, while those taken too late can be identified as foreign, causing the host to reject them. ...[T]he scientists fixed the ideal time for spleen transplantation at 42 days. Hemophiliac mice with spleen tissue transplanted from pig embryos at this time experienced completely normal blood clotting within a month or two of implantation."
While pig tissues into humans are a potential treatment modality from this research, which would present no moral issues, pig embryos may not be the only nascent life forms considered for such usage. "Although a number of problems would need to be surmounted before researchers could begin to think of applying the technique to humans, the Institute team's experiment is 'proof of principle'--evidence that transplanted embryonic tissue, whether human or pig, could one day help the body to overcome genetic diseases."
I am convinced that ESCR is merely the launching pad for a far wider use of human tissues and cells in medical experiments and therapies than scientists are currently letting on. Once (and if) artificial wombs are perfected, the same bioethicists and scientists who now tell us that an embryo in a Petri dish is not human life if it is not intended for implantation and birth, will tell us that an embryo gestated in an artificial environment for 6 weeks that is not intended for birth is also not really human. Or, personhood theory can be used to justify human sowing and reaping. Indeed, it seems to me that in the name of CURES! CURES! CURES! we will ultimately find ways to justify anything.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:03 PM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
T]he scientists fixed the ideal time for spleen transplantation at 42 days.
I hate to think of how many pigs and mice it took to figure out that 42 worked better than 41 and 43. And how are they going to apply that experience to people, or are they just going to find the right balance of tumors and rejection all over again?
[the same people] will tell us that an embryo gestated in an artificial environment for 6 weeks that is not intended for birth is also not really human.
Yeah, that seems to be what makes someone human in their mind. Just their own opinion. One thing we could to tell them is that their intentions aren't the only intentions (we intend that their embryos be born), and also that intentions have nothing to do with whether or not a person is conceived. A person is conceived when people think they have done something that could lead to the birth of a child. They didn't have to intend to conceive a child, and they don't have to intend to give birth to it, and they don't have to intend to implant it. It just has to be a possibility that it could be implanted, that it could be gestated for long enough, and that it could be born.
Right, John. Postmodernism has now infected biology. It isn't the biological facts that define the nature of the embyro, it is the desired narrative.
I think this story with the comments about proof of principle is SHOCKING.
Do you think this comes close to admitting that ESCS 10-14 days in the dish are to tough to handle and/or not worth the effort/not really useful?
I would put it this way: They would seem to indicate they may not be optimal.
Crap, that's HORRIFYING!
I'm not all that crazy about using fetal pigs, to be honest with you, but I can deal with it, I suppose. I personally would prefer using adult stem cells in all cases, and leaving any kind of fetus alone. Unborn babies, be they human or animal, shouldn't really be played around with.
But the very idea of using an unborn human baby like this is sickening. Talk about opening the floodgates. How long before a White Supremicist website starts touting how "children of color" can be bred for their body parts to help keep white children alive?
Don't tell me that's not going to happen. I read a horrifying little novel about how the "black race" is trying to take over and make everyone a middling brown color, so as to "bring down the white race," and these freaks actually believed that.
All told, the moment we start deciding that some people are more equal than others, the "others" will be looked at for spare parts. Mark my words.
And you won't want to be one of the others, trust me.
THey have done experiments in which a cow cloned embryo was aborted and its kidneys grafted onto the skin of the DNA donor, to see if they would produce urine and whether they would be rejected. The did and they weren't. It was celebrated in the media as a success for "therapeutic cloning," before Big Biotech convinced them to quit using that phrase.
Question: In the end, could this sort of thing be done with aborted human fetuses from elective abortions on an ad hoc basis?
In other words, I realize that what is considered ideal is to clone a person and do the transplants from an embryo cloned from him, to avoid rejection, but perhaps this wouldn't be always necessary.
I ask, because it's worth noting that there is no present limit on the use of federal funds for aborted fetal tissue research, and in fact the Bush NIH has funded such research. The limits everyone is concerned about concern federal funding _only_ for _embryonic_ stem cells, not for any tissues taken from fetuses aborted in abortion clinics.
So if fetal tissue turns out to be "best" for their research, would they be able just to get as much as they needed from abortion clinics, and use federal money to fund it to boot?
Lydia:
"So if fetal tissue turns out to be "best" for their research, would they be able just to get as much as they needed from abortion clinics, and use federal money to fund it to boot?"
Goodness, I hope not. The minute that happens someone will be looking for a way to increase the "amount of available tissue." If you think that paying women for their eggs for research purposes is bad, in that it can cause the exploitation of poverty-stricken women, imagine what will happen if aborted foetuses start getting harvested that way.
Now you'll have people encouraging young women and teens to have abortions for medical reasons. Bad enough that you have these poor ladies suffering from PAS, from their bodies being messed up (hormone imbalances wreak havoc on a woman's system), from whatever negative emotions they may have, but now you have the doctors treating them as a commodity... You can only go so far with the "let's use only what's available" line, before man's reach exceeds his grasp, and scientists start insisting that we need more "tissue" for whatever.
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