using aborted babies for stem cells
Ok...I am going to preface this by saying I learned this in high school and I MIGHT be wrong...but it was taught to me by a Teacher-Of-The-Year winner and registered nurse. I trust it.
We do not get stem cells from aborted babies! They are not a particularly stable or bountiful source for them. We get them from fertilized but not implanted zygotes created for fertility clinics. They generally create more than a couple would generally use just in case something goes wrong. The extras are kept on ice until they are either ordered to be or end up needing to be destroyed. There should be no moral qualms about using this as a source for stem cell research, as they have very little chance of ever being implanted and brought to term.[/QUOTE]
You are correct, Dorko (and thanks, I feel like a jock now
). Many eggs are fertilized for in-vitro fertilization; when the couple is done, they're 'on ice'. The embryo being destroyed isn't the one people think of (i.e. that diagram that looks so like a chicken embryo, with little limb buds and eyes), but when it's between the 8 and 32 cell phase. This, coupled with ethical guidelines for research--such as informing the donors of what it entails, including them not being misled by thinking they will receive benefits directly from their donated embryos--makes embryonic stem cell (ESC) research something I support.
As for stem cells not being a cure-all, this is very true. Interestingly enough, Stienman, stem cell research would serve as a tandem approach to solving their problems--not taking anything away. Heart disease, for example, could be treated by tissue repair (tissue engineering) or, once the science advances far enough, regrowth of the organ (one promising mode right now is SCNT and ANT*, where--in a nutshell--one's own nucleus is implanted into a de-nucleated fertilized egg, then grown to create self-embryonic stem cells).
For cancer, there's many labs (one of which I'm actually applying to, if I'm accepted for a program at the school) that investigate the idea of cancerous stem cells--that is, cells that regress into a stem cell-like state and cause a cancerous state. Research from this (such as cell cycle/differentiation genes/factors within the cell) would benefit multiple fields that could use it.
For AIDS, once again, stem cells could be harnessed for treatment and therapy. Regular infusion of one's own HSC (hematopoieitic stem cells) could hold off the AIDS phenotype of HIV infection; or--although this is just off the top of my head--one's own stem cells could be altered with a disease-resistant phenotype (such as replacing the 'normal' CCR5 gene with CCR5D32, thought to help in HIV resistance) to afford some measure of resistance in a patient.
Obviously, I'm a huge proponent of stem cell research, but I do think there is a valid reason they're being shunted to the forefront of medical research. They help us understand how we develop and how we're put together, they have an amazing potential range of treatments and therapies, and they're a parallel approach to virtually any major medical question we can think of.
Of course, these are just examples I'm coming up with off the top of my head (but all of which hold some measure of promise). The therapies and benefits, if any, will (of course) be years away, but the nature of science is not immediate--the sooner we start, I say, the better.
TL; DR: Dorko's right, stem cells aren't a one-trick pony, and the government should definitely fund embryonic stem cell research.
*ANT and SCNT: Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer and Altered Nuclear Transfer.
