Dr. Forbush Thinks

After watching Richard Doerflinger last night on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer I wanted to commit some act of violence. Fortunately when the show was over I fell asleep and now I only feel some bitter hatred instead. Why do people find this need to distort facts to save the life of a ball of eight cells, but they don't care enough to help a live person with a family and a horrible disease?

Richard Doerflinger is certainly a pro-life extremist who can not see the forest for the trees. He was invited onto the News Hour to discuss a recent advance in stem cell research that will allow a single cell to be taken from an embryo without harming the embryo and then the single cell may be used to generate new stem cell lines that could be used in research. The hope is that if an embryo is not destroyed in the process of creating the stem cell lines, then there may be little opposition to the use of federal funds for this type of research. And, of course money is what every good research program needs to continue to learn about the wonders of creation and to be able to use that knowledge to make our lives better.

Mr. Doerflinger doesn’t see it this way. Instead of praising the effort of these scientists to create a work around an arbitrary law banning money for embryonic stem cell research he criticized the way the privately funded research was conducted. There are no laws preventing the use of embryos in this way. There are only limits by the federal government on the funding of this research. But, Mr. Doerflinger uses his opportunity to shame Robert Lanza claiming he had destroyed 16 embryos in his research to prove that this could be done.

Here is the Washington Post story on this research: link

The research question was a two part question. The first question was can a single cell be removed from an embryo without damaging it. To do this Robert Lanza’s group used eight of the 16 embryos to prove that this could be done. All eight, eight cell embryos matured just fine with the loss of one cell. It is amazing to me that people are concerned about these tiny eight cell clumps, but if this is what it takes, then so be it. So, Mr. Doerflinger was either misinformed, or chose to misrepresent the research done by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT).

The second question to be answered was, can a single cell be enticed to grow into a stem cell colony in a petri dish? Single cells don’t generally like to live by themselves, so this is the more complicated part of the experiment. Since this had never been done before it was expected that the failure rate would be high, until the technique could be established. So, the remaining eight embryos were destroyed in order to get as many cells as possible. The result was 91 stem cells, so obviously some of the eight cell embryos had multiplied. But, the point was that they were able to try this 91 times with 91 individual stems cells and the result was 2 stem cell lines.

Could the same experiment be done without destroying any embryos? Yes, 91 single cells could have been taken from 91 embryos. Did Advanced Cell Technology have 91 embryos? I don’t know, but they did have 16. The probability that they could have produced a stem cell line with only 16 cell would be about 30% based on 2 lines for 91 attempts. But, the knowledge is now known and stem cell line could now be created without harming an embryo.

But, Mr. Doerflinger was not happy about this triumph. Instead, Mr. Doerflinger launched into a tirade about how the new technique could be used for genetic screening and even more embryos will be thrown away as a result of the Advanced Cell Technology technique. Well, doesn’t Mr. Doerflinger sound like he would be fun at a party. He’s certainly always looking at the bright side of things - NOT!

This whole debate is filled with distortion in order to win a point from the public score keeper. But the reality is that there aren’t so many people that care enough about the details accept for the people who are doing the arguing. And these people just continue to listen so they can find one more point to justify how they already feel about the issue.

If pro-life people were really serious about life, then they would be figuring out how to make food from non-living things. This is because the level of life that is in that eight cell clump called an embryo is slightly more significant than a one-cell organism. And, it is slightly less significant than a roundworm. That is the truth in the reality-based world. Equally true is the fact that that clump of cells has the potential to become much more. But, in the reality based world we need to realize that not every conception results in the birth of a child. Nature itself determines the viability of an embryo before it even implants into the wall of the uterus and it continues to monitor its progress throughout the pregnancy. Spontaneous abortions or miscarriages happen all the time. If they happen in the first month of a pregnancy the woman may not even have known that she was pregnant.

However, people who have taken up the cause to fight stem cell research are the first to call an environmentalist a “tree hugger,” because they think these people are over the top. Have they forgotten that the tree is alive and deserves some respect? These same people wear fur, eat meat and maybe go hunting animals with rifles. Is any one of these activities respecting the life they take?

Obviously there is a major speed bump in our culture. We are not on the same page at all. There seem to be two distinct pages and maybe even a few pages in between. Obviously ethicists and philosophers have tackled the question of life before, but they don’t seem to be unified on the subject either. The problem is that in this circle of life we must all destroy life in order to live in one way or another. If society could ever come to terms with what the purpose of life is, then we could more easily come to a consensus on what we should do as a society to make it work. Seeing that this is never going to happen we need to resort to the old plan, every man for himself.






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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics, Stem Cells, Ethics