Sour Grapes: The Scientists Try to Hold Back the Tide
As I suspected would happen, I just listened to an ABC Radio report, and a Harvard scientist said the new stem cells were "not ready for prime time" because they can't yet be used in human patients. Gee, they have never said that about embryonic stem cells. Instead, they insisted we go forward full speed ahead. We were told they were the only hope. Yadda, Yadda Yadda.
Tumors remain a problem before human use can be attempted. Indeed, one of the indicators of pluripotency in the studies was the capacity of the cells to create teratomas! But these cells will permit the research that scientists said they wanted from pluripotent cells. They will be able to be used in drug testing, cell differentiation, and etc. Adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells will continue to be used in human trials. Perhaps one day, the iPS Cells will also be usable in patients.
But until then, this is still BIG and "the scientists" can't change that.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:01 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
I knew the sour grapes would come too. There's too much money, too much political gain, and too many people are too invested in human cloning to back off. There's too much ego invested too. How do you back off all of that?
I want to see how they tar us as anti-embryonic stem cell and anti-science now that they have a ready supply of embryonic stem cells to work with that that the Catholic Bishops probably support and that came from unbelievable science. That's going to be fun.
I wonder if this will get the same attention and "respect" that ACT generated when it said it created stem cell lines without killing embryos-which of course we found out was not true. That was big news. I wonder if the fact that it had something to do with embryos made it more news worthy.
Naturally, they're pissed because they want to make super-babies and clones and Frankensteins and Moreaus (look up the novel "Forests of the Night" by an author named Swan (Swann?) for more details).
They want to give babies super noses so they can grow up to be drug sniffers. They want to make some babies be born with missing parts of their brains so that all these people know when they grow up is how to do a job they're designed to do and then do it without hesitation or annoyance. They want to improve their own babies so they can have perfect children so they can feel superior to the rest of humanity. And they want to figure out how to make babies be born with body parts identical to their own so that when their hearts and livers give out they can kill those people and have their hearts and livers so they can keep living as long as they want to, because they're scared to die because they don't believe in an afterlife or because they don't think that their lives on earth have meaning unless they can live forever. I mean, I know plenty of atheists and agnostics who are okay with death and accept it without freakouts or a desire to extend their lives unnaturally, and they would roll their eyes at this kind of thing.
So, yeah. This is wonderful, but it won't let them make super-babies or living spare parts. So they're going to bury it in the backyard so it won't stink up their dreams of eternal life.
The idea of using humans as means to our ends is pretty frightening. These novelists' insight into human nature is pretty shocking. I thought the encounter with the clone and the donor in the movie the Island was pretty insightful. He still saw the clone as his property and means of getting well.
I hope a lot of the announced success today helps some of this die out. The mentality of IVF paves the road to cloning. Hopefully this kind of research that we've seen announced today will prevent any kind of cloning and keep us from going down the road to cloning to produce children. The sad thing is that it doesn't seem to be from anything ethical. It's practical. Wilmut mentions the ethical part, but I don't think his crowd is saying that it is unethical or that there are qualms. I think talk about ethics of cloning for biomedical research means it's a tough environment to work in when there are people like us questioning the morality of their work.
They want to give babies super noses so they can grow up to be drug sniffers. They want to make some babies be born with missing parts of their brains so that all these people know when they grow up is how to do a job they're designed to do and then do it without hesitation or annoyance.
Who are you talking about? People such as James Hughes would not advocate this.
Hell Kaiser Ryo:
I didn't grow up with James Hughes. I don't know him. I *do* know the guys that I read growing up - Heinlein, Asmiov, Swaan, Clark, Lackey, Huxley, Alan Dean Foster.
I grew up with old school sci-fi. The people who saw science as proof there was no God, that saw science as the only god they needed and the only permission they needed for experimentation.
Asimov *believed* we'd come up with a positronic brain and that from our robots would rise a new race. Foster had the Star Trek mentality that anything we do would greatly benefit mankind. Swaan envisioned a world where genetically engineered humans and gengineered animals with human intelligence co-existed with "normal" humans, where gengineering people and animals to be living weapons was the norm. Lackey has the same, "if it doesn't harm anyone, go for it" spirit, but doesn't define "harm" in her philosophy, and doesn't define who counts as living and who doesn't. Huxley saw the potential madness around us, as did Orwell.
I saw all these people growing up, and they presented a future where this kind of stuff was the norm, and considered perfecly acceptable because it was *going* to happen anyway.
I grew up with Star Wars and Star Trek, where cloning was normal and not punishable for any reason. It was seen as a justifiable action, no matter the end (Worf from TNG having some of his nerves cloned so that he could walk again; the Clone Wars of Star Wars).
I grew up with an optimistic/pessimistic bunch who believed all this was going to happen no matter what we did, and who tried to hold on to hope - and their hope was in the extention of life.
Play Alpha Centauri some time. The nhilistic behavior of the characters in that sci-fi game all fit into characters you find in any sci-fi genera story.
So I don't know about "transhumanists." I know about normal people who see the potential for extended life and that's *all* they see. They don't fall into your category, hon. I'm talking about people who don't philosophise at all. Normals who see Big Biotech as their answer to all their worries. Christians and atheists, Pagans and agnostics. People who won't look deeper into the issue.
Personally, I don't care about transhumanists - at least they're philosophising about the situation. It's the normals who got caught up in fantasy and take it too literally who scare me.
I'm probably on the wrong blog to be saying this, but let me quote the last line of the actual paper:
"Human iPS cells, however, are not identical to hES cells: DNA microarray analyses detected differences between the two pluripotent stem cell lines. Further studies are essential to determine whether human iPS cells can replace hES in medical applications."
This means that iPS cells aren't ES cells. They're similar, sure, but they're not the same thing, and it will take many years to learn the differences. Interesting, but ultimately wasted years tat could have been spent learning how to do something important with the cells we have.
I recognize that y'all really just want to legislate your own version of morality, but consider this: They're doing ESC research in freakin' Iran!
No one said they were ES cells. They are pluripotent cells, which is the quality that supposedly makes ES cells good.
But ES cells haven't done much, they cause tumors, etc.
This won't stop ESCR, but I think it will stop cloning. Which will save billions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours of talented researchers, because it has the potential to create tailor made stem cells for disease research and perhaps, medical therapies.
But as I said, pluripotent stem cells cause tumors.
We do ESCR in this country, too.
Thanks for stopping by.
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