O.K. I need help deciding whether to support embroynic stem cell research or not? Please provide your reasons for supporting it or not to support it. Thanks:confused:

Someone might want to move this to RL issues :).

One question before we start, Grixxly - is this for a school assignment of some sort?

Regards,
Nydia

If it's for a debate class, you should instead attack the implicit assumptions of the question. Always a crowd pleaser.

Actually I'm looking into the pro's and cons of stem cell research specifically ESC research because I'm seriously considering gifting a large amount of money in my will to the cause and just wanted some thoughts.

I will leave the more knowledgable to provide specifics of the pro/con debate, and will simply add that from the newspaper, news magazine, news programs interviews and reports that I have seen and read, I would consider this to be on a par with juvenile diabetes research and cancer research as the three worthy causes to donate to as you are stating.

And, the stem cell research also overlaps some with the other two from what I have gleaned from the information.

This might seem a little.. personal, but unless you're going to be kicking the bucket soon, or you plan on rewriting your will every few years, I'd consider something akin to what Bylimet suggested. I'm not sure how old you are, but the nature of stem cell research is likely to be very different 50 years from now. I figure we'll either be using it to replace/repair defective body parts, or we'll be making creepy sex homunculi.

Both are good causes though, I guess.

I'm pretty strung out from lack of sleep at the moment, and not as up on the specifics of what is happening in research in this area as I should be, but I can say that embryonic stem cell research is a very worthwhile cause to donate to, and is already showing a great deal of promise in terms of dealing with both juvenile diabetes and other organ/tissue loss based diseases. The trick is to get the cells, once you have them, into differentiating into the type you want once you have them in culture.

Adults don't produce totipotent (can differentiate into anything) stem cells, so thus far, we've been limited to the tissue types that normally produce stem cell lines in adults (bone marrow derived blood cell and osteoblast lines, mainly). Even so, German scientists actually managed to grow new bone last year using bone marrow stem cells and were able to succesfully replace a man's cancerous jaw by growing him a new one on a scaffold made of cow's bone and stem cells allowed to grow on his shoulder blade - he chewed his first meal in 9 years last summer.

Truly totipotent stem cells are only produced by very early stage (~ 7 days) embryos, and receive their 'instructions' on what to differentiate into based on where they are positionally in the embryo, and what sort of cells they are in contact with via cell surface receptors and receptor-mediated cascades. It is hoped, for example, that by producing pancreatic scaffolds and the appropriate growth factors that we might be able to induce islet cell growth (in order to treat Type I diabetes, where insulin is not produced at all), and employ similar techniques in order to repair or replace other organs.

There are some concerns, as you probably know, about the 'use' of early-stage embryos in this way. Something that is worth mentioning is that tens of thousands of frozen embryos are currently destroyed (often by law) in this country and Great Britain every year because they have been in frozen storage and have either become too old or will not ever be implanted into their rightful owners (they have all the children they desire, for example. Secondly, embryos are actually only required for this technology for the purpose of creating cell lines; once the lines are established, one does not need to continually create and use embryos for this purpose.

I hope that helps a bit, and I apologize for not including a couple of links for you; my mouse is in its death throes and conflicted out again about halfway through this post and I can't grab anything to link for you at the moment - if I have time, I'll try to do so for you later this afternoon.

Regards,
Nydia

Have I not read somewhere that they are able to harvest the needed cells required from placenta and such?

Also Nydia said

Even so, German scientists actually managed to grow new bone last year using bone marrow stem cells and were able to succesfully replace a man's cancerous jaw by growing him a new one on a scaffold made of cow's bone and stem cells allowed to grow on his shoulder blade - he chewed his first meal in 9 years last summer

Man, that had to be the best meal ever. Hope it works out for the guy, gave me goosebumps thinking about how it must have felt.

Fandros

Nydia Thank you very much for your thoughts

Dear Grixxly:

Unfortunately, I'm probably as close to an expert as you are likely to find on the topic posting on *this* board, being as I am (I think) the only person with any formal education in Cell/Molecular Biology (MS in Biology (Parasitology) + 2 years/BS in Microbiology), and at least *some* actual acquaintance with the topic who hangs out here regularly, and this board is devoted to a videogame. Not to take a swipe at you either, but you might be better off heading to MEDLINE or using one of the available multi-journal search engines yourself (EBSCO, WilsonWeb, etc) and digging up some papers on what is going on yourself, or I can try to dig some up for you when time allows - it's dead week here and I have a huge pile of student papers to deal with. Best of luck with your search.

Regards,
Nydia

Actually pretty recently (as in the past few months or so) they have discovered pluripotent (thats how I've learned it anyway, have not heard of totipotent) stem cells in human hair folicles as well as bone marrow. I wish I had a link on hand, but they took a human hair folicle stem cell they had seperated and cultured en-vitro (a bit antiquated, sure but the idea is the same. Seperating it from the rest of the cells and putting it in a petri dish or other container for obsveration), and then applying one of the 220 (or was it 226? Man I need to remember this stuff) protein paths, was able to turn it into a motor neuron that would be commonly found in the spine.

While this may seem like a "huh?" to some people, there are 4 main branchs of "adult" stem cells, that is to say everything past the embryonic stem cell stage, which is at about 6 days of division when they're 'ripe for the taking' as I've heard it. The 4 main branchs are neuralogical (thats not the proper name, but anything having to do with the brain, motor neurons in the spine, etc), muscles (pretty self explanatory but again I don't remember the proper name), fast growing stuff (hair, fingernails, skin, anything that needs to be replaced in mass amounts every day since they die so quickly), and I'm drawing a total blank on what the last one is.

Anyway, by the Central Dogma, adult stem cells can only make the differentiated cells that are on their trees, and nothing else. They can NOT be pluripotent by this definition, because it simply does not work. However, how does one explain taking a hair folicle, a source of "fast growing" cells (sorry about the crudeness of that name, I wish I could remember), and turning into a neuron found in the spine?

This is a rather exciting jump in the whole stem cell research field. While not too much has been released as of yet as to how efficient or inefficient this process is, it means that if it can be done en-masse, we can avoid going near human embryos altogether, despite the fact that with "the dream" (the idea that one day we'll have all of the cell pathways mapped out) we could give people who are born with extremely debilitating diseases, or who develop them at later ages (alzheimers comes to mind since my grandmother had it and parkinsons before she died) a chance to live out their lives with the same shot as the people who are more healthy.

Still, I suppose there would still exist an ethical issue as to how they would be used. Should they be used to cure, or should they be used to 'better', or both? Whats to stop people from using gene therapy (not to be confused with cloning, cloning is an entirely different process except for the beginning) to extend their lifespans indefinately? Aging is our organs ceasing to function the way they should be in the generalist way to say it, so if they can be replaced with cloned organs (there have been experiments cloning organs using stem cells, though again I can't think of any offhand) whats to stop humans from becoming biologically immortal? A cancerous cell is biologically immortal because it no longer has the telomeres that dictate its lifespan, and can live forever. What would we become?

OK Cloudwalker thank you very much for your interesting imput

haha..negative rep points inc..lol

I think stem cell research is a good thing, it helps and seems to have some potential in cures.

In response to your original question,


I need help deciding weather to support embroynic stem cell research or not?

No, weather provides no direct support to embryonic stem research. Chairs and tables do, though!

And woodchucks eat chairs and tables!

I was responding to Nydia, but if you feel like attacking me, go for it. It interests me, yep. Call me a woodchuck if you wish.

By the way:

"The term immortalization was first applied to cancer cells that developed the telomere-lengthening enzyme telomerase, and thereby avoided cellular senescence." (Which, for your knowledge, is when a cell is recycled.) Sorry I wasn't quite clear. They're not immortal in the sense that they never die. They just do not age in the cellular sense, they can still be cut apart, or irradiated, burnt, etc.

I don't think I'll answer your question though, since I'd rather you come up with your own opinion before I offer you mine.

I will no longer reply back to woodchucks!

Huh? Aren't you the one looking for replies? And what the fuck are you doing calling people woodchucks?

Regarding your will, your primary concern should be finding someone more coherent than yourself to write it for you. Given your claim to knowing so much about "telemeres" and your failure to spell the word correctly, I fear you might fuck up the name of one of your beneficiaries, which could lead to confusion.

Hey Mdana!

I remember hearing about the hair follicle stem cell extraction a few months ago, and if I recall correctly, they regressed those cells in much the same way that the udder cells were prepared to clone Dolly (and mammals since), that is to say, by starving them back into a G0 nondividing state for a while? In any case, the term pluripotent used to refer to a cell that can differentiate into more than one cell type (but of a limited number of types, usually of the same lineage), while totipotent referred to a *completely* undifferentiated cell that can develop into *anything*. I think, however, that term may be becoming obsolete; it was used in the late 1990s, when I was in graduate school, but is not used on NIH's site currently. That having been said, even the cells that are harvested from early-stage embryos for research are most often early blastocoel (proto-endoderm) cells, taken after the blastula begins to invaginate 4-5 days after conception, so *some* differentiation has already occured :).

Btw, for those who are interested, a couple of nice links to recent research and breakthroughs involving embryonic stem cells can be found on NIH's website here:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/Scilit/highlights/
http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/literature.asp

and a very nice and comprehensive primer on stem cells can be found here:

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/

My impression of the work done on the hair follicle (epithelial is the word I believe you were looking for, btw :) ) cells is that these are still limited in terms of what they will differentiate into (that they will differentiate into glial cells is pretty amazing, though :)), but it *is* exciting that so much plasticity is being discovered, as well as adult stem cells in places we didn't think they existed. Recently, cardiac stem cells were found, which is significant because cardiac muscle is fundamentally different from striated/smooth muscle and preliminary studies using bone marrow stromal cells have not demonstrated that they can pick up cardiac cell attributes (apparently CNS stem cells can but this has not yet been tested in vivo). I think that even if more adult lines and adult stem cell plasticity is demonstrated, there will be a valid and vital place for embryonic stem cells in this sort of research, largely because ESCs possess an ability that, to date, no adult stem cell lines have demonstrated: the ability to convert adult cells in vitro *and* in vivo back into pluripotent stem cells. Hot stuff, eh?

To the OP, please forgive Mdana and I for wasting your (and, apparently, our) valuable time by forcing you to read polite, considered replies; we perhaps absurdly assumed that you might be interested in some of the current science behind an area of research you are considering donating to in order to help you make up your mind as to whether this is an endeavor you might wish to support. Truthfully, it was difficult to determine *what* you were asking for in your initial, poorly written post, and since your initial reply clarification asked for pros and cons, and your subsequent reply to me came down rather hard on me for my lack of 'useful' data on the topic, it was reasonable to assume that you actually cared to know something about the state of the technology and potential ethical issues around it so that you could, you know, make up your own mind on the issue?. Is it that hard to extract your *own* 'pros and cons' from such? If you just wanted people's unsupported *opinions*, I'm sure you could find plenty of folks who could tell you: "OMG, Embryonic Stem Cell research pwns!1!one!! Only losers don't support it, noob" or something along those lines, but if you're looking for someone to give you a laundry list of why you should or should not invest your money (even post-mortem) in ESC, you should be thankful that most scientists aren't salesmen... yet.

My stance on the issue, were you simply looking for an opinion, should have been implicit from my initial reply to you, in any case, but if you're looking for dialogue, why not share yours?

Regards,
Nydia

Rover was the only one who answered the question the way it should have been answered.

No, weather provides no direct support to embryonic stem research. Chairs and tables do, though!

And woodchucks eat chairs and tables!

Therefore, woodchucks must be against embryonic stem cell research! It's all so clear now...

Why do I envision some sort of cyborg woodchuck, controlled the Christian Coalition, running around and demolishing researchers' lab table space?

Dear Grixxly:

To most people, data is a good thing to look for if you're trying to come to an informed opinion on something. Or do you simply intend to tally the 'yes' and 'no' votes and let mob rule from a bunch of random strangers (granted, some of my best friends are random strangers ;) ) on a board devoted to a *video game* decide what you should do with your estate? Or were you fishing for a moral debate of some sort? I have nothing against Rover, but 'it helps' from a bunch of folks you don't know seems to be a pretty vague basis to base a financial decision on, if you ask me. However, if you really need my opinion spelled out loudly and slowly, I favor funding embryonic stem cell research because we can learn an enormous amount about how the pathways of cell differentiation unfold, and relieve a lot of suffering, by doing so. I won't bother including links, since you don't appear to be interested in them, but there *are* a couple of good ones in the post above.

Regards,
Nydia

Thank You for your input Nydia.

/thumbs the neg respect button....

Personally I enjoyed reading the info provided by those knowledgeable about this subject.

Name slinging because you're too blasted obtuse in your intial question is childish Grxxly.

Fandros

fandros i think that's knowledgeable information

Grixx....

You hardly sound cognizant enough to recognize a mammal from a reptile let alone destinguish between various members of the rodent family.

I'd bow to Nydia's input long before I listen to your hash slinging, Deliverance inspired diatrabe.

Fandros

Thank You all for your kind comments

/chuckle

Standard fare for you and your ilk isn't it Grixx? Question your ability to communicate and engage in intelligent debate and you devolve even one step more. Hell from the looks of your initial posts you already suffer from a condition that has your knuckles dragging the ground and your brow pushed down over your field of vision.

Child...

Fandros

What the hell is a woodchuck in this environment and why should it bother anyone?

Just curious, since said child just hit me with a "woodchuck" rep hit. heh

Fandros

So, you want my opinion Mr. Eightposts? If you die and give your money to stem cell research, you have my support. But please, by all means, do it soon, ok?

Hell from the looks of your initial posts you already suffer from a condition that has your knuckles dragging the ground and your brow pushed down over your field of vision.


Nothing stem cells couldn't fix!

So grixx is insulting the very people he was asking opinions of. Nice. And here I had high hopes that this thread would be very informative and not devolve into poo slinging.

Then again, it has been informative, but pity about that poo part.

Oh grixx, you can use that "Quote" button in the lower right corner to make your attempts at quoting people a little easier to read.

What the hell is a woodchuck in this environment and why should it bother anyone?


EXACTLY! so you attack me

So grixx is insulting the very people he was asking opinions of. Nice. And here I had high hopes that this thread would be very informative and not devolve into poo slinging.

Then again, it has been informative, but pity about that poo part.



Hey I got attacked by a bunch of overreacting woodchucks

Smell that?

It's cute,
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y97/Tranzure/japant1.jpg
but it's still a troll

I checked the threads this morning before heading off to work, and I was pretty confident that this was the theme I would see in this thread by the time breaktime rolled around.

Wish I could have made a vbookie bet on this one, hehe.

I'm sure woodchucks don't play in sandboxes. Grixxly should be safe and alone with his stem cells here.

Wow. Come to a message board for a gaming community to ask for "serious" input on a medical topic, get it from undoubtedly the most qualified member of the community, and then shit on said community. Are you related to Schelp and Dante? My personal favorites are the posts he "deleted".

Yes, you are so right and perfect

haha someone turn the Shep magnet already.

Hi grixxly I see you have a problem with stuttering you must be the love child of Dante and Schlep.

I'm sure woodchucks don't play in sandboxes. Grixxly should be safe and alone with his stem cells here.

Nice Try but your theory didn't work as the woodchucks popped back in again Woodchucks GO HOME!!!!

Are you really that upset the whole board didn't line up to do your homework assignment for you?

Are you really that upset the whole board didn't line up to do your homework assignment for you?

No I'm not upset but thanks for your concern

Ummm, anyone check the address of this troll and compare to Shep's?

I may come to regret coming to post in here again, but I don't have the time or energy to tackle the Iraq thread du jour yet so, in response to Fandros' question:

What the hell is a woodchuck in this environment and why should it bother anyone?

I'm guessing that our mystery date's use of the word 'woodchuck' is a play on that silly tongue twister: "How many chucks would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?", meant to imply that the posters were just 'chucking wood' instead of providing him with any 'useful' information on the topic based on whatever bizarre internal definition he has for such. I'd like to remind the OP that his initial, edited-multiple-times request consisted of a single sentence (with multiple misspellings and syntax errors), and gave no clues as to what *sort* of information he might consider useful, nor what his general level of knowledge on the topic was going in - so what you got from me was a generalist reply based on what I could come up with in the few moments I had free before my evening Microbiology lab/lecture.

I'm still a bit curious as to whether he was in fact under a deadline to write an opinion paper for school, or was a fundie-in-waiting hoping for Jesus to somehow raise his bloody head in relation to the topic (with no disrespect meant to either Christians or sanctity-of-life folks). That he would not offer *any* opinion on the topic or engage in any actual dialogue on it inclines me to believe the former...

For future reference, Grixxly, if you want people to actually *discuss* a topic with you, try offering something of your own (other than 'go smoke a pole' or musings on your woodchuck obsession :) ) to the debate...

And fyi, thanks for the rep comments, but 1) I wasn't one of the folks who neg-repped you, and 2) when your reputation falls below zero, your hits don't actually count. If this *is* Shep, it appears that he's in the hole again, alas. Now, where can I find some tables and chairs to gnaw on? I'm feeling a bit peckish...

Regards,
Nydia

Oh, and +rep to Fildien for the "Touched by his noodly appendage" sig. I'm expecting my "Global Warming vs the Number of Pirates" poster to arrive any day now!

Regards,
Nydia

I was third to neg rep grix!

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Mr. Grxxly is someone we already know.

Nydia's admittedly the formost authority on this subject out of everyone on this board. So, it stands to reason if somone wanted to yank her chain, he/she might ask a pointed question and then start with the insults.

Still smells funny to me...

...and that's what I get for not noticing that there's a second page of posts already.

I'm still a bit curious as to whether he was in fact under a deadline to write an opinion paper for school, or was a fundie-in-waiting hoping for Jesus to somehow raise his bloody head in relation to the topic (with no disrespect meant to either Christians or sanctity-of-life folks). That he would not offer *any* opinion on the topic or engage in any actual dialogue on it inclines me to believe the former...

For future reference, Grixxly, if you want people to actually *discuss* a topic with you, try offering something of your own (other than 'go smoke a pole' or musings on your woodchuck obsession :) ) to the debate...

OK I'm going to pack this thread up and move along because it's going nowhere fast. Nydia for your curiousity my original intention still holds true about my will. It's kind of sad that my first experience here turned out the way it did. I'm considering starting another thread and applying your logic to it inorder to get a good dialogue started I hope you take part as it seems geared toward your knowledge. Grixxly

Dream Theater - The Great Debate

It's kind of sad that my first experience here turned out the way it did.
You of course realize that this thread ended up the way it did as a result of your own actions?

I'm sure folks here would be willing to give you a shot at redemption. Just take it down a notch and don't begrudge those posters that reply, even if it seems a bit off topic, or is not a direct answer to your question. We do that a lot here.

http://www.netmediazone.net/adobe/tarzan-hogarth.gif

It's kind of sad that my first experience here turned out the way it did.

It is however completely sad you want to assign responsibility for that to people other than yourself.