Sabz5150 said:
Besides, aborted fetuses aren't the only way to get the cells you need... fertilization clinics are a start.
Everyone is SOOO misinformed about this issue. Sabz, I can tell your for stem cell research, however, everyone is thinking that we are the little embros that look like tiny babys like this..
We are talking about a "fetus" (I put it in quotes because that is like calling a seprate sperm and egg on a collision course a "fetus") that looks like this.
The embryonic stem cells are the first 150-200 cells produced and are only there for about a week after conception. Just to give you some perspective on how SO ridiculously small number this is, there is estimated
1,000,000,000 blood cells in just 2-3 drop of blood.
An abortion is typically done around the 12 week or so after conception. This is just one week. And were not talking about haversting stem cells by having people screw and take the 12 week old "fetus" to go about with science. Remember, the above picture is NOT stem cells.
A little backround on fertility treatments. Couples will go in if either the man has a low sperm count, slow swimmers, ect, or if the woman has problems having the egg do its thing (really have no clue what that would be but many women have that problem) so what they do is extract several (lots 10-20 maybe more) eggs from a woman and basicly put it in a peitree dish with the guy's sperm. Several of the eggs get fertilized and then one or two eggs are then placed back into the woman's system. However, no women wants to be carrying around 20 growing baby's in there womb, so the rest of these already fertalized eggs are put in storage. These are what we are talking about. If they are not used after a while, they are "thrown out".
Basicly there is two choices.
A) The cells are thrown out, saving no ones lives
B) The cells are used for research to save millions of peoples lives.
There is no C. Basicly we are talking about trash or recycling.
Yes, Bush did, after he vetoed the bill have a group of invetro-adopted children visit the white house. However, maybe 1% of those eggs sitting in storage will be addopted. The other 99% will be thrown away. Were saying that you cannot do both. Have an agreement that the parents sign when they first do the treatment weather they want there unused eggs to be thrown away, adopted, or used for research.
And finally to B's comment, yes, private research is allowed however, a good amount of research is done in govermently founded universities. That means places like UofM a huge medical research univerity can not do the research.
And lastely, to answer someone else's above post, the issue at hand is using embronic stem cells (again, medical waste from fertility clinics). There was another bill that was passed to use adult stem sells which passed 100-0 and bush said he will not veto it, however, embronic stem cells are the most promissing types of stem cells.