Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
One Human Cell Equals One Human Being?
So, you know the whole "embryonic stem cell" thing? You remember how the Catholic church held to the insane belief that an embryo equalled a fully-grown human person, therefore using embryonic stem cells for research and other applications was wrong? It is the same objection that they raise to abortion, basically.
Using the stem cells from dead embryos that are going to be destroyed anyway didn't seem to appease them any.
Along comes Robert Lanza and his team of scientists at Advanced Cell and they create "embryo-safe" embryonic stem cell lines. What they do is grab the embryo when it consisits of only 8 to 10 cells, remove ONE of the cells, then culture it to create a new line of stem cells. The embryo, minus one single cell, has the abiulity to be implanted into a woman and grow normally into a human being.
Wow! Embryonic stem cells wothiout harming an embryo! You'd think that the Catholic church would be ecstatic!
You'd think wrong.
[link] Advanced Cell then made things worse by extracting what could be a "totipotent" cell, Sgreccia said.
"This is not just any cell, but a cell capable of reproducing a human embryo," Sgreccia said. He added that, in effect: "a second embryo is being destroyed".
Across the Atlantic, Richard Doerflinger, a bioethics expert with the US Conference of Bishops, has accused the scientists of "killing" 16 embryos during their research.
What the fuck is a "totipotent" cell? Is the Catholic church making words up again? A "second embryo"? One cell is now an embryo? Removing one cell from 16 different embryos is "killing" an additional 16 embryos? If that's the case, then we're all guilty of murder most foul every time we scratch.
I say again, WTF? What complete and utter lunacy.
I really hope that the scientific community working on stem cells finally just ignores the prehistoric crap coming out of the Vatican and continue to do good science. Stem cell research is the most exciting thing happening right now in the biological sciences, with the greatest potential for benefit to everyone on the planet. A superstitious bunch of old men in Italy should NOT have veto power over science.
Update: Alert reader cserpent sets me straight on the word "totipotent". Dangit. I knew I should have looked that up! :)
[cserpent] Nah, the catholic church makes up a lot of batshit insane things, like the assumption of Mary, but it didn't make up the word totipotent. It means a cell capable of differentiating into any other type of cell. The cells in the earliest stages of an embryo, like a morula are considered totipotent because each is capable, under the influence of chemical signals from its neighbors, of becoming pretty much any part of the body. They usually differentiate into pluripotent and multipotent stem cells, capable of giving rise to many different tissues and many different cell types of a particular tissue, respectively.
The second part about the fate of that one cell, however, is flat-out wrong. That one cell can't become a whole embryo, absent the various chemical signals diffusing from its neighbors. Nor would anyone be able to manufacture multiple embryos from breaking apart that earlier embryo, at least not in humans. So they are off their nut on that account (and so many others). But, what do you expect from the every sperm is sacred crowd?
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Stop Stem Cell Research
It is bad enough that through medical science and public acceptance we have taken out the cornerstones of survival of the fitest. Stem cell research is going to turn it on it's head.
I love the research part and it is proving man is the most intelectually fit, but physically we are becoming a weaker species. I could be wrong and that is the circle of evolution. We are going to make ourselves extinct through being stupid and worms are going to rule the earth.
All together now...
Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is great
When a sperm is wasted
God gets quite irate
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Um. Actually, while I don't
Um. Actually, while I don't want to encourage the "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children" crowd, it is at least theoretically possible to make artificial twins in humans by "embryo splitting"--dividing the embryo into parts while it is still a ball of undifferentiated cells. I seem to recall that it has been done for domesticated animals (embryos from crosses of racehorces, for instance) for a few years now. I think it involves a clump of sixteen cells being split into two clumps of eight, but I can't rule out the possiblity that it might have been done by splitting off a single cell from the ball.
Not that I think a single cell is in any way equivalent to a human being. I'm just not sure we can state that it is not possible for the single cell split off from the ball to become a human being under the right circumstances.
embryos
No, I think scratching would be more like assisted suicide on the celular level (since you are technically killing yourself).
I think this is just another facit of the church's fear that humans could be lowered from their self-proclaimed ivory tower to be on the same level as animals or spare parts. Though they may say it is all for the embryos the fact is those embryos are just a cat's-paw for them.
Logical equivalency
As in, there is no logical difference between taking one cell from an embroyo and one of my epithelial cells. Either one, given a bizarre set of circumstances, could become a new human being but that does not make them human.
Ow! I just got a paper cut! Oh, the humanity!
Totipotent schmotipotent
Nah, the catholic church makes up a lot of batshit insane things, like the assumption of Mary, but it didn't make up the word totipotent. It means a cell capable of differentiating into any other type of cell. The cells in the earliest stages of an embryo, like a morula are considered totipotent because each is capable, under the influence of chemical signals from its neighbors, of becoming pretty much any part of the body. They usually differentiate into pluripotent and multipotent stem cells, capable of giving rise to many different tissues and many different cell types of a particular tissue, respectively.
The second part about the fate of that one cell, however, is flat-out wrong. That one cell can't become a whole embryo, absent the various chemical signals diffusing from its neighbors. Nor would anyone be able to manufacture multiple embryos from breaking apart that earlier embryo, at least not in humans. So they are off their nut on that account (and so many others). But, what do you expect from the every sperm is sacred crowd?