My critique of fellow SCI's embryonic stem cell debate claims

Preface: I am SCI (spinal cord injured). I belong to several fora where my unique community meets to share tips and discuss, 'life as' issues, etc. A debate ensued over the embryonic stem cell issue. What follows is my critique of certain opinions held by someone that ought to know better in my opinion. He believes he is sacrificing his recovery and in so doing taking the higher moral ground. I disagree that he's, one taking the higher moral ground at all and two, really sacrificing anything at all. Indeed he enjoys adoration from those that flock to those they feel mirror their own feelings over faith issues. Everyone acts out of self-interest. It doesn't matter what selfless act one believes one's self to be enacting, at bottom they did it for a selfish reason. It can be as simple as generating pleasant endorphins from emotions.

My response:

Well what a grand and well-written piece of propaganda we have from Mr. Jlubin. Pardon me Mr. Jlubin if I get a little sarcastic and exuberant below as I expose the flaws in your prose and your logic.

Mr. Jlubin: I am paralyzed from the neck down and dependent on a ventilator to breathe. Yes I want a cure but I don't want it to come at the cost of another life.

FutureQ: Way to narrow it down. I guess logically you really don’t want a cure, because even skin cells turned pluripotent are bound to show some loses of life. Cells are alive too you know. And umm, why mention the ventilator? Does looking more pathetic help your position? Why should it? Shouldn't the arguments stand on their own? You are using a propaganda technique to play upon the sympathies of your readers. Not fair dude!

Mr. Jlubin: Here's a quick review in biology. A sperm and an egg are human haploid cells or gametes (sex cells). Haploid cells have a single set of chromosomes in each cell. Most higher organisms are diploid – that is, they have two sets – but their gametes (sex cells) are haploid.

Each egg or sperm gets 23 chromosomes. When a sperm and egg are combined it's called conception, whether it happens naturally or in a dish. The resulting zygote contains all the 46 chromosomes need to be considered a human. It is a living human at that point based on biological analysis alone. It continues to divide and, when put in the proper environment, will grow to an embryo, fetus, baby, child and adult human.

Being a human, it is entitled to protection to life from the Government. Therefore, the Government should not be funding the destruction of life for the purpose of research. Now your opinion of when a human is a human and entitled to protection obviously differs from mine and president Bush. You can decide for yourself when a human becomes a human that is entitled to protection. Some people think after birth and not before.

I'm against IVF treatments as well because it creates extra embryos in the process.

FutureQ: Good luck with that one. Even the hard core right to lifers, er umm I mean, Repooplicans, have wisely kept their mitts off that one. Well too many of them bringing more of god’s little ones into the world with it right? Power in numbers in the bible belt, ya’ll.

Mr. Jlubin: As for using those extra embryos in research for the possible benefit of others, just because they are going to be destroyed anyway, following that reasoning, here's my problem with that. A person with a traumatic brain injury or in a coma being kept alive on ventilator will never be completely healed and will die without the life-support, so why not harvest their body parts to improve someone else's life? I see both equally wrong.

FutureQ: Indeed why not? I don’t see anything wrong with harvesting organs from someone that previously approved of it being done and they wind up brain dead with no reasonable sign of recovery. Let’s be clear here, comas are not persistent vegetative states. My criteria is the “individual’s mind” is dead. Terri Schaivo’s meat should have been euthanized and harvested, had she made donor arrangements. It should have happened long before all the years wasting away ruined them and before her meat became fodder for political wrangling. She did not exist anymore even though her meat still drew breath.

Here is the flaw in your logic. You, apparently by all indication, think that a body is a host for some parasite ethereal eternal being but yet you also illogically place person-hood values upon this meat. Science has proven this wrong long ago. There is no such thing as a non corporeal soul that gives a clump of cells arbitrarily human being status. Brain damage can do more than simply alter personality, it can indeed destroy the ‘person’, the ‘ID’, the ‘person-hood’, the ‘I inside’, while the body yet shows primitively understood signs of life.

What matters is information. REAL living human beings develop loving relationships and experiences. All this is information. If the brain is damaged to the point that it cannot retain the information that makes the person the ‘who’ that they were, and there’s not possibility of relearning or becoming someone else anew, then they, to me, are dead period. If that should happen to me don’t waste efforts keeping my meat around, put it to someone’s benefit.

Mr. Jlubin: If the unused embryos can not just remain frozen (which I don't see why not) then they will be thawed out, eventual stop growing and die. At that point they are incinerated as medical waste. To me that is more ethical than removing parts (ie stem cells) from a living human.

FutureQ: So I’m guessing you disapprove of removing your own adult stem cells? After all, are you not a living human being? But really it is more ethical to prolong their existences, oops I mean according to you -- their lives, but in the end, so it looks more natural, let them perish through neglect? Wow! I am nonplussed!

Mr. Jlubin: This is how it differs from organ donation. When organs are donated, a person is declared dead by doctors before the person is removed from life support and organs are harvested for transplant. When stem cells are removed from and otherwise viable "leftover" embryo, it is the remove of the stem cells that kills the embryo. The stem cell are not being removed from a dead embryo. They are not even declared dead by a doctor, just extra not going to be used for IVF.

FutureQ: Uh excuse please but just what criteria exactly is used to declare someone dead that differs so radically from the state of an embryo? Let’s see shall we?

1. Hmmm, no heart beat or pulse -- at least at any time yet proposed for when stem cells would be harvested. Oh yea, no heart!

2. No brain activity. Umm, NO BRAIN!

3. Eyes equal and responsive, yes/no? No = dead if combined with other criteria. Oops, I forgot, no eyes!

4. Cessation of sinus rhythm? Well of course no lungs?

Looks like embryos don’t stack up to organ donors for determination of life over death. Go figure!

Mr. Jlubin: Since pluripotent stem cells can be obtained from sources other than human embryos, it seem more ethical to me not to use human embryos for research.

[End of Mr. Jlubin's forum post]

FutureQ: Eh hem, well not quite the whole truth there, right? Care to elaborate those other sources friend? This is some clever propaganda mate. You’re as subtle as the serpent! Mix a little truth with a lie of omission and voila, have the faithful eating out of your hands! Oh I see they are already aren’t they?

The truth is pluripotency is only available from EMBRYO related products, like cord blood, placenta and of course embryonic stem cells. Now totipotency is available from the sources I am sure is meant here, as in adult stem cells but pluripotency, mmmm-going to need something close to umm, conception like activities.

Shall we explore some more truth?

No one is ever going to use foreign DNA material stem cells for the repair of anything! In other words, IVF leftovers were never expected to be used for cures. I sure the heck do not want any recently mixed of two strangers DNA-containing cell material placed in my spine!

More truth for those interested. It is hardly ever mentioned that IVF uses techniques to mimic the woman’s body in its role to weed the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. That’s too much information for the faithful lest they see through the subtleties. Many of those discarded embryos are discarded for the same reason they would never have implanted naturally in the first place, had they been naturally produced, because in all likelihood they had errors in DNA replication or other. This is not such the hindrance to research if they will never be used for actual treatments because we can still learn from what they do.

The reason for using IVF generated embryonic stem cells is ONLY, and always was, for learning nature’s tricks!

Here’s the fundamental truth of truths! The goal has always been to bypass using embryonic stem cells altogether! As a matter of fact this has finally just been done! Would that this goal had been more widely presented but then it wouldn’t create such a hot button issue to rally the faithful, would it now?

What Mr. Jlubin has not mentioned about his alleged other sources for pluripotent cells is equally troubling. In order to be useful and not consign us all to life sentences of compromised immune systems -- because we would must needs take immuno-suppressant drugs the rest of our lives – would necessarily need cause the actual bringing to life a real living and breathing packed with information human being. To be brought into the world, just so we could rob some of their cord blood, now that’s just special.

The same goes for placental stem cells. I don’t know about the rest of anyone but I cringe when I hear tales of babies born just to cure big sister or Dad, etc. Will they be treated as fairly as if there were not an ulterior motive to their planned existence? Indeed they could not be asked for permission so is that in itself fair? How will they feel when they learn that if not for another’s need they would not even exist? Show me the love!

Another thing overlooked in Mr. Jlubin’s logic is that any stem cells that are pluripotent regardless where they come from can indeed become a human under the right circumstances. If placed in the same conditions that he claims the mere possibility of alone requires us to consider them as being potential human beings with full government protected right to life. This by he and his ilk is considered ‘a given’ regardless if embryonic stem cells would even ever be so treated.

Well that’s the rub is it not? It’s the “right to life” issue that IS most telling here. I say again, all embryonic stem cell research objections are NOTHING BUT a WEDGE ISSUE for anti abortionists.

Mr. Jlubin, can you say you vote for freedom of a woman’s right to choice?

IMPORTANT LOGIC POINT FOLLOWS:

Here is another question for you. It highlights the flaw in your fundamental logic that embryos are persons.

Suppose for sake of argument you are fully capable of the tasks I am about to put forth.

Scenario:
You find yourself visiting an IVF clinic one day, perhaps to get dirt for shutting them down since you say you also object to them as well. For cove and stealth sake you have a friend or sibling or wife or child with you. But the thing is the more radical of your ilk neglected to tell you they intended taking more direct action that day. You find yourself waking up from a sudden shock from he force of a fire bombing that has induced a brief lapse of consciousness. Your loved one is across the room lying still unconscious as flames encroach nearby. As luck would have it or perhaps providence, a number of petri dishes that you recognize to at that moment be containing live embryos has landed in your lap, they total over one hundred.

Question:
Do you drop the one hundred “potential human beings with rights to life and government protection” and rescue your loved one or friend or even a stranger? You cannot carry the one hundred potential humans and rescue the breathing person too, not even one of the dishes and besides if you chose to make a choice of which dish to choose, just which one would you pick? Talk about playing god.

I don’t expect an answer to this above query because anyone reading the scenario knows well beforehand, you cannot answer it and still justify your position. How terrible a person you would have to be to stand by your stated opinion and choose to save the potential lives of the one hundred POTENTIAL HUMANS over ANY living breathing human being with INFORMATION, especially a loved one! One hundred vs one hmmm, oh the quandry.

I rest my case.

Look folks, this is not rocket science. Allow embryonic stem cell research to go forward. I promise it will not lead to wholesale harvesting of embryos or women selling their eggs or renting their wombs or any of the dozen or so strawman horrors that the ill informed and the willfully misinforming have placed as deterrents in the path of progress. It has already been proven we can turn adult cells from your own body into pluripotent stem cells capable of the promise that embryonic stem cells have been promoted for. We only need the actual embryonic stem cells for so long as is required to suss out all their tricks. Is that not reasonable?

Real people, with feelings, hopes and dreams, with the knowledge of loving and being loved are dying while heartless proselytizers mislead and obfuscate the truth in the debate. There should never have been a debate but alas science education in this country is abysmal.

I will make a prediction however. Since he stem cells from co-opted adult cells will be “pluripotent” the right to lifers will still object to them because after all, if they were to be implanted in a womb they too would have human potentiality.

They, if so implanted -- wait-for-it, would become clones!

"Oh the horror!" Umm, not!

FutureQ

Adendum: I strongly recommend the video lecture on the nature of "Potentially Human" and the problems with that notion by Dr. Lee M. Silver found here. Anyone concerned by the embryonic stem cell culture war needs to see this video!