In First Stem Cell Stroke Trial, Scottish Patient Has Embryonic Stem Cells Injected Into His Brain

Putting aside the argument on whether this "fetus" was a living baby or not (most assuredly it was!), one thing is for sure; This "fetus" would have developed into a healthy baby under normal circumstances. BUT, he or she was sacrificed so that this guy could POSSIBLY have a better quality of life.
You see, that is the real point that everyone misses. An "embryo" or "fetus" WILL BE a child if left to develop. If you aren't taking life, you can't argue that you are stifling it. SO, which is better, bring a healthy child into the world OR end it before it begins so that some may propser a little longer?
This is nothing more than putting VALUE on life based on FUNCTION. Such a cold, heartless machine like existence.

We shouldn't do such things until we learn how to acquire the proper stem cells without killing our own young. This is detrimental to our species, feeling okay kill our young. It will not end well. We should attempt to progress technology while remaining ethical.

If an aborted fetus can either sit in a bucket doing it's best impersonation of a stewed tomato or it could advance medical science why not use it for the latter?
Any embryo or fetus used for this is aborted you know. Moms aren't makin millions dropping off loved children at stem cell clinics. Nor do I know or have I ever heard of women getting rich by having abortions. If so I'll yell sexism cause so far there's no room for men in that industry.

I guess both TP(if male) and James(likewise) need to stop pleasuring themselves because they're destroying hundreds of millions of potential lives in a stroke(no pun intended).

We do not kill people to give someone a heart on a transplant list, and I assure you that this fetus was not killed for the stem cells. On the other hand, this guy will probably just develop brain tumors. As far as I know, they still don't know how to control growth in these stem cells.

i agree with skosmurph, if it can help save lives, and would otherwise go to waste, use it, however if people start having abortions just for this i am, or course, against it.

@sykosmurph

Stewed tomato... my god that's hilarious. We have too many people anyways, I say we abort the little bastards and keep our population steady and healthy.

@trueperspective so what makes you think that the potential child will come out perfectly? you have no way of knowing whether or not a fetus if left to develope with come out as a perfect child. I am not arguing the fact that stem cell research is wrong or right, but you should clearly try to understand the fine line on what we consider "human" or "alive."
Is a fetus considered a living being even after 8 weeks of conception if it cannot feel, perceive or sense the world around it? or is a fetus considered alive right after conception? if you choose the later of the two then by your own logic a tree is more "human" than an embryo or "fetus."

Everyone understands that leaving an embryo or fetus left to develope under normal circumstances will become a child, so for you to say that, that is the point that everyone is missing is abritrary and illogical. The MAIN issue and there is only one, IS the fact that at what point do you consider a human embryo "alive" or "human." Is it right to let a human embryo develope and become a child to only be born into a country of poverty, war, and starvation and to later die at the rightful age of 12? (such as those in africa)
From your logic it is more humane to let a baby starve and die of disease than to destroy it when it surely cannot feel any pain or even perceive the world around it.

It's not like they knocked up some woman so she could sell her unborn child to the stem cell lab. Get a grip. People make it sound like they grow fetuses Matrix style so they liquefy them into stem cell goodness.

The article says "Aborted fetus from the US." If you're going to point fingers point them that way, not at the potentially life changing science. Besides, hopefully adult stem cells will make the same head way soon.

It said they used "neural stem cells." If stem cells are "blank" then how can they be classified as neural? Do they sometimes favor one form of tissue over another? A Google search turned up that 1 square cm (unspecified depth) contains about 6million cells of differen types. So 2 million cells (esp. 20 million) seems like a pretty substantial amount of tissue to regenerate. Awesome.

@ trueperspective - Do you use "quotes" because you believe that the fetus and embryo are imaginary and don't actually exist?

Another question for all you nay-sayers....what life is more valuable and why? An adult human, unborn child, cow, or a garden snake.
Makes you think about how all of this is based on perspective and there is no right answer, you just need to accept what other people want to do as long as it doesn't directly affect you negatively.

If you want to say...oh God wouldn't want this....well then according to certain holy books, God flooded the earth for the future benefit of man-kind. There are so many arguments, so I'll stop here.

Anyways...I was under the impression that they had methods to take one set of stem cells and essentially clone them into many of the same base stem cells. Meaning that they would only need one fetus now who's martyrdom will provide medical advances forever.

The first thing that will happen will be the preservation of your own embryonic stem cells at the time of your birth. This program will allow you to receive the new-fangled regenerative medicine without having to compromise your immune system. Neural or brain cells don't have the same immune protection as the other tissues in the body.
The Embryonic Stem Cell Bank will have your stem cells there waiting just for you when you need them. Need a new heart, lung, stomach, etc they'll grow one for you.

(*sigh* we get a good conversation going only to have interrupted by ad spammers. >:( )

anyway, okay look, as far as the argument of whether or not do these tests goes. Both sides are nearly equally immoral.

one the one hand...

those against this research and it's potential benefits are depriving ill patients from potentially life-saving treatments as a result of these stem cells.(assuming that there are life-saving treatments to be derived from them) Thus, the anti-stem cell people are depriving the ill patient's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by banning treatments that could save this person's life.

on the other hand...

those that are for the stem cell research are willing to sacrifice one human life to save the other. (Granted that these embryo's would've been just thrown away if they weren't being used for research.) But regardless, using the embryonic stem cells as treatment deprives the embryo's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

No matter which side you are on, you're going to violate someone's human rights. Though the pro stem cells do have slightly more merit since the embryo's they were using would've been just discarded otherwise.

anyway, there's my take on the issue. I'd be very interested to hear how this trial turns out.

*scroll, scroll, scroll*
...blah, blab, blabbitty, trolls, spam, blahrt. . ._.

mmkays peoples, how about we stick to commenting on the article at hand, instead of trying to convince one another that they are wrong/flawed in their views having to do with an age-old, long-going battle of he says/she says that is easily disproved on either side¿?
ffs everyone.. its like arguing god!
plz step away, take a breather.. and dont come back until you can control yourself and act like a civil human being with an open mind, a passion to learn, and an understanding that everyone (including you) may be wrong!

_ _ _
uherm.. now with that done:
we need loads more studies like, and completely different from this one before we can truly understand what we have done with this type of medical practice. so far it seems all they're doing is injecting it straight into the problem area when that may/may not be the best method, i believe they're "wingin it" so far ;) ...but like the article with CERN & the antihydrogen: progress is progress
good start ReNeuron :D

just for the record, i stated i was neutral. I'm with you on this z7u2v.

i'll admit, i got pulled into the argument foolishly. But i then stated why both sides are equally wrong. So i'm neutral until we see some conclusive results.

Why does everyone have to prove themselves to be right, either your killing an unborn child or your hurting someone who was already born, each way its bad. Or you guys could just comment on the article and not your own perspectives that would be nice.

@atomicdoorknob:

Because humans are competitive, big-headed creatures. It's in our nature to try to out-do each other and feel important.

I will never understand the focus on embryonic stem cell research when there are so many issues that complicate things. Besides that, I thought adult stem cells were proving to be more successful anyways.

With a transplant of human tissue I thought that there would always be a possibility of rejection by the immune system. Can someone who knows a lot more than me explain why stem cells may be not have this problem?

I'm glad the research is moving ahead, I just wish it didn't require human fetuses or embryos. For now it's very easy to say that it's ok because the fetuses were aborted (that in itself is an argument). But part of me hopes this will fail miserably because I can easily think of the situation where women intentionally become pregnant for the sole purpose of aborting the baby and helping a spouse, relative, friend, or in the worst case scenario they just do it for pure profit. A fetus or an embryo would just be another "organ" for sale on some kind of twisted black market. Yeah it's a slippery slope argument, but it's the nature of some people to find the most unethical ways of using something that was intended for the benefit of humanity. I understand failure would mean that this man would never recover from his stroke, but if it meant that this type of Pandora's box (forgive the exaggeration) is never opened that would be a good thing for humanity as a whole.

Regardless of what I think or what I'm a afraid will happen in the future, this research will not be halted unless adult stem cells prove to be sufficient in doing all that scientist hope to achieve with embryonic stem cells. I really hope that day will come sooner rather than later!

I think we can all agree that the stupid spammers need to be better filtered from this site

@hamstrahammer:

PopSci appears uninterested in tackling the spam. I've looked at old posts where the spam is still there, just with the "Reported to site admins" comment - that's useless isn't it! I haven't seen any PopSci reply to the suggestions from it's readers about the spam, I even took the trouble to personally email PopSci suggestions as to how to tackle it and didn't even get a reply. You can click on the usernames of spammers that were reported weeks ago and you will see their usernames are still active (i.e. not cut off).

I love how no one has yet brought up the numerous amount of scientific studies stating that stem cells can be harnessed from skin cells or numerous other tissue. Or the fact that these fetus's were dead, and not killed in the name of science. You Luddites with your liberal self image and do gooder attitude need to get over yourselves. This was biological material which would have developed into a baby unless the mother didn't abort it. I respect your views but when you start telling people what to do with potentially profitable medical waste you need to realize what your doing. To put it simply put your telling someone which you have no right to tell, what to do with their garbage. This baby was dead from the get go and we still lack commercially feasible technology to save aborted fetuses. So till we get to that point what do we do? Wouldn't it be more logical if we used these aborted fetus's in question to potentially revolutionize biological research? If you want someone to blame for a baby not being brought into the world, blame the mother of the dead child who had to sleeze around and get her self knocked up. We live in the 21st century where human ethics and humans them selves are changing. We no longer need to stare up at the sky and worship moons instead we land on them and conquer them. A wave is coming where the primitives will fade into the pages of history books and the progressive people will advance.Just imagine the amount of lives that would have been lost if we never invented vaccines, antibiotics and even the gruesome human experimentation of nuclear medicine. On a final note until you see one of your loved ones slowly rotting away of a neurological disease don't question people how far they will go to save them.

Unethical acts:

1) A women engaging in a procreational act without reguard to the consenquences - being unable or unwilling to raise the potential child. (I would include the man as part of this unethical act, but so far, the courts have given the man very little say in the choice to abort or not - and oft compel the raising of the child - through child support - on the man.)

2) Women choosing to abort, when a healthy, normal human being is developing life. (Don't give me the incest/rape arguement - we all know that only a very small fraction of abortions are done for anything other than convienience/cost.)

3) Playing "blender baby" with aborted cells, rather than giving them the respect given to the fallen in normal organ/tissue transplants.

4) Shooting up a guy's brain with cells that might start growing into anything. Sure a stroke is bad - but having to surgically remove a growing hand from his brain? Freaky.

5) Arguing that it is okay to abort, okay to use the cells, and okay to do whatever else it takes to prolong the inevitable death of individuals who will, even with treatment, almost never become productive members of society again. Killing things before they seem human to delay things that are swiftly loosing their humanity is only an outcome of people's fear of death. Is there any moral difference between aborting a child and euthanizing a sever stroke victim - other than our own emotional connections?

6) Pretending that it is a moral act to spend more than the sum total of a man's potential lifetime production in the hopes that, at best, he might return to the level or normalcy that he likely was already unhappy with?

The poor man does not become happy by being rich - he still burns with want. The man who has learned to control his desires is happy whether rich or poor. A contented person wants only to be free from most pain, and would not strive to be other than he is. (Paraphrased from Marcus Aurelius)

Look, people will go out and find new technogly with could help or destroy. It will happend and no one can stop it. If the Stem Cells don't work they will try again and again and so on. If its unethnical or not, a lot of people dont care. many people who has gotten passed religion. I for one am not a follower, so i'm not confind by their laws. So thats why a lot of scientist are not religous. look at it this way, do you think we got this far ahead in technogy because we were following Gods whim, NO! so get off the horse and see whats happening. We are advancing to a new age and nothing but extiction can stop us.

There is really no grounds for this to be a debatable topic. It would be like debating if war is bad... It is.. People dying is never good.

So let's step back and take a deep breath. Medicine is a practice due to the fact that we (people) don't know everything. Until the entire human genome is 100% understood and we are able to manipulate it 100%. We will continue to "practice" medicine.

#1 Conventional medicine is not moral or ethic. To make progress with our "post primitive" medicines sacrifices must be made.

#2 Few will die so that many can live.

#3 These sacrifices will help lead us to proper medicine when one day we won't need to sacrifice any lives at all.

#4 Medicine once thought radiation was the fountain of youth. Tomatoes were poisonous. Cripples would never walk. Etc...

#5 The less we argue about controversial proceedures the further we will get with medicine. (It should still be monitored and regulated to a degree).

#6 Keep an open mind to new things.

#7 Please someone do something about the spammers.

re: Constantine Oshio

I agree. As I scrolled through the comments, I too was surprised nobody mentioned this. The only thing I've heard (back aways) is that only certain types of stem cells can come from skin, other cells, etc...; and maaaayyyybe not become embryonic cells. But until I search the web more about this, I'll agree that I thought new advancements were already proving that no fetuses need be tapped to advance stem cell growth anymore. This would be good. What would be better is that these wee ones be given a chance to live on this planet.

re: sykosmurph -- harsh, but amusing....but still...harsh.

re: gillje03 -- your argument is the same as All in the Family's "Meathead" -- "oh, what a terrible world, who would want to bring a child into this?" -- ridiculous. Let's say the child in Africa that is born is actually adopted out of there. And that's just addressing your third-world approach/reason for aborting babies. As to any child born in the rest of the world, in normal peaceful cities like North America, Europe etc....the child could/would have the same life as the rest of us. Anyways, it's a weak (and surprisingly often used) excuse.

1. It wasn't reported where they got the fetus, so a lot of assumptions have been made.

2. Aguing generally doesn't change anyone's mind, even if you have a great argument. Stop wasting posts off-topic, and everyone's time in the process. You're all too verbose.

I posted this not three weeks ago in another thread, maybe it's applicable here as well?

"We've cloned animals from adult cells. It's almost positively possible to create human clones from adult cells as well... ***************** What does the morality group have to say about embryos created from adult cells? They're embryos after all... ***************** Are the only embryos that 'deserve' legal protection those that are a result of sperm and egg cells? An embryo created from sperm and egg in a petri dish can in no way result in a baby if it's not implanted. A majority of in-utero embryos don't implant either, they're naturally aborted, or fail to implant for whatever reason. If we could collect those through some means, would that skirt the morality issue entirely? Maybe the morality issue, if one exists at all, should begin with implanted embryos, instead of starting with just embryos? (Maybe someone should start a for-profit venture to harvest embryos from menstrual blood. Sexually-Active Ladies, help save a life, collect your menstrual fluids in this container, and send post-paid to : ....... And the company can harvest whatever may be of use from the fluids, which may include living embryos that God saw fit to not let implant, which would leave the morality up to him, and the saving of lives up to us?)"

Putting aside the Morality, that I have no issue with, yet, what is not talked about much is the Mortality. Are we going to extend the life span with this technology? I can condone the use for a little child that has a genetic defect that may be corrected by this or even the middle aged (i assume) man that had a stroke as per the story. But when grandpas ticker is giving out, do we grow him a new one? As per "Dollhouse" do we only cater to the very wealthy? There are so many levels of questions with this technology (along with cloning) that will need to be examined, we are pretty much past the "where do the stem cells come from" question. We better look further forward so we are prepared for the real break-through that will make science fiction stories look like Dr. Seuss.

My only disagreement with embryonic stem cell research is this: Didn't scientists learn a heck of a lot more about stem cells when they were prevented from taking the shortcut? By learning how to reverse-engineer adult cells into stem cells, we learned a great deal about what makes a stem cell different from a normal cell, and trials with induced stem-cells were already yielding results when the ban on embryonic cells was lifted. We don't even *need* embryonic stem cells for stem cell research anymore. Why is this even an issue?

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Overpopulation is a serious problem. Lets focus on the living, not the yet to be. A deer's heart beats too, yet many objectors are rednecks. So they can shoot a deer just to mount it's head on the wall; when they use the argument a fetus's heart is beating. Are they saying having a miscarriage is a sin? An abortion is a "controlled miscarriage." Doctors should treat patients who have a chance(of returning to normal life) with stem cells.

There is spam on this page. However, if you complain about it, the web operators think YOU are the spammer, and block you from posting.

Complain at your peril.

Stem cells are not harvested from embryos. By the time they become embryos, they are already specialized.

To obtain them, they must be taken from a cytoblast, which is a microscopic ball of stem cells, all exactly alike, and none specialized into an organ.

This is probably going to make some people feel ill, but ill fill you in on the mentality of the people funding this research. The majority are rich people whom would prefer if they could live forever. Harvord has been working on reversing aging for a looong time now, and the guys here working on stem cells are working on fixing any diseases/accidents that might come up in their extended lifetime. The way they see it is... If they are going to be living forever, well, they have got to make room for themselves in the next generations to come in order to not overpopulate the planet right? I mean, it must be one or the other right? Kill our young to keep the living, living longer? Thats enough for most higher society's conscience. Personally I think its kindof selfish, but who am I to say so...

Anyway, from a business point of view, babies are liabilities, trained corporate executives are assets. Most of you are probably getting the picture here, but to spell it out in black and white~ Your government in the USA values trained working adults MUCH MORE than children which dont contribute to your economy for at least 16 years. That is why this is being allowed to happen, and it will continue to happen because there is money to be made, and plenty of people who really dont give a crap whos baby has to die in order to make their face look 5 years younger. Get used to it. lol, are you still enjoying your capitalism? Because you are capitalizing on your own flesh and blood. Whats worse, other countries are folloing your lead. Next you will be harvesting souls for profit! yay! lol shoot me now!

sorry, ive got to add something after my last comment. Firstly, dont feel guilty. Your government does it because they know very well that they can get away with it. They know that you will sit at home, and feel bad about it, but feel powerless to do anything except well, complain a bit. But, hey again I dont blame you, how COULD you oppose it? do you know who is directly responsible for this research? I sure dont. Probably, neither do you. What I do blame u guys for, is letting your government keep obvious and HUGE secrets in the first place. Sometimes, they arent even secrets, they are crystal clear and in your face haha! and well, most people's eyes just go wide, give their head a shake and just try to go to work the next day pretending it didnt happen, because, dang, that stuff sure is a downer isnt it. The salvation of the human race will come with stronger individuals, thats all i can say.

We can always get them from genetically modified rats.