Jim, I'm with you 100%, and I think that you presented it very well and very clearly.
I'm puzzled as to why umbilical cord blood cannot be used; lots of stem cells there, easily available, and no life-no life ethical questions to wrestle.
Sam
-------------- Original message --------------
From: Jim Lubin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
At 07:17 AM 7/26/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Jim,
So sorry not to include that the donor is "Brain--dead", a in a Vegetative state- being kept "Alive" by various machines.
And that gets us back to the question of when is someone "alive".
Usually the patient is affirmed, by three physicians, to be "Dead." before transplant.
This is a difficult question that physicians have to decide frequently.
Frank
Frank,
I think you just made my point, it is a difficult question.
"Brain dead" and "vegetative state" are not the same. A brain-dead individual has no electrical activity and no clinical evidence of brain function on neurologic examination. They are kept "alive" by life-support (such as the ventilator keeping me alive). Patients in a persistent vegetative state are usually considered to be unconscious and unaware. They are unresponsive to external stimuli, except, possibly, pain stimuli. Unlike coma, in which ! the pat ient's eyes are closed, patients in a vegetative state often open their eyes. They are kept alive by a feeding tube to provide nutrition to patients who cannot obtain nutrition by swallowing.
But the same applies, they are determined to be dead before organs are removed for transplant.
With human embryos created for IVF that are viable and frozen (i.e. on life support), someone decides they will no longer be used to implant into a uterus to continue development. Stem cells are not removed from something dead just something that will no longer be kept frozen or implanted. If the embryo is dead, with no activity, what use would the stem cells be?
I've been re-educating myself in biology before reaching my decision.
From a biological standpoint, Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm cell, and the female gamete, the ovum, fuse to give rise to a diploid cell, the zygote. At that point the single celled z! ygote b egins to divide completely by itself. If that what defines a "life" in non-human creature then why not in humans as well? Makes sense to me. I'm not talking about a soul or self awareness but a genetic human life. If the zygote did not continue to divide to a multi celled embryo then there would be no stem cells to extract. So, to me, there must be something "intelligent" to the process.
In humans, when fertilization happens in the uterus the process of development next continues to a fetus. IVF changes the environment where fertilization happens but it does do anything differently than nature to start the cell division process.
Some say a brain or brain activity determines life. Some people say blood determines life. Since no one knows with absolute certainty, I chose to error on the side of it's a life from the point of fertilization.
In vitro fertilisation (IVF), I am personally against it, but it's legal.
Human ! embryo research, I am personally against it, but it's legal.
Abortion at any stage after fertilization, I am personally against it, but it's legal.
Do I think the government should fund any of those legal medical procedures? No!
Government funding of stem cell research from sources that do not come from human embryos? Absolutely!
Jim
