the decline of rome

[Guest guest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/science/20clone.html

 

If futurist Ray Kurzweil is right, then the rate of change in

technology is itself accelerating logorithmically. This article on

the advance in Korean stem cell research may be just one example. It

may also foretell the fall of Rome, just not clear if Rome is America

or Asia. Ten years ago, the brits cloned a sheep after biologists

said it was not possible. It took till last year to clone an embryo,

this time in korea, but the process was so onerous that it was not

worth duplicating. Proof positive to many that so-called somatic cell

nuclear transfer would never be viable. Yet, in less than one year,

that never has turned into a reliable method of producing stem cells

that are genetically identical to the adult donor. This jing

therapy, as I see it, has nothing at all to do with ethics and most

of the rest of the world agrees, including most religious leaders.

but for those who think it is the beginning of the end, then the end

will soon be upon us. Because rapidly accelerating changes build

upon their own momentum. With exponential growth in bioengineering

techniques predicted, a few years delay will put us FOREVER behind

Asia. Because a few years of progress will be like more than a

decade at current rates. A decade will be more like a century. I

predict that the first reports of well documented and dramatic cures

from stem cell therapy will be rolling in from Korea by this time

next year, if not sooner. And then many of the naysayers will just

jump on the bandwagon.

 

So perhaps the US alone will survive this moral crisis or perhaps it

is really no moral crisis at all. Orrin Hatch, an ardent

conservative and longtime friend to herbalists (he wrote DSHEA to

prevent the FDA from destroying the market), is also a staunch

proponent of stem cell therapy. He personally is into fitness, diet

and exercise, uses herbs regularly, etc. Like the christian, jewish

and muslim clerics worldwide who have said that the torah or old

testament only bans the removal of life from a woman's womb, Hatch

put it more succinctly. He said that he never learned that life

begins in a petrie dish. In other words, if you take an egg from

woman, there is no life there. Unfertilized eggs get sloughed and

flushed every day. So they alone are considered garbage, waste, etc.

by everyone. If you take one of these eggs, which has not ever been

fertilized and implanted and remove the nucleus from that egg and

replace it with the nucleus from an adult somatic cell and do this

all in a petrie dish, I don't think anyone would argue that there is

any individual life there, any more life than there is life in the

small piece of flesh that I accidentally cut off my finger while

grating carrots. That small piece of flesh contains living cells

that contain my DNA. I could take that tissue and try and culture

about 100 so-called adult stem cells from it in a petrie dish and no

one would have a moral objection. Yet take my same DNA from that

cell and put it into a donated egg cell with no DNA (perhaps even

donated from myself if I was an adult female patient) and grow about

100 embyronic stem cells and that is somehow fiddling with life just

because these cells COULD POSSIBLY MAYBE grow into a fetus if placed

in a woman's uterus.

 

As many of you know, 75% of in vitro fertilizations fail, yet somehow

that is NOT murder. The embryos do not result in life. They die

anyway or are frozen and eventually disposed of. Are we nuts?

Trying and failing to bring children to infertile couples when

millions need adoption is somehow a morally defensible reason to

destroy 75% of the embryos that are created through failed IVF, yet

using these same bunches of cells (not little people) to save the

lives of already living human beings is immoral. I have had it up to

here (hand held palm down above my head) with the way morals and

values have been turned on their heads in this country and this just

one more example. If it is OK to sacrifice these cells for IVF, it

is OK for stem cells. For the record, all asian governments ban the

last step of implanting cloned somatic cell transfers into wombs to

" farm " actual humans for organ harvest, etc. That of course is the

real fear, but we currently have a thriving international market in

black market organs already. There will always be some of us who

will do evil, but that is no reason to stop progress. The more happy

and healthy people there are, the less crime and sociopathic behavior

we can expect, as many long term trends show (the main variable

affecting crime rates has always been levels of unemployment and

wages). So the longterm gains outweigh the risks, IMO.

 

The reason I mention is has do with the issue of accelerating

change. After decades of what seemed like plodding changes in

science and medicine, we have reached the asymptotic point in the

curve, where things are probably gonna go straight up through the

roof. If I am wrong, we shall soon see. If we resist these changes

for too long, rather than figure out how to embrace them as a highly

desirable part of modern integrative healthcare, then we will be left

very far outside the mainstream in a very short period of time. Many

in the field of clinical applications of stem cell therapy are

proponents of alternative medicine. The two work together nicely.

Patients being treated with stem cells need to eat right, exercise,

take certain supplements, etc in order to get the best results. I

can't think of anything more " natural " than using youthful versions

of my own cells to regenerate the old decrepit ones. Using myself at

my peak as my medicine. That's how we should really think of Somatic

Nuclear Cell Transfer (SNTC), which is the scientific name for so-

called cloned embryos. But this is really not an issue of the

donated egg, which had about a 1/10th of 1% chance of becoming a

person anyway (considering the number of viable eggs woman has versus

the average number of children). It really should be an issue of

what I get to do with my own DNA. If I want to grow it in an egg

cell for 100 divisions, that is my right. If the only objection that

can be raised is that the implantation of my DNA into an egg cell

with no DNA of its own in a lab somehow involves the incarnation of a

soul or spirit, all I can say is wow. Are the religionists actually

saying that scientists can now actually create life without

involving a male animal in any part of the process (except perhaps

the scientists, ironically)? No, since the likelihood of successful

fullterm development of a human clone is less even than normal IVF, I

think we can say unequivocally that LIFE requires an implanted embryo

in a woman's uterus. Lets say there is a soul? Only a cruel god

would condemn such a soul to live in a frozen petrie dish for all

eternity. It would seem far more likely that any soul would wait

till implantation before taking up residence. If not, perhaps that

was just one's karma anyway. :-)

 

 

 

Chinese Herbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Are we nuts?

>>>> it seems so

 

 

 

 

Oakland, CA 94609