Another psychopath judge makes an insane activist ruling

[piasabird]

growing anything from stemcells from embryos is most likely just going to produce deformed cells. It is very wasteful. You can still do this, but US federal funding will just not pay for it.

 

[woolfe9999]

You are woefully optimistic, especially this close to the election. Right wing extremism is in full tilt mode. Notice how warm, kind and accepting of all religious faiths and minorities the electorate is these days.

Nah, I think the bulk of the GOP would vote against changing the law. But do you really think that people like Collins, Snowe and Brown, all from strongly pro-choice, pro stem cell research states would participate in a fillibuster of this? They've crossed party lines already on several other issues.

They can change this law so that it still precludes actual embryo destruction being federally funded, but doesn't preclude research that is based on it. So that makes the change pretty moderate.

- wolf

 

[Aegeon]

There have been many areas where embryonic stem cells seemed to be more promising; none have yet panned out. Injecting someone with cells which are genetically of a different individual, much less cells which have already been activated for the purpose of producing a baby, seems to me to be a foolish thing on its surface, and to date clinical trials have fallen in line as the embryonic cells group and form a tumor (what one would expect to get growing an embryo without benefit of a womb.) Personally I think embryonic stem cells will be a dead end for treatments, although some breakthroughs in treating disorders without using embryonic stem cells may well result from the basic research.

If you look at my previous link, not only have embryonic stem cells been successful in animal trials in allowing rats with broken spines and paralyzed rear legs to successfully walk again using all their legs, but Geron is now starting human trials of this same treatment. Yes its not going to be at the formally approved FDA treatment level for awhile, but that's basically a matter of human level trials simply taking time to make sure there are not unexpected long term side effects.

If the tumor risk was viewed as being too serious, the FDA would not have allowed even Geron's current human trial to go forward. There were possibly some additional cysts detected in rats, but since they were benign, that's not a reason to disallow this treatment. To put things in perspective, even if there is a slightly increased risk of cancer from the treatment which Geron can't get rid of, this is still absolutely a worthwhile treatment to use for curing something like serious paralysis.

 

[Aegeon]

growing anything from stemcells from embryos is most likely just going to produce deformed cells. It is very wasteful. You can still do this, but US federal funding will just not pay for it.

This is just wrong as stated. With some of the latest techniques such as Geron's this is simply not the case. While there was an apparently slightly higher risk of small benign cysts in animal testing, this is by no means a bar to using this as a treatment and of course this still means the overwhelming portion of what is grown from embryonic stem cell using such techniques is not deformed in any respect.

By contrast, the techniques trying to turn adult stem cell into something equivalent to embryonic stem cells have so far run into far more serious problems with tumor formation.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

quite an activist ruling.....not only does it overturn Obama's efforts regarding stem cell research, but also GWB's also.

as someone already pointed out, where's the conservative wailing with regards to disposing of embryos? at least with stem cell research these embryos are being put to use instead of simply being discarded.