The truth is hard to come by,but I expect you will get lots of responses telling you what they believe.

As I understand it, there are two sources of support for the stem cell research agenda. One group focuses on its potential for medical advancement in treating and preventing certain medical maladies. The other group consists of the current backers of an unfettered right to an abortion. The support against is primarily those who oppose abortion (a range from zero abortion to those who accept its limited use). Both sides have a lot of emotion invested in their positions and do not exhibit much flexibility. As with many of these conundrums, I doubt there will be a resolution of the conflict anytime soon.

The anti-stem cell animus comes from people who are hostile to science, who think the world is 6,000 years old and that early man wandered among the dinosaurs. They want to impose their view of sexuality (sex for procreation only, no birth control, no women's control over their bodies, no same sex unions) The president is pandering to these reactionaries in his veto.

The debate is between demagoguery, superstition, and ignorance on one side, and reason and progress on the other. Simple as that.

Tuppy Glossop wrote:

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The anti-stem cell animus comes from people who are hostile to science, who think the world is 6,000 years old and that early man wandered among the dinosaurs. They want to impose their view of sexuality (sex for procreation only, no birth control, no women's control over their bodies, no same sex unions) The president is pandering to these reactionaries in his veto. The debate is between demagoguery, superstition, and ignorance on one side, and reason and progress on the other. Simple as that.

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Now that's what I'd call an objective,  fact based assessment of the stem cell debate.  No bias evident there, eh? Sounds like you're parroting talking points penned by Michael Moore and his hateful ilk.

Invicuts, thanks for injecting a reasonable response, even though we might disagree on some particulars. You might be interested in an online report from Reuters that I just read -- apparently the EU is having this same debate, and a coalition of nations also oppose EBO.

The real, real problem is that we created these embryos in the first place, in a well-intentioned effort to help infertile couples. What SHOULD be done with them? The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Atheist, you raise an important issue. What makes an issue "religious"? Are all issues of morality ipso facto "religious" -- I feel certain that you would oppose murder, adultery, theft, and lying. Two of those actions are illegal and two are not (except lying under oath or to commit fraud.) Which are "religious" issues and which are not?
Does every moral issue become a religious issue?

Atheist wrote:

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Finally, I notice that "Conservative Scientist" mentions, "bias", 'Michael Moore" and the "lack of facts" on the debate, but doesn't supply any substance based comments.

Please re-read my comment.  I commended "Tuppy Glossop" for offering an "objective, fact based assessment,"  noteworthy for its lack of bias.  Didn't I? The "lack of facts" quote is yours,  not mine.

If you've heard Michael Moore opine on the stem cell debate,  you'll understand my observation.  He and others quoted  in the national media use demagogic verbiage  from the same play book, verbatim.  This approach, replete with name calling, is hardly constructive in my opinion.

I offer no substance based comments because I believe this to be an inappropriate forum.  Perhaps a moderated panel discussion in Bennett Auditorium,  open to the public,  would better serve the purpose. The stem cell issues are complex and I will not  engage in a message board pi$$ing contest with colleagues who are likely my friends.  FWIW,  I consider myself to be a religious individual,  and I strongly  support stem cell research  and appropriation of the requisite federal monies to fund it.  However I do not and will not impute motives to those who disagree with my perspective.  Fringe individuals notwithstanding,  it just ain't that simple.

The point is that the issue is a science vs. religion issue.  One system is based on reason and evidence and the other on faith.  With his veto the president imposed his faith (and that of many others) on the nation, for no good reason based on logical reasoning from evidence.  

Oh, is that the point?  This is exactly what I'm talking about,  the characterization of a vastly complex issue as a simple science vs. religion debate.  There are respected scientists who have reservations about stem cell research,  and deeply religious individuals who support it. If there's a compromise to be hashed out,  it won't be achieved by embracing  the good guys (pro-stem cell research) vs. bad guys (ignorant anti-reseach religious bumpkins) paradigm. It makes for good theater, but ordains an undesirable outcome.

A good response would be to discuss the logical reasons and evidence the president used to support his decision.

I agree,  and will participate in such a dialog whenever rational people engage, but not here.  You'll no doubt be pleased to learn that this will be my last comment on this matter, here on the message board.  I'll leave it now to the resident voice of balance and reason, LVN.  Oh, and Invictus too.

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LVN wrote:

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I'm outa here too, C. S. My dear friend Atheist has missed the point of what I was asking him, and I'm just not up to hashing through it. Thank you for attempting to explain that things aren't so simple.

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LVN, I'm sorry you feel this way.  I thought I answered as directly as I could the questions you asked of me concerning moral and religious issues.  I was anticipating your response so I could understand your position and the reasoning of those in favor of limiting stem cell research. 

Both you and Conservative Scientist say the issues are "very complex" and " not simple" and will take too long to explain to me.  However, you provide no clues, except for C.S.'s hint, "If there's a compromise to be hashed out,  it won't be achieved by embracing  the good guys (pro-stem cell research) vs. bad guys (ignorant anti-reseach religious bumpkins) paradigm. It makes for good theater, but ordains an undesirable outcome".   To me this is correct for "salesmanship", but I thought we were discussing philosophy, and I wasn't paying attention to "feelings".

I don't see where it says that Dr. Brugger believes the world was created 6000 years ago, but maybe this discussion will be of interest to the scientists among us. (FWIW, I don't subscribe to First Things, I found this referenced on another website.)
The bolding is mine, not the author's.
Sorry for the length.
___________________________________________________
Moral Stem Cells
E. Christian Brugger

Copyright (c) 2006 First Things 163 (May 2006): 12-15.

The desire of the scientific community for embryonic stem cells is not diminishing. Indeed, it is increasing, despite promising research with adult stem cells (scientists have already developed therapies for more than fifty diseases and disorders using stem cells from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood) and despite the fact that no useful embryonic stem-cell-based therapies currently exist or are even in FDA clinical trials.

Indeed, no amount of success in clinical trials using adult stem cells is likely to lessen the desire of the scientific community for embryonic stem cells—which is what has created the arguments that have dominated the medical news since 2001. For a large swath of the nation, creating human embryos (with the intent to experiment lethally upon them) is morally repugnant, but the scientific community seems unwilling to accept anything else.

But what if we could produce pluripotent stem cells, functionally identical to embryonic stem cells, without ever needing to create, experiment on, and destroy human embryos?

This is what a scientific procedure called “Altered Nuclear Transfer-Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming” (ANT-OAR) proposes to do. The proposal is based upon the premise that the identity and function of each cell in the human body depends, in the first place, on which subset of the approximately thirty thousand genes in the cell’s nucleus is switched on or off. In other words, the gene sequence is not what is responsible for determining cellular identity, since the DNA is identical in nearly every cell in the human body. Rather it is the programming of the gene sequence that distinguishes cell types. This genetic programming is referred to as the cell’s “epigenetic state.”

We know the key epigenetic markers of pluripotent stem cells, and we know the markers of zygotes, which are one-celled human embryos. The stem cells that scientists seek are “pluripotent” (with the capacity of a cell to develop into most all the tissue types of the human body), while zygotes are “totipotent” (with the capacity to develop all the tissues of the human body, and extra-embryonic supporting tissues like the placenta, in an organized and self-directed manner). Using a procedure called “somatic cell nuclear transfer,” defenders of ANT-OAR propose extracting the nucleus of a somatic cell (an adult body cell with the highly specified “epigenetic state” of the cell type from which it was extracted, say a skin cell) and then transferring it into an ooplast (an organic sac of cytoplasm left when the nucleus has been removed from an egg cell, or oocyte).

In the ANT-OAR proposal, before we transferred the somatic cell nucleus into the ooplast, we would preemptively alter its epigenetic state so that the genes expressed in the nuclear genome are consistent with pluripotent stem cells—but incompatible with totipotency and thus with the existence of a human zygote.

When scientists attempt cloning, they similarly remove the nucleus from an egg cell and insert a new nucleus. And they have discovered that the biochemical constituents in oocyte cytoplasm have the remarkable capacity to reprogram the epigenetic state of a transferred nucleus back to a state of totipotency. When the nucleus is transferred, the cytoplasm goes to work on the genome, and we are back to a totipotent zygote—the one-celled embryo whose moral status has caused so much concern.

For ANT-OAR, the key element in avoiding this is the altered nuclear transfer: The genetic material in the nucleus is preemptively altered to prevent its being affected by the reprogramming of the oocyte cytoplasm. The result is that the nuclear genome will never reach a state of totipotency—and thus we would create a pluripotent stem cell (from which, if all goes well, stem-cell lines can be derived) without ever creating a human embryo.

ANT-OAR defenders include such eminent thinkers as Hadley Arkes, Nigel Cameron, Maureen Condic, Kevin Fitzgerald, S.J., Kevin Flannery, S.J., Robert P. George, Alphonso Gómez-Lobo, Germain Grisez, Markus Grompe, John Haas, William Hurlbut, John Kilner, Patrick Lee, William E. May, Gonzalo Miranda, L.C., Archbishop John Myers, Tad Pacholczyk, Peter Ryan, S.J., William Saunders, Monsignor Stuart Swetland, and Thomas Weinandy. Many of them propose initial research using only nonhuman animal cells. If such research establishes that ANT-OAR can reliably be used to create pluripotent stem cells, they would then support research on human cells.

But there remain critics of the proposal. David Schindler, dean of the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., has emerged as the principal Catholic critic of ANT-OAR. In the pages of Communio, several essays have appeared over the past year, with defenders of altered nuclear transfer, on one side, and with Schindler and his followers, on the other.

These opponents of ANT-OAR fear the procedure will create, not a pluripotent stem cell, but merely a badly disabled human embryo. Faced with the question of how can it be an embryo when it has the biological characteristics of a pluripotent stem cell, Schindler replies that he does not dispute that the end result of the process is a pluripotent stem cell; what he fears is that the entity brought into existence at the beginning of the process is a human embryo.

As it happens, the ANT-OAR proposal emerges from the same moral concerns that worry critics such as Schindler: It cannot be right to create human entities like embryos solely for the purpose of destroying them and extracting their components. So, the defenders hold, the entity brought into existence must look and act like a pluripotent stem cell in every relevant respect in order to be considered morally acceptable; if through animal trials the product exhibits embryonic characteristics, the procedure will be rejected.

The problem, for the critics, is in the way pluripotent stem cells would be created in ANT-OAR. Because the procedure is a form of somatic cell nuclear transfer, its product, Schindler argues, comes into existence in a “species-specific way.” The process of ANT-OAR entails the fusing of an ooplast with a diploid somatic cell nucleus. In Schindler’s view, this fusion is tantamount, in its effect, to conception.

In fact, he calls it a “mimicked conception.” The fertilization of an egg by a sperm brings into existence a single-celled entity whose progenitor cells include an oocyte, and that possesses a complete human genome contained in a diploid nucleus. So, too, somatic cell nuclear transfer used to clone human embryos brings into existence a single-celled entity whose progenitor cells include an oocyte and that possesses a complete human genome contained in a diploid nucleus. And ANT-OAR also brings into existence a single-celled entity whose progenitor cells include an oocyte and whose diploid nucleus contains a complete human genome. Whenever we fuse an enucleated oocyte and a diploid nucleus, we “mimic conception”—bringing into existence an entity in a species-specific way and thus creating something that must be a human embryo.

This seems to mean that, for Schindler, the epigenetic state—the programming of the nuclear genome—is irrelevant to the nature of the entity. How this could be so is hard to see. The entity brought into existence through ANT-OAR is not totipotent until the specialized epigenetic state of the somatic cell nucleus is reprogrammed through its interaction with the oocyte cytoplasm, and, through preemptive genetic alterations, ANT-OAR sets out to prevent a state of totipotency from ever being realized.

Is it reasonable to hold, as Schindler does, that the entity brought into existence is in any case a human embryo? He claims that it is the embryo itself that directs its own epigenetic reprogramming back to a state of totipotency. ANT-OAR, he believes, can modify only the end of the process (to a state of totipotency or pluripotency, etc.), and thus the nature of the entity that originally came into existence in a species-specific way remains a human embryo.

The answer to Schindler’s kind of complaint seems obvious. An entity is a human embryo only if the organic material is able to be human—if, in the language of Aristotle, it is apt to receive a substantial human form. Not every collection of organic material, even material that includes an oocyte and a diploid nucleus, can be a human being. We know this because we know that teratomas (naturally occurring tumors)—together with hydatidiform moles (disorganized entities that occur in humans and other animals as a result of certain types of defects in fertilization) and even oocytes themselves—are not human embryos, yet they all have as their starting material an oocyte and a diploid nucleus.

With respect to the biological conditions for the origins of a human zygote, this means the single-celled entity brought into existence must possess the inherent active biological disposition for self-directed development toward species maturity (including the capacity to develop all tissue types necessary for a differentiated human body and extra-embryonic supporting materials). In other words, the cell must be characterized by an epigenetic state of totipotency.

Biologically speaking, totipotency in a cell is a necessary and sufficient condition for concluding that that cell is a human embryo. It follows that even in human cloning, a human embryo does not come into existence until—among other things—the nuclear genome, through the reprogramming that takes place as a result of its interaction with oocyte cytoplasm, has attained a state of totipotency. The entity immediately after nuclear transfer and before nuclear reprogramming is not a human embryo that begins to self-direct its own process of reprogramming. Rather, it is akin to a body cell, with the epigenetic makeup of the donor somatic cell.

This suggests that the efficient cause of the reprogramming is not an embryo; the efficient cause is the complex of active constituents in the oocyte cytoplasm—the cytoplasm reprograms the nucleus. The product remains a single isolated cell until a state of totipotency is attained, at which point a human organism—a new whole, embryonic human being—comes into existence. In the case of ANT-OAR, the product never is totipotent. It is never apt to receive a substantial human form, and therefore it never becomes a human embryo.

One might still ask: Given the novelty of the procedure, its likeness in certain respects to human cloning, and the complexity and mystery of the progenitor cells used for its starting materials, isn’t some doubt about the identity of the product of ANT-OAR justified? And if it is, are we not required to side with caution and refuse to proceed with experimentation that might produce disabled embryos?

If doubt were justified, then such caution would, in fact, be required. But ANT-OAR, as its defenders propose it, warrants no such doubt. It aims to create a cell that, from its first moment, exhibits organic properties biologically incompatible with totipotency. Schindler asserts that a single-celled entity can at once be a human embryo and yet manifestly not be (or ever have been) characterized by an epigenetic state of totipotency.

That requires one to believe that a cell’s epigenetic identity is not a necessary condition for cellular identity—which, in turn, requires a dualistic anthropology inconsistent with the Christian understanding of humanity. It denies that the biological disposition of the organic material is a necessary condition for determining cellular identity. It implicitly holds that a cell can biologically look and behave in ways biologically indicative of a certain cell type, yet in fact be a wholly different kind of cell.

The property distinguishing a liver cell from a cardiac cell, or a retinal cell from a skin cell, is the programming of the genome. Yet no one would argue that a cardiac cell is a liver cell, or that a retinal cell is a skin cell, or that any of them are human embryos. The assumption that epigenetic identity does not determine cellular identity is clearly false—and moralists concerned about human embryos should welcome and support ANT-OAR as it moves to testing with animal cells.

E. Christian Brugger is assistant professor of theology at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia.

LVN, thank you very much for your long post.  I now see what you, and Conservative Scientist, consider the "complex" issues.  For me the complexity is created in the following way.  The default position is assumed to be "don't use embryos" for reasons never discussed, but assumed to be understood by the reader.  Then the question is asked, "But what if we could produce pluripotent stem cells, functionally identical to embryonic stem cells, without ever needing to create, experiment on, and destroy human embryos?"  This is a complex scientific question that as yet can't be answered.  It is only a hope for those opposing the use of embryos.

The question leads to a  philosophical question of what is human and when do we decide it is human. The author considers, "An entity is a human embryo only if the organic material is able to be human—if, in the language of Aristotle, it is apt to receive a substantial human form. Not every collection of organic material, even material that includes an oocyte and a diploid nucleus, can be a human being."  But is a human embryo the same as a human being?  Note the equivocation in this quote. 

The theologian shows how entangled the problems become with this approach he created.  " Schindler asserts that a single-celled entity can at once be a human embryo and yet manifestly not be (or ever have been) characterized by an epigenetic state of totipotency.

That requires one to believe that a cell’s epigenetic identity is not a necessary condition for cellular identity—which, in turn, requires a dualistic anthropology inconsistent with the Christian understanding of humanity."

I agree, LVN, that these are very difficult issues for theist. The only scientific issue I see is asking science to accomplish something that is beyond it's present ability and may be impossible. It appears all of this is so Christians can maintain their ancient understanding of humanity.   

 

 

LVN, thanks again for you research efforts. I appreciate you responding when I know you had rather not.  Have a good evening my friend.

C.L.--Support science, not superstition

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060721/OPINION02/607210308/1009/OPINION

C.L.--Logic absent in stem-cell stance

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060721/OPINION02/607210310/1009/OPINION

H.A. OPINION: Despite veto, stem cell research isn't going away

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060721/OPINION01/607210341/1014/OPINION

Old Gypsy Woman Run Over Without Consequence

July 19, 2006 | Issue 42•29

'CHICAGO—Area motorist Moe Balaczs is not showing any signs of weight loss, suppurating lesions, dementia, blindness, or any other grave maladies two weeks after maiming an 83-year-old Gypsy woman with his Ford Excursion. "I have to tell you, it's a relief to suffer no repercussions after dragging a wizened crone in a black babushka under my truck for a block and a half," said Balaczs, who did not report the accident in an effort to escape arcane retaliation. "I really thought I'd be vomiting scorpions and weeping centipedes by now." Balaczs added that, now that the old superstitions about curses and "evil eyes" have been proven to be wives' tales, he will not be concerned about running over old gypsy women in the future. '

 

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50646