So? That doesn't mean some of our best minds have indeed left the US due to governmental restrictions on their areas of specialty.

Physics joke? :rolleyes:

This is a big story because of the political implications not because of some scientific breakthrough. If he had refused to turn over the previous administrations policy it would also have been a political story.

Let me ask you a question. If there is a breakthrough in a foreign country it wont be applied here? What difference does it make where it is accomplished?

Some of our best criminals also leave the country due to govt restrictions on their area of specialty.

Jesus -- after all this time, that's been all that's missing? If only someone would have just shed some light on this it wouldn't be happening anymore!!!!!11!!!1!!

yas see what happens when r and d get switched...
things that are not supposed to happen naturally.

hadron jeeezzzzz....

rul en enz ze flur!

or whatever....
Damn I wish I had posted this.

i have to admit as soon as i started the 'sperm in a' sentence, i thought of drugs and had to use sock. i didnt even know guys used socks for receptacles until drugs mentioned it-and then it was reinforced when i finally saw american pie (late last year, i'm a bit behind on the times).

Irish - you are right, some people mistakenly lump this as abortion.

Embryonic stem cells do not come from aborted fetuses, they come from eggs fertilized "in vitro" (means out of the body, in a petri dish) in fertilization clinics, but that are not used and are thrown out. These thrown out cells are 2-4 day old blastocytes.

These thrown out cells - with the permission of the donors - can be used instead in stem cell research.

I have used stem cells derived from a patient's own fat and injected it back into the patients hip joints to fight hip dysplasia (dog). We use adipose-based (fat) stem cells in horses (the patients own fat) to help repair tendons (have been doing that for several years). We can also use the pateint's own blood-based cell lines.

I know Chuck has purchased a horse in the past at the F-S sale, that came with the bit of information that it has it's own blood from it's own umbilical cord (from it's birth) saved in a laboratory. That blood can hopefully be used someday to derive it's own stem cells if the horse needs it.

But adult stem cells are not the same as embryonic stem cells - you can't always get the same things from them.

This summer there will start trials for people with certain spinal cord injuries. In the laboratory, mice with certain spinal cord injuries that cause them to be paralyzed have had certain stem cells injected, and the cells grew into the cells the mice needed, and the mice were healed and could walk.

Imagine if Christopher Reeve (remember, he got a paralyzing spinal cord injury in a fall from his horse, that made him a quadriplegic and ultimately ended up causing his death from pneumonia) - imagine if someone like this, with this terrible injury, could have been injected with stem cells that regrew the damaged neural tissue, and that paralyzed patient could walk again. How wondrous and great would that be!

and therein lies the rub. there are some who think life begins at fertilization-so they will of course object to using the cells, regardless of where they'd otherwise end up-in this case, the trash.

Bush made science political. That was wrong. Now science is being returned to it's rightful place outside of politics.

life does begin at fertilization, I don't see how you can believe otherwise.

because a fertilized egg won't necessarily attach itself to the uterine wall for starters.

i'd just as soon not get into that whole debate tho.

Then the number of deaths every year is sky high.
All the "miscarriages" that happen at the 1,2,4, 8, 16, 32, etc... cell stage.
Lots of little crosses.

oops I did.

A little basic Biology can make things awfully gray.

it's one of the arguments against birth control pills that some have made. one of the affects the pill has is keeping the uterus from allowing a fertilized egg to attach. i guess i'm going to jail.

Breakthroughs take time to be within the general public domain. An example, for decades, many pharmaceuticals have been accepted, used, studied and legal outside of the USA. We had patients leaving the US in search of the best medical care for particular conditions. We often require studies be redone from virtually scratch before acceptance here. Same with implants, heart valve replacements, that type of thing.

If it's not being done here, it will be a long time before it gets here.

In the meantime, before general public use, clinical trials - and the benefits to those patients - occur in the country of origin.

If we don't have an environment that fosters these health and scientific developments, the creative and bright people who are responsible for those developments go elsewhere. Where they can be creative and bright.

Your comment about criminals ... no comment.

I'll give a little science lesson, correct me if im wrong...


The human sperm cells are alive. They are sex cells that contain half of the genetic code needed to make up our 46 chromosones.

Ova cells are likewise alive. They contain the other half of the genetic code.

When a sperm cell enters an ova a new cell is made. This cell is too alive and it is called a zygote. The zygote has all 46 chromosones in tact (half coming from the father, half from the mother). You now have a human being. 46 chromosones = human.

When did life begin? WHEN DID IT EVER END? The father is alive, the mother is alive, the sperm are alive, the ova is alive, the zygote is alive...EVERTHING IS ALIVE!!!

well, i guess i really did too since i mentioned it and then explained my point a bit. but it's a very touchy subject to many. hell, i'm a mother of three-i think i get it.

i'm going to go bury my bedsheets now, have a bit of a funeral.

So if you have a wet dream
its like the killing fields?

Is there a diff. between alive and human?
When does a cell become a human?
You said at conception... thats a problem then.
Do you realize how many humans die without
anyone even knowing?

You sound like a moron now. I was just saying that everything is alive to begin with, and when fertilization takes place is it no longer alive? It has all the chromosomes to be human, so how is it not?

Death happens, murder SHOULD not. Are you not understanding this is the point being made. I can accept death, but not abortion which is MURDER!

True, and then to be consistent, they would have to be against much of modern human reproductive science. That would be saying that a couple isn't entitled to get any child from her egg and his sperm, if it resulted in a second or third fertilized egg being discarded and not used.

And that would make The Octo-Mom and her repro specialist, that injected her with eight viable fertilized eggs ... heros?

(Edit: actually Octo-Mom was injected with seven fertilized eggs, one split, two of those kids are twins)

So are birth control pills that shed a uterine lining with a zygote
murder or death? We are treading a very, very worn path.

You're right, bioethics are important, Irish, very important in all this.

sorry, i'm too busy laughing at the killing field analogy above to take this seriously....whew. ok.

but yes, those arguments have been made, time and again. it's why those who don't worry about 'playing god' when they do in vitro always slay me when they suddenly get all religious about culling the eight fertilized eggs they had implanted in hopes one or two would take.

i guess i just don't understand what this has to do with stem cell research. but the two subjects are intertwined for some reason in many peoples' minds.

like i said, were they intertwined on election day???

The Catholic Church has bio-ethics experts discussing this
constantly. The Catholic church is very careful
in considering all cases involving the use of human cells
to make some sort of decisions that make sense. From
reproductive technology, to using body cells/ stem cells
for research. This is horribly difficult.

So forgive me if you come waltzing in making such definitive
statements in an area where Science has got way ahead
of ethics. And not on purpose, not for some evil deed.
This is an area where many very religious people go through
a great deal of debate and agony because some
aspects are so complex.

no doubt they were. obama could be the answer to all our troubles, but a great many will not vote for certain candidates solely on their stance on abortion-which i believe is ridiculous.

i doubt the catholic church EVER signs off on this. it wasn't long ago that they were still against blood transfusions and organ transplants. that's a group that won't condone condom use in africa to combat the aids epidemic because they feel 'all life is sacred'. well, not once you're here, they don't. i'd imagine a lot more lives would have been saved had they given the go ahead for condom use than what was prevented by using the same. and who knows how many kids over there were born with aids-sentenced to death essentially from birth, because we can't be using condoms folks!

but right wing news articles are ok? and is casino gambling a conservative or liberal endeavor?

let's leave it all up to scientists. what could go wrong?

Under Pope Paul they had some very impressive people
to explain all the implications of this stuff. At least they
thought about it. And I am not saying I am disagreeing,
but the Catholic church is hardly some preacher who creates
some crazy church on his own and rails against beetles invading
our brains.

The condom stuff was set up a pretty long time ago.
A big mistake imo.

What we have to do is have some serious thought
about issues because science is gonna move on.
Huge things are happening in Biology that need
to be brought forth in a reasonable manner so
we have some idea on how to get a grip on this stuff.

You cant stop humans from thinking and innovating.
So the ethics people need to catch up with what is
really going on so serious discussion can take place.

Do you think scientists have no ethics? No morality? Do you think government is unable to put on breaks at any given point if they wish?

Are scientists more capable of judging the validity of pursing stem cell research than people that believe dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together?

Hell yes, they are.

Kevorkian, Mengele? great scientists and standouts on ethics, probably neither one believed that dinosaurs walked the earth with men either.

its foolish to think that scientists alone must lead the way.
FYI, this issue wasn't driven purely by science, it was driven mainly by politics.