9 replies to this topic

[jaydfox]

Well, I posted this topic in the "Open Discussion" forum, because I thought I had to be a full member to post in the focused fora. It's my first day here, so I apologize.

Anyway, I'll keep it short, and link to the other topic I posted (sorry for the hassle): Moral dilemma of emryonic stem cells

Basically, it boils down to three questions. First, since the cells in the earliest stages of the embryo are not yet differentiated, would an embryo really miss one or two stem cells? How many cells could safely be removed, and still leave a viable embryo that could be implanted?

Second, why destroy the embryo? Why not freeze it, and then thaw and repair it once the technology is available to repair injured embryos?

I also have a third question which is harder to summarize without explaining it. Basically, take some stem cells, then put the embryo in a state of minimal or zero development (freeze it maybe?). Multiply the stem cells that were extracted, perhaps with two to four cell division cycles. Finally, return the embryo to a normal state, and put a sufficient number of stem cells back to undo as much damage as possible. Once sufficiently recovered from the trauma, implant the embryo.

I suppose at this point, I should mention that I am not a biologist.

Thanks much for considering my questions!

Jay Fox

[Lazarus Long]

Do you understand the difference between Embryonic Stem Cells (ESC) and Adult Stem Cells (ASC)?

There are manners of acquiring stem cells from many sources, including the umbilical cords of the infant. Taking such cells from a fetus would be considered an undue hazard. Have you read on stem cells much?

Do you understand that once the lines of stem cells are developed (cultured) there doesn't have to be the use of fetal tissues as much and no fetus is *destroyed* solely to create stem cells. Most embryos used today come from excess fertilization for in vitro implantation. No one will be using those embryos and they will in all likelihood be destroyed no matter whether the stem cells are harvested or not.

This is not even about abortion because these embryos were fertilized outside the womb to begin with and have a near zero chance of reaching maturity. When preparing an in vitro fertilization many many eggs are fertilized and only the best candidates are implanted and usually not too many for the risk of multiple births. Normally these fertilized ova are never stored as the risks to the fetus would be too high so fertilization is performed each time there is an intended pregnancy.

Take a while to read the news clipping and subject analysis we have here in the forum.
Stem Cell News
http://www.imminst.o...T&f=44&t=873&s=

AS Cell Harvesting
http://www.imminst.o...&f=44&t=3708&s=

You will find a considerable amount of discussion on this topic in a variety of forum areas.

[jaydfox]

I suppose I should have clarified that I'm not opposed to using left over IVF eggs for creating stem cell lines. However, the major roadblock to this approach has been the moral dilemma I cited. I'm simply looking for a way around it.

By the way, if umbilical cord stem cells are as good as embryonic stem cells taken from 3 week old embryos, then why aren't more lines being created from this widely available source?

Jay Fox

[apocalypse]

1) you are destroying a living human organism (i.e., murder), and 2) you are using the embryo as a biological tool, degrading it as though it were something non-human

Maybe if we just asked: "What is biological life?", "what's so important about the embryo?" , "What is special about it?"

Do you know that it's just a machine, that is molecular machinery, that the difference between a dog's embryo, a human's embryo, and some other cell is just a difference in genetic structure/expression and a few other proteins, molecules. That is there is no special "life energy", there is no humanistic essence in there, alot of the genes are shared with other species, and if say you had a small error in a gene here or there, or something went wrong here or there, it might develop brainless or incapable of developing into a living human?

A few undifferentiated human cells, have no real moral weight. Those who deny this truth are either ignorant, or somehow have managed to blind themselves to accepting the true ramifications of the truths that are made evident even in introductory biology courses. That is cells, are akin to nanobots, they're molecular machinery, they hold no moral value. Only when differentiated and in groups in structures that can harbor conscience(e.g.brains) do they hold any moral weight.

Currently we've created viruses out of mere chemicals in a few weeks, it's expected in a few years bacteria will follow. It's not too unrealistic to consider the possibility that some day with advances in technology a full eukaryotic cell could be manufactured out of simple chemicals. Thus if we can create an embryo from scratch, should we imbue these simple molecules with value for they could develop into a full human if allowed to go through an advanced process in the lab? No my friend, we should not. A machine or a piece of material no matter if in some possible configuration might harbor conscience(say carbon, or some proteins, or some cells, or some nanobots or whatever), hold's no moral weight unless it's acquired such a configuration.

That is a hammer or a piece of clay, or piece of graphite, has no moral value. Nor does a car, nor does a modern computer, or a bacteria, or a human cell. Machines no matter how complex or small, or what abilities they may hold, or what possible configurations they may one day hold, do NOT have any moral weight, unless they acquire the mentioned configuration. A few elements like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc, have no moral value true a combination of many of these elements could yield a cell or a human one day if we used nanotech or the like, but that DOES NOT GIVE THESE MORAL weight. Only once a configuration suitable for consciousness/sentience/etc is present should they hold any value, otherwise they're just instruments and materials, and however we may like these, a hammer or a microscope has no moral value, nor does a simple cell, these are simply machines, tools, instruments.

edited

[jaydfox]

I suppose I should have further clarified that these are not moral dilemmas to me. I personally don't believe that an embryo has a "soul" until it has a brain. Whether we count the first budding of the brain, or a brain that has functional lobes, gray matter, brain waves, the whole nine yards, I can't say for sure.

Although I'm religious, I nonetheless am not ignorant of science, and I have no problem accepting scientific explanations of how life functions. After all, we are living in a material world (and I am a material girl... j/k), and our souls must be able to interact with this world. Perhaps upon achieving sentience, some part of us exists in tandem with our bodies outside this three dimensional plane (e.g., as in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn triology). Or maybe not; maybe our souls, being limited compared to God's, can be contained entirely in the matter that composes our bodies. I see no reason that religion and science cannot coexist.

So if we assume that the soul is an extension of the mind, then it must reside in the nervous system, primarily the brain (and perhaps to some extent in the upper spinal cord). Moreover, it must be a functional brain. Clearly, a 4-month fetus has a functional brain. A 4 week embryo does not. Where the crossover occurs (more of a process than an event) is a debate that unfortunately hasn't been settled to my satisfaction. I also admit that I haven't studied the exact stages of brain development in the embryo/fetus, which could allow me to at least narrow down that wide range somewhat more.

But, that said, I don't see any problem with using embryos prior to four weeks, maybe even five or six. (On the flipside, for those who are curious, I am adamantly opposed to abortion beyond the fourth month, except in legitimate medical circumstances, including rape and incest. We can argue what legitimate means later. So I'm willing to err on the side of a woman's right to choose, taking the high end of the scale, but I'm also willing to err on the side of caution in the case of stems cells, so the low end of the scale) At any rate, four weeks is plenty of time for harvesting stem cells.

So, when I was asking how to get out of this moral dilemma, I was looking for a way to appease the religious right. From a non-religious standpoint, I agree that it is worse to injure an embryo and try to repair it. It's a waste of resources, and the embryo will have a higher chance of problems if it even survives.

But, if it is more acceptable to the religious right to let millions suffer and die so that we are not responsible for the "death" of a few thousand embryos (never mind that that makes us responsible for those millions that are suffering and dying), then surely it would HAVE TO BE more acceptable, even required, that we prevent millions from suffering and dying, if we are not killing but in fact promoting the life and well-being of these embryos. After all, we could leave the embryos on ice until Christ's second coming (or whatever religious analogue applies), and then he could fully heal them. If the life of an embryo is so important, then preserving it on ice has to be better than destroying it, right? I'm just looking for a way to trap the relgious right into making a moral decision they have otherwise been avoiding.

Eventually, when people start seeing the fruits of this research, the religious right will lose their political and media clout, and the research will be opened up. I'd rather not have to wait that long, though.

Jay Fox

[Lazarus Long]

Jay you assert the soul *resides* somewhere and do so because you are religious. I ask you to consider the question from another perspective.

What is the qualitative difference between how you use the word *soul* and *mind*?

I ask this question not to start a debate but to try and focus the problem of explaining why there is no moral dilemma to some people and a very serious one to others. Those that are troubled assume the *soul* (mind) begins with conception. Hence the relevance for example of the *pain debate* and *self recognition* of it with respect to abortion.

Cognition, and the lack of a clear demarcation between *none* and *some* is why the debate gets cloudy quickly with theists. So instead how can we better speak to this confusion of scientific and theistic terminology?

A scientist should be reluctant to discuss *the soul* because it is not an empirically accessible subject. Theists see a supernatural *reason* to distinguish the word from how the mind is used in common and studied dialog.

[jaydfox]

Ahh, an interesting point, Lazarus (or do you prefer Lasarus Long, LL, ...?).

Okay, I suppose this won't answer the question in general, as there can be no general answer that applies to all religions, or even a moderate sized subset. But I can answer how I personally believe.

Well, I can't really provide a full answer, as the answer is just too complex. For background, I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This could raise issues about whether my views are in sync with my religion. For example, my Church absolutely forbids abortion at any stage if there is no medical reason to justify it. So, from a personal perspective, I would not allow my wife or my daughters (should I have any) to get an abortion, not even with the morning-after pills. However, we also are supposed to respect the law of the land. Currently, that law says to respect the rights of women to choose.

So, I have a dilemma. From a personal standpoint, I would oppose abortion. As a citizen of this country, I need something more substantional than a religious belief before I can justify banning abortion. Hence, I look to the formation and function of the brain, a scientific demarcation line. After this point, aborting the fetus is tantamount to murder. Ignoring outside extremists (soul begins at conception, or at birth), I realize there is a wide margin for error here. Hence my four week to four month range. Where in that range should we place a limit. Well, conservatively, we should at least place a limit at the top of that range: four months. A conservative approach like this would respect the rights of the woman to choose over our concerns of "murder", until those concerns become overwhelming.

Another demarcation line I have considered is how old would a fetus need to be before it could survive on moderate life support (e.g., respirator and intravenous feeding) if it were removed by C-section rather than abortion. This is in the same ballpark, five months give or take a month.

When choosing in the stem cell debate, I take the low end of that range, respecting our concerns of "murder" over the research value of embryos older than four weeks.

Anyway, I do my best to align my views about religion, science, and our Constitution (I should point out that my religion holds that the Constitution, despite any shortcomings, was religiously inspired, to the extent that its authors were). Whenever I find conflicting ideas, I do my best to avoid "doubt", as the conflicts usually end up being superficial and actually reveal more insight. I only "doubt" to the extent that I work to resolve conflicting views of the world.

As for the soul itself. I believe that our spirits existed before we entered this world. So I can see the validity of the argument that an enbryo has a soul, on its face anyway. However, given how much our mind affects our behavior, our emotions, our thoughts and ability to think and feel, I cannot see how one could disentangle the mind and the soul: any attempt to do so would be from ignorance, not piety. I view the soul as the meshing of our spirit and our mind. The soul is not complete without both. This raises questions about death: when the mind dies, what happens to our souls? However, the Resurrection reunites the spirit and the mind, rejuvenating our souls. Probably boring stuff to non-religious folk, but quite fascinating to me.

Anyway, the point is, I don't view a soul as capable of "possessing" a body devoid of a mind. Without a mind, there is no soul. No more soul than a clump of skin. An embryo is still special, still sacred, in its potential to become human. But until it has a mind (which comes at some point after it has a brain), I cannot say it has a soul. Perhaps there is a spirit waiting around the embryo, watching it develop, caring for it, and then finally "moving in" when it has a mind. Maybe that spirit is saddened when it loses its chance to come to earth when the embryo is destroyed, and it has to go to the back of the line, so to speak, and wait for another chance. But I don't consider it murder. Its destruction should not be taken lightly, but neither should it be used to stop life-saving reseach.

Anyway, I guess this has sidetracked me from the point I was trying to make: the religious right avoids all serious debate on this topic by sticking to their guns: destroying the embryo is like murder, worse than abortion, because we're using the embryo as a tool, degrading it in addition to destroying it.

If we could pin them down, and pull out their biggest defensive argument (and even turn it on its head, pointing out that maiming an embryo and then trying to fix it is less religiously abhorrent than killing an embryo, yet the latter is more humane), then maybe we can get them to seriously debate the issue, and perhaps win some political votes.

Anyway, I know my views may seem strange, and in some cases self-conflicting. I am continually redefining my views based on new scientific insights, religious insights, and discussions with other people.

Jay Fox

[Lazarus Long]

Lazarus is fine Jay and the issue is almost summed up by this comment of yours:

the religious right avoids all serious debate on this topic by sticking to their guns: destroying the embryo is like murder, worse than abortion, because we're using the embryo as a tool, degrading it in addition to destroying it.

Bingo, this position ends serious debate that is why they avoid the discussion like a plague.

I don't want to belabor theology here or we should move this thread to religion, or philosophy. However there are a few small points.

Another demarcation line I have considered is how old would a fetus need to be before it could survive on moderate life support (e.g., respirator and intravenous feeding) if it were removed by C-section rather than abortion. This is in the same ballpark, five months give or take a month.

What if I suggested that in ten to fifteen years we will have perfected artificial wombs and any embryo from the moment of conception could be provided an *incubated* path to a post partum state. Does this confuse the argument further?

Actually you haven't really stated how you see the two (mind and soul) as distinct and in fact have simply stated basically that the mind as perhaps the product of a physical function (the brain/body) is essential to the manifestation of a *soul* (whatever that is). So without resorting to *supernatural* argument would you please describe what *you* meant by a soul?

I am asking you to address this not for some reply out of somebody else's doctrine.
I am glad to be having the discussion because I think it is important to learn how to communicate the important realization you have come to but the problem is also described by what you say here:

If we could pin them down, and pull out their biggest defensive argument (and even turn it on its head, pointing out that maiming an embryo and then trying to fix it is less religiously abhorrent than killing an embryo, yet the latter is more humane), then maybe we can get them to seriously debate the issue, and perhaps win some political votes.

When you "pin them down" and you are not at the very least an accepted insider, the general response of many if not most, more *fundamentalist* folk, is to become reactionary and even hostile as the process begins to threaten many associated world views.

[apocalypse]

After all, we are living in a material world (and I am a material girl... j/k), and our souls must be able to interact with this world.

But what is matter? Sure we ever elucidate its nature ever more, but still... some have begun to see it as akin to information. Information is in a sense intangible, abstract, ethereal.

But, that said, I don't see any problem with using embryos prior to four weeks, maybe even five or six. (On the flipside, for those who are curious, I am adamantly opposed to abortion beyond the fourth month, except in legitimate medical circumstances, including rape and incest. We can argue what legitimate means later. So I'm willing to err on the side of a woman's right to choose, taking the high end of the scale, but I'm also willing to err on the side of caution in the case of stems cells, so the low end of the scale) At any rate, four weeks is plenty of time for harvesting stem cells.

Well, legal or not it will ALWAYS take place as long as everyone is free to reproduce at will. Also babies will be killed, young children too, and many will be tortured/raped/sold/abused/etc, many will receive genes that will make them ill, it's innevitable with unregulated reproduction for things to be otherwise. Many will have good parents, but many will not, under the present circumstances. Many will have to die and many will have to suffer needlessly, it's the price for lack of regulation. Clearly, you realize the only choice for a better world? for an ideal world?

An end to virtually all forms of abuse, murder, and crimes is possible. Innocent children need not suffer needlessly, many need not have hostile environments and genes, that will predispose them so as to one day commit atrocities... to become criminals, rapists, murderers themselves. All can have ideal parents and ideal genes, the means to this end will become available... it will be our choice. Are we willing to pay with the suffering and blood of innocents for unregulated reproduction?

In any case I believe we should not only end aging, but virtually all diseases, accidents, crimes, murders, and the like. This will in effect collapse the death rate... to allow such an ideal thing, would require a choice. A choice so that all members of society receive an ideal childhood and contribute properly to society, and a choice so that the sister of this rate is also controlled.

So, when I was asking how to get out of this moral dilemma, I was looking for a way to appease the religious right. From a non-religious standpoint, I agree that it is worse to injure an embryo and try to repair it. It's a waste of resources, and the embryo will have a higher chance of problems if it even survives.

The religious right? Education, allow our children to get college level biology courses in public schools. Educate the public, and let most see the light. As in the past, they'll have to accept enlightenment or risk alienating their followers.

Church absolutely forbids abortion at any stage if there is no medical reason to justify it.

What the church forbids, is that which is allowed by the ignorance of its members. Just like with the roundness of this planet, just like with evolution, the church will have to accept reality once the truth becomes widespread... and this is only a matter of time.

Another demarcation line I have considered is how old would a fetus need to be before it could survive on moderate life support (e.g., respirator and intravenous feeding) if it were removed by C-section rather than abortion. This is in the same ballpark, five months give or take a month.

This changes with time, with ever more advanced technology it becomes earlier and earlier.

This raises questions about death: when the mind dies, what happens to our souls? However, the Resurrection reunites the spirit and the mind, rejuvenating our souls. Probably boring stuff to non-religious folk, but quite fascinating to me.

There are even some passages, IIRC, in the bible were people clearly state they'll only see each other at the end of days when they're resurrected. It's not to hard to imagine a dreamless night until the underlying structure of our mind is reconstructed to sufficient fidelity. Currently it seems the mind is not a product of matter, but a pattern, a pattern whose function is that of an information processor. Whether it's properties, sentience is a property of our world, an emergent one or a combination of both will most likely be found out within the coming decades... yet current evidence indicates it is likely to be an emergent property of some advanced information processors.

Once the nature of the mind is elucidated, or once AI comes of age. It will be difficult for many a religion to cope with the truths that will be unveiled. Should an AI that speaks, that feels, that is shown to be sentient be considered souless, though akin or beyond us in its abilities? What if the nature of all of these abilities is elucidated? What then? What if it's shown that there is no ghost in the machine, biological or otherwise?
conscience

[jaydfox]

Lazarus and apocalypse:

I do intend to reply to your questions and comments. I don't have time at the moment, as I'm trying to come up to speed on what's already been covered in the religion forum. I think that we should take the personal religious questions unrelated to this post to that forum, and stick to my questions here.

By the way, after looking at the responses, and taking the time to consider them, I do see the lack of merit to my "solutions". I figured they weren't going to solve the problem, but since I hadn't seen them discussed anywhere else, I thought I'd at least see where they fit into the debate.

And I wasn't approaching them from "our side" of the debate. I was approaching the problems from the point of view of someone who views embryonic stem cell research as objectionable because it destroys a human embryo. I was looking for a way to avoid this, at whatever other costs might be incurred (e.g., injuring an embryo, but still trying to save it).

For the record, I have no moral objection to using embryos before four weeks. I have every objection to Bush's policy, for several reasons.

At any rate, the population now seems in favor of the research, by about a 3-to-1 margin, given recent polls. This reminds me of the situation in Germany, where 4 out of 5 Germans favor PIGD (Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnostics) to prevent genetic diseases, yet the majority of politicians oppose it and are continuing a ban on the process. Unless we can make stem cells a major political issue (not just in the sense that it gets public debate and rhetoric, but in the sense that the voters actually view it as a major issue on which to base their votes), stem cell research could hit another four-year dearth.

So I suppose, solving the moral dilemma isn't as much of a priority as voting out those who hold the minority view. Once the research bears fruit by bringing treatments to individuals, and then to the greater public, there will be no turning back.

Jay Fox