BF2S Forums Bush vetoes embryonic stem-cell bill

kilroy0097 wrote:

kr@cker wrote:

I did read the bill a few weeks ago, haven't read it since it was no doubt modified at the house and senate levels as always, but these modifications almost always happens in regards to the $$$ aspect of it, I am aware of the different types of stem cell research, as I have been following it as a matter of curiosity for years, the fact that your post is longer and is written with a condescending attitude does not make you correct, the fact remains that, until you can prove that a fertilized embryo is not a human, then we should err on the side of not killing humans for research purposes.

Do not mistake an informed and detailed post explaining stem cells to the masses as condescending and I will not mistake your misconception as you being an ass. Deal?

I am an ass, thank you, and now explain how this cannot be taken as condescending:

"This is a long read but I urge you to get through it if you can. This is after all the Serious Debate and Discussion section."
or
"No. We can't and you need to try harder than that."

Last edited by kr@cker (2006-07-20 21:12:52)

First off let me thank those that have honestly put effort into their replies in this thread. Esspecially to those that obviously did research to support your points. I am enjoying this discussion on this, in my opinion, important topic. I ask that those that reply do so with a neutral mindset and please keep the discussion to a low roar emotionally. Thank you.


To those that support this Veto, from what I have read the number one reason is due to your collective stances against abortion. Though what level or state of abortions you abhor I am not familiar with nor am I familiar with your backgrounds or all your view points. So to clear the air for those that care I am going to state my own viewpoints just so it's all out in the open.

---

I myself am Pro-Choice merely because that avenue of support offers the most leaway in the laws for what kind of abortion can be legalized. Pro-lifers (most not all) tend to wish that abortion in all states be outlawed and I am emphatically against such a shortsighted or myopic mindset. Do I view that human life begins at conception? No I do not. I believe personally that human life "might" begin at the second trimester as some babies have been prematurely born and survived at the end of it all though often surrounding massive complications and often result in death.

I however do not believe in wholesale legalization of abortion as a method of birth control. I personally believe in abortion in the following extreme situations. Preganancies resulting from rape, incest and in the cases of extreme underage mothers (14 years or below). Also with preganancies that would endanger the mother's life or when the child is so malformed that it would not be able to live outside the mother's womb at all or with the help of major medication intervention for most of their childhood.

I also strongly support the usage of birth control and I dislike any legislation that would attempt to prevent the usage of birth control by anyone (See http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/14/ … tion.bill/). I personally believe that birth control should be federally subsidized and that it should cost next to nothing and preferably be free to all registered women who wish to take advantage of such a program. I believe that these women should also receive a free yearly OBGYN visit in a certain age bracket.

---

Due to these viewpoints of my own I believe that embryonic research is not immoral and should not be condemned. I also believe that this research may lead to new discoveries that would connect these type of stem cells to the many other types of stem cells. Once that link has been established it may be unnecssary to ever use embryonic stem cells and hence the need for them would diminish.

For those that value life so much that they are against abortion and hence are against the use of embryos in research should then also be against any use of embryos including fertilizational methods of intravenous pregnancy. As previously state by others and as stated by the procedures of this process more than a single embryo is actually fertilized. Many eggs are collected from the woman and placed in stasis. Sperm from the man is then injected directly into the embryos. Sometimes this produces a fertalized egg and hence it becomes an embryo. Other times it doesn't produce anything and is rejected. Of the bank of fertalized eggs they are inserted into the woman while she takes horomonal medication to better the chances of it taking. This often results in twins or more. Once the woman is pregnant the rest of the bank of embryos are placed into stasis for a certain amount of time before they are..   Discarded. Thrown away. Taken to the Bio-trash bin. Removed from existance. Destroyed. Killed.

It is this bank of slated embryos that the bill was to save from destruction so that they could be used for embryonic stem cell research. This trash was to be recycled for the betterment of humanity.

For those that are against this bill... please think hard on this one.

Would you want a life destroyed offering it no reason for existance?
-or-
Would you want a life destroyed for research to pottentially cure illnessess and save the life of others?

There are only two choices in this. The wording of the Bill is implicet. There is no room for misconception. Reality is not going to change. Embryos will be destroyed and killed regardless of your decision.

I personally would want such a fate to help people and not be wasted. Hence my support of Bill H.R. 810 and why I am angered by the President and his Veto of it.

On another note, Congress passed this Bill. Congress represents the people. The people, through our government process supported this bill. The President, an elected official by the people as vetoed a bill supported by the people. A blatant case of personal prejiduce versus the views and wishes of Congress and hence the people.

I do not support the President for he does not represent my wishes nor the wishes of the people.

oh for fuck's sake, my statement was in regards to the fact that most of the posts on this thread were along the lines of "bush hates all stem cells it's his fault hawking is still in a wheelchair", this is blatantly untrue, again I point out that the bush administration, at least as of 2004, since i cannot find any current info on this (all my search results only pull up the current bill since it's now big news), has funded more stem cell research than any other world administration, as for the fertility clinic example, I don't think that it's any more justified to use these failed embryos (they are usually still around in the first place because they were the least likely of the batch to "take", and are discarded in turn because they have aged too far and cellular degeneration has taken place), than it is to harvest organs from dead/dying people that have not agreed to do so, if bob has a lovely liver, and bob is not an organ donor, how is it justifiable to take bob's liver "for the greater good of humanity", the cellular degeneration of these failed embryos (common procedure is to re-introduce EVERY embryo with a snowballs chance in hell to the uterus, this is why many fertility clinic patients end up with multiple births) combined with the fact that they were the least likely to sustain cell division in essence makes them "dead" or the equivalent of a baby born with an unsustainable birth defect, you are basically wanting to harvest dead people's organs without their permission for a technology that has not shown that it can provide us with anything that the dozens of other stem cell research techs can't. The embryos are in essence "dead", in order to use them for research one must kickstart the life cycle, until you can prove they're not human let the dead rest in peace.


and yes, my first posts were researched, using my "opposition's" own material, it is possible to prove one's point in less than a paragraph, you yourself actually provided some of the research I was going to post by listing the different kinds of stem cells being researched, but since I have dial-up at work, you finished before I could get home and do it, Thanks!

Last edited by kr@cker (2006-07-21 06:54:32)

Anfidurl wrote:

captain_itchy_pants wrote:

Agreed. Maybe we should wait till Hillary is in, huh? No F@#king way, that crazy Bit$h would have the flood gates open to abortion clinics where its abortion on demand. Screw that. Why did Bush use his veto and his only veto in his presidency? To save lives, embryos and taxpayers money from fruitless searches.

What? You open yourself up for ANOTHER one?

...

Okay. In a year, the human body sloughs off enough cells to make 100 fully devoloped, adult people.
The energy to create new cells comes from life, as previously posted.
So it's okay to sit around and ejaculate yourself at night (assuming you are male. If female, substute flushing an egg down your drain along with several mL of blood and iron) and waste all those lives' potential?
Just think, instead of involintarly MURDERING three billion 'lives' every so many nights, you could overrun the world with more creatures than there is food to feed them!

To hell with any other problem, like HUNGER, CRIME, SUFFERING, and PAIN! Let's regulate the killing of cells, when we ALL DO MUCH MUCH MORE OURSELVES, AND THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!

Congratulations. You have been proven to be a self-imposed, involuntary hypocrite. Good day.

How am I a hypocrite? You are talking about dead skin cells! WTFrell!  I am talking about Bush not spending taxpayer money on testing that doesnt work. And the fact that Hellary Clinton would have signed this into law and wasted all that money on fruitless research.

JUst having fun at Finlands expense, guess thats all. Cleese is a true comic genius as well as the other python members, but he was the best. Anyway, have a great day.

Chuckles wrote:

captain_itchy_pants wrote:

How am I a hypocrite? You are talking about dead skin cells! WTFrell!  I am talking about Bush not spending taxpayer money on testing that doesnt work. And the fact that Hellary Clinton would have signed this into law and wasted all that money on fruitless research.

You're most certainly a hypocrite if you defend Bush not allowing a little government money to go to research that could potentially save lives but it's ok for him to spend billions and billions on a missile defense system that only works about half the time when we rig the tests for it, and when we really may have needed it a couple of weeks ago he has to admit that he had no idea if it would work or not. 

Defending an administration for saving a very little amount of money on a program like this when it's guilty of running up the largest deficits in our history seems a little silly.

And lastly, saving money had nothing to do with his decision.  Bush is perfectly willing to blow money, just not for stem cell research.  Or at least not on more stem cell research.  They already fund research on about 25 lines.  So it's fine to "kill" those embryos, but no new ones.

That, my friend, is hypocritical.

look at my earlier post, my friend. Embryonic stem cell research doesnt work. Not spending the money is just one reason, you are right, but the facts are that there is more promise from adult stem cell research.  Why are the big drug companies not funding it? Why should the governement fund it? The bush administration already spend more than Clinton ever did on stem cell research. Embryonic Stem cell research only leads to one thing and that is Cloning, IMHO.

C.I.P

Last edited by captain_itchy_pants (2006-07-21 11:29:06)

Chuckles wrote:

And I still maintain that the thought of the US government "saving money" here is laughable.  Bush is blowing our future by the millions every day, this is a drop in the bucket.

You have to understand that those old men are too old to benefit from stem-cell research, therefore they couldn't care less. I'm talking about dubya & co.

I agree that there is far to much spending in government. It pisses me off the the lowly GI and his family have to go on food stamps and live in assisted housing while the fat bastards live the life of luxury on capitol hill.

captain_itchy_pants wrote:

How have their hands been tied? Bush hasnt banned it. He has in fact spent more money. (Over $90 million in Federal funding has been devoted to research on approved lines since 2001). Let the drug companies fund it, they are the ones who will make the money if it is to be made. But as of now they wont because they see it as a dead end.

IMHO that kind of thinking is pretty dangerous. You are offering power to companies. Actually it's what's going on in a world today. And sadly very few companies care too much about ethics as long as stocks are high.

Last edited by PekkaA (2006-07-21 13:56:32)

kr@cker wrote:

oh for fuck's sake, my statement was in regards to the fact that most of the posts on this thread were along the lines of "bush hates all stem cells it's his fault hawking is still in a wheelchair", this is blatantly untrue, again I point out that the bush administration, at least as of 2004, since i cannot find any current info on this (all my search results only pull up the current bill since it's now big news), has funded more stem cell research than any other world administration, as for the fertility clinic example, I don't think that it's any more justified to use these failed embryos (they are usually still around in the first place because they were the least likely of the batch to "take", and are discarded in turn because they have aged too far and cellular degeneration has taken place), than it is to harvest organs from dead/dying people that have not agreed to do so, if bob has a lovely liver, and bob is not an organ donor, how is it justifiable to take bob's liver "for the greater good of humanity", the cellular degeneration of these failed embryos (common procedure is to re-introduce EVERY embryo with a snowballs chance in hell to the uterus, this is why many fertility clinic patients end up with multiple births) combined with the fact that they were the least likely to sustain cell division in essence makes them "dead" or the equivalent of a baby born with an unsustainable birth defect, you are basically wanting to harvest dead people's organs without their permission for a technology that has not shown that it can provide us with anything that the dozens of other stem cell research techs can't. The embryos are in essence "dead", in order to use them for research one must kickstart the life cycle, until you can prove they're not human let the dead rest in peace.

Just as modern medicine was learned from dead corpses and cadavers, just how elementary medicine and surgery was practiced first on dead human bodies instead of attempting it on live human bodies, just how every single surgeon in the country has used a cadaver to explore and practice on to better their skills.

As has been stated in a lengthy post above about my beliefs on the subject, I am more than willing to harvest embryos to further science if it gets us the links we need to better stem cell usages as a whole. If for some odd reason medicine thought that harvesting dead people's organs in the current day was necessary to cure some diesease then I'm in support of that as well.

We would not be at the point we are today in medicine if it weren't for those cadavers used oh so many years ago in the interest of medicine.


Edit: P.S. Woohoo. Almost my most popular thread yet. Karma luv!

Last edited by kilroy0097 (2006-07-21 14:05:34)

hmm ok so unless im missing something arent the stem cells just going to be destroyed? its not like theres evil monsters roaming the streets snatching children for evil research

kr@cker wrote:

oh for fuck's sake, my statement was in regards to the fact that most of the posts on this thread were along the lines of "bush hates all stem cells it's his fault hawking is still in a wheelchair", this is blatantly untrue, again I point out that the bush administration, at least as of 2004, since i cannot find any current info on this (all my search results only pull up the current bill since it's now big news), has funded more stem cell research than any other world administration, as for the fertility clinic example, I don't think that it's any more justified to use these failed embryos (they are usually still around in the first place because they were the least likely of the batch to "take", and are discarded in turn because they have aged too far and cellular degeneration has taken place), than it is to harvest organs from dead/dying people that have not agreed to do so, if bob has a lovely liver, and bob is not an organ donor, how is it justifiable to take bob's liver "for the greater good of humanity", the cellular degeneration of these failed embryos (common procedure is to re-introduce EVERY embryo with a snowballs chance in hell to the uterus, this is why many fertility clinic patients end up with multiple births) combined with the fact that they were the least likely to sustain cell division in essence makes them "dead" or the equivalent of a baby born with an unsustainable birth defect, you are basically wanting to harvest dead people's organs without their permission for a technology that has not shown that it can provide us with anything that the dozens of other stem cell research techs can't. The embryos are in essence "dead", in order to use them for research one must kickstart the life cycle, until you can prove they're not human let the dead rest in peace.

The main reason that the Bush administration spent more on stem cell research is more a function of time than his big heart.  This field of study has only existed since '98, so Clinton only had the opportunity to fund it for two years.  Bush has been there for six terribly long years now, and has only funded it $90,000,000 according to another poster here.

And if I understand you correctly, it's ok to throw out unneeded embryos, but not do research on them?  Even if the embryo's "parents" have given their consent for research to be done on them?