Kevin's Watch

Apart from the fact that they think it will take ten years before anything meaningful can be done, the cells still have to be fused with embryonic stem cells, right? I just browsed the article, but it seems those cells for the fusion still have to come from somewhere?

--A

Cail wrote:As I've discussed before, I'm as OK as I can be with abortion in the case of rape, because rape is hardly consentual sex. I would have no problem with the stem cells from those aborted babies being used for stem-cell research.

As in "then the baby couldn't have been made for the purpose of deriving stem-cells, which makes it ok to use them?"

As for the "abortion is OK in case of rape" I know you are not a fundamentalist, so I gues it's ok that there is something fundamentally wrong with that statement, if you say you are pro life (immagine a provocative smiley here please).

Avatar wrote:Apart from the fact that they think it will take ten years before anything meaningful can be done, the cells still have to be fused with embryonic stem cells, right? I just browsed the article, but it seems those cells for the fusion still have to come from somewhere?

--A

Yes, for now. But what the article states is that this research could possibly lead to the creation of stem cells from adult cells, eventually eliminating the need for human embyos to be used.

The new process still involves use of an embryonic stem cell, but the researchers hope it will tell them how an adult cell can be reprogrammed into an embryonic stem cell without use of embryonic cells to begin with.

I think that is a giant step forward, and one that pro-lifers will look forward to seeing.

While I agree that it'll ease "pro-life" ire over the instances of embryonic cells being used in stem-cell research, it doesn't address the deeper issue of abortion at all.

In fact, (and while I'm all for whatever comes from this), it means that the embryo's or foetal cells or whatever will simply go back to being thrown in the bin. I know it will continue to be done for some time, but I always think it'll be better to use them than to throw them away.

--A

In that I completely agree. If no use was found for them in life, at least there there be use in death.

Exactly.

--A

Prebe wrote:As in "then the baby couldn't have been made for the purpose of deriving stem-cells, which makes it ok to use them?"

As for the "abortion is OK in case of rape" I know you are not a fundamentalist, so I gues it's ok that there is something fundamentally wrong with that statement, if you say you are pro life (immagine a provocative smiley here please).

No, as in we're not harvesting children for stem cells.

Explain how there's something wrong with that statement. I am for responsibility and against murder. Rape is not consentual sex, the woman has no say in the matter. If she becomes pregnant from said rape, she should not be forced to carry the child to term. It's called compassion.

My bad.

I meant for a pro-lifer, which you are obviously not, it would be fundamentally wrong. I assume that you are just against abortion in cases where the fetus is the result of concentual sex.

What I am trying to do here is to discourage the term pro-life. I don't even know if you have used it to describe yourself. Sorry.

I hate the labes "pro-life" and "pro-choice", but it's what we've got. I am anti-abortion because I believe abortion is murder.

I fully understand. But is it not murder if the fetus is a result of a rape? Or is the compassion for the raped woman enough to justify murder?

It's still murder, but yes, compassion for the victim overrides the murder of the child.

Good. Then we understand each other.