[timr]

There are so many angles to this story that involve the tension between the forces of conservative thinking, and innovators who are trying to make the world a better place. Ignore the idiotic airport security problem, and you're still left with an amazing, improbable story about the world-changing consequences of an emerging technology that religious luddites keep trying to destroy.

Only a few short years ago, our society was getting its collective panties in a knot over the ethics of stem cell research. The US president made a strong movement to kill that research in the womb (pardon the pun). At the time, nobody could convincingly enumerate the medical benefits of the work...because it was research. Now we're synthesizing body parts. Amazing. How many years of human life will be saved? There's no upper limit. "Pro-life", indeed.

Save this story, and use it the next time you're in an argument with someone who wants to stop pure intellectual exploration in the name of vague, supernatural objections.

(Edit: Yes, these particular organs are being synthesized from adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. But it's a distinction without a difference -- we cannot predict what advancements or understanding will come from any given line of research. The argument is greater than the adjective.)

[Turing_Machine]

These aren't embryonic stem cells. No one has a problem with adult stem cells (well, I suppose the folks who refuse all forms of medical treatment might).

[timr]

"No one has a problem with adult stem cells."

Untrue. There are/were plenty of groups who object to all stem cell research. Embryonic cells are just the most controversial segment. (Consider this thought experiment: take a fully differentiated human cell, and transform it such that it is capable of generating a embryo. Do you think this won't generate objections on religious grounds?)

The heart of the debate is that our knowledge is pushing relentlessly against the darkness of superstition, and that makes some people uncomfortable -- just as every scientific advancement has made people uncomfortable. We're just in a sad period where these people have greater influence over our society's decisions.

[Turing_Machine]

"There are/were plenty of groups who object to all stem cell research."

Can you name a few? Thanks. To the best of my knowledge, no major religious group opposes adult stem cell research.

[timr]

How about bishops in the Catholic Church?

http://www.lifenews.com/2006/08/23/bio-1727/

'Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, an expert on bioethics issues, told the Associated Press the research "raises more ethical questions than it answers."..."It is widely believed that one cell of a very early embryo may separate and become a new embryo, an identical twin," Doerflinger told the Associated Press.'

Here's another response to the same experiment, which better captures the root of the objections:

http://cathnews.acu.edu.au/608/140.html

'"Regardless of the speculated benefits, no human being, particularly the most vulnerable, should be treated as raw material which we can manipulate and manufacture," Mr O'Gorman said.'

[Turing_Machine]

That has nothing whatsoever to do with adult stem cells.

Did you miss the part that was talking about embryos or what?

Update: try this http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.ph...

If you think the Catholic Church is opposed to adult stem cell research, you're simply misinformed.

[timr]

It has everything to do with them: there's no such thing as an "adult" stem cell. There are only differentiated and undifferentiated cells, and "embryonic" is a useful description only insofar as it describes the source of origin of an established cell line. The techniques that those quotes were concerning don't destroy embryos -- they turn differentiated cells into undifferentiated cells -- but that's enough to trigger the objections.

Said another way, there's no fundamental reason that "adult" stem can't be converted to an "embryonic" state. And the quotes above illustrate that once you do that, you run afoul of the opponents. The religious groups don't want to prohibit "embryonic" stem cell research; they want to prevent anyone from doing any sort of science that they perceive to be in violation of their notion of human-being-ness. Science doesn't support the distinctions that they're making, and therefore, the conflict is unresolvable.

[Xcelerate]

You completely misread his question. He wasn't referring to embryonic stem cells at all. I think hardly anyone has a problem with using something like mesenchymal stem cells for cartilage regeneration (well, the FDA maybe, but that's a different story).

[aptwebapps]

> We're just in a sad period where these people have greater influence over our society's decisions.

Greater than when, exactly? Things could be a lot worse.