Obama Overturns Bush Policy on Stem Cells

Bad banks got their bailout...........
Bad auto makers got theirs...........

Bad science....how much did you say you needed again? Nancy....cut them a check, and bill it to America's great grand children!

reply to post by RRconservative


First two were just as much due to your party. Third one... well that's your opinion, and we prefer to keep religion out of it.

Originally posted by whatukno
reply to post by Supercertari

 

Abortions aren't the only places to get embryonic stem cells. Many of these cells are readily available in the umbilical cord at birth. The baby certainly does not need them, and otherwise the cord will just get thrown away. There are exactly how many live births at hospitals in this country alone every day?

The argument against stem cell research is flawed. It's flawed in the fact that embryonic stem cells don't always have to be harvested from aborted fetus tissue.

I fear you may have been confused by the point I was making and also perhaps a tad confused about the issue. As I said I have no problems with stem cell research but with embryonic stem cell research.

The abortion issue relates to the quantity of "waste" embryos produced in IVF programmes whilst children who might have been adopted by the infertile are aborted.

As for the embryos being "destined" to die anyway these are human lives, human life at no matter what stage in the chain it might be always demands our respect and reverence. We should not be creating lives as commodities were the surplus problem will arise in the first place. To be consistent: no to IVF, no to embryonic stem cell research, no to abortion, no to contraception. A no to all those things which disorder the true function of the generative act and lead to the devaluing of human life.

About time, for heavens sake this can cure alot of suffering if its true what they believe can come out of it.
I saw a guy on TV last night, an American idiot blasting Obama for this policy

'' Stem cells are real, they are human. They are a living thing like you and me, they just havent had time and development ''

Ahh, excuse me a second here.

That stem cell isnt breathing air, which is what I thought classified it as living.
That stem cell doesnt know whats happening, it wont realise its being harvested, it has no communication or thought.
Sperm is basically the same concept as a stell cell, yet im sure this guy cracks a few off and happily disposes of the tissues!


Religion is a dying disease.
And for people to prolong others suffering because they are trying in dear vein to hold onto religion, are evil.

Originally posted by Irish M1ck
reply to post by RRconservative

 

First two were just as much due to your party. Third one... well that's your opinion, and we prefer to keep religion out of it.

What does religion have to do with it? If embryonic stem cells had even a remote possibility of doing anything worthwile private companies would jump at the chance to cash in on it. But it doesn't, that is why government has to fund it.

That's why I called it "bad science". Where did you get religion out of my comment?

[edit on 10-3-2009 by RRconservative]

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
I very much agree with the President's decision on this matter. It has been too long that we have neglected to allow the studying of stem cells to their full extent.

These cells have the possibility of providing us with many cures and or treatments for a variety of diseases that affect millions of people all over the world.

It may upset some people because of their nature, but we need to look to the future on this subject and cannot stop funding of vital projects because of outdated ideology.

~Keeper

President Bush didn't ban stem cell research- just the federal funding for certain lines of research.

Why should I have to pay for unproven medical research, rather than it be privately funded? Surely if it were so promising there would be no end of private funding, as the returns would be great. Do you support giving federal funding and tax breaks to the pharmaceutical industry?

And they were given to us by God. People think Gods plans were limited. line dux God's plans are not limited. Just my .02

mikell

Will the government and public listen to science about Embryonic Stem Cell research?

Stanford Researchers Announce Immune Problems With Embryonic Stem Cells

Scientific American, August 22, 2008

Following experiments with mice, Stanford University scientists have announced that stem cell therapies which use human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have a high probability of failing because of immune rejection. In these studies, mice that were injected with hESCs exhibited an immune response which is at least as severe as that triggered by organ transplantation. Consequently, all the transplanted stem cells were killed by the immune system within a week. The Stanford researchers used molecular imaging technology to monitor the hESCs after injection, which revealed that the hESCs began dying within a week of injection and were completely dead by 10 days. When more hESCs were subsequently injected, they were found to die much more quickly, within 2 to 4 days, due to the already fully activated level of the immune system defense response. Even when the animals were given tacrolimus and sirolimus, two mediations that are commonly used to suppress an immune response, the hESCs lasted 28 days before dying but were still rejected and killed by the immune system.

The company I work for makes Tacro and Siro testing kits ^_^. I haven't made them yet, but have for other therapeutic drug monitoring. I can say that these two drugs are VERY effective and are used daily nationwide by hospitals for major transplant procedures.

Additionally, in all cases, the overall health of the animals continued to deteriorate, and the researchers were not able to determine any benefit from an increase in time before all the hESCs were eventually destroyed.

The U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has not approved the use of hESCs as a medical therapy, primarily because of the danger of teratomas, which are a well established risk of hESCs. A teratoma is a specific type of tumor which contains cells from all 3 germ layers of the body, which have often differentiated into specialized tissue such as teeth, hair and organs, and which therefore make these tumors particularly hideous and dangerous. The ability of embryonic stem cells to form teratomas is, in fact, the defining trait of embryonic stem cells, and the ability of a cell to form a teratoma remains the universal laboratory test by which embryonic stem cells are identified: namely,if an unknown cell is found to form a teratoma in the laboratory, then it's an embryonic stem cell, whereas if it doesn't form a teratoma, then it's not an embryonic stem cell. Teratoma formation, however, is certainly not the only risk posed by embryonic stem cells, and once again we are now reminded of the dangers of immune rejection that are inherent in embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells, by sharp contrast, do not pose any risk of teratoma formation, and some types of adult stem cells, such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), are known to be "immune privileged", meaning that they do not trigger an immune response.

According to Dr. Joseph Wu, a Stanford radiologist who led the recent research, these findings, which reveal such a strong immune rejection of embryonic stem cells, constitute "a reality check".

- www.cellmedicine.com...

[edit on 11-3-2009 by saint4God]

The sad thing is any cure discovered from this research would inevitably be only available to the wealthy. Not only to recoup the expense of the research but for the simple fact that medicine is a business, a very greedy business. If hospitals can charge $10 for aspirin, what do you think the cure for Alzheimer's would cost? So congratulations to anyone who feels this is some sort of victory. I will try not to laugh when the these cures come around, just in time for you to realize you will never be able to afford them.

And 2 days later... the head-fake

Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After Signing Executive Order to OK It

On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.

The amendment says, in part: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

Found in Section 509 of Title V of the omnibus bill (at page 280 of the 465-page document), the federal funding ban not only prohibits the government from providing tax dollars to support research that kills or risks injury to a human embryo, it also mandates that the government use an all-inclusive definition of “human embryo” that encompasses any nascent human life from the moment that life comes into being, even if created in a laboratory through cloning, in vitro fertilization or any other means.

“For the purposes of this section,” says the law, “the term ‘human embryo or embryos’ includes any organism … that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.” (The entire verbatim text of Section 509 of the omnibus spending law is reprinted at the bottom of this article.)

At a widely publicized White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama signed his own executive order lifting an executive order that President Bush had signed in 2001. While allowing federal funding of research involving embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created from embryos that had already been destroyed, Bush's 2001 order denied federal funding to research that required the killing of any additional embryos.

Rest at link

And you THOUGHT this politician would keep his word???

reply to post by redhatty


Thanks for that post redhatty, it sounds like good news though now I'm officially 'confused'. Was there any change to previous policy then?

reply to post by redhatty


And, this goes to prove the point that these idiots in DC do not read what they pass into law.

Congress doesn't and obviously the President doesn't.