Stem cells have cured an HIV+ patient

[TaboriHK]

The distinction is only there because non-religious people get lumped in with the religious people who are fighting for the same thing. There may be different reasoning and different scales but that doesn't change the fact they are both against the same thing. If a person feels strongly about something they will campaign against it with whoever they can get. The only differences between the two parties is that non-religious people are a minority compared to the religious.

I'm pretty sure those campaigning against it that aren't religious and are against it because they feel it is wrong to abort a child, because it is already alive, rather than it tampering with God's work, wouldn't want to be called religious campaigners. Just because they are in the minority of people campaigning doesn't mean they aren't there.

Right but this is where numbers come into play. Nonreligious and religious types can have the same desire to change policy. But religious types are in a much better position in terms of resources and organization to start groups that WILL affect policy, not just complain about it. An atheist against this could print flyers or start a website, but a church can reach out to a built-in community and do 95% of the work for them by creating form letters for them to mail out or sign. Only organizations actually get anything done in this country, for better or worse. Individuals with passion can only get so far, and no non-religious group will approach the kind of resources any major denomination's chapters could summon very easily. It's religious institutions that can create a campaign from nothingness to back in the first place.

 

[Julianking93]

This is just another reason why I can't understand why people get all pissy over stem cell research.

I'd like to see those anti stem cell research groups refute this now.

Well that's easy: It was gods will that he have HIV, because he was probably a sinner afflicted with "the gay".
Basically any argument from somebody like that comes down to "BECAUSE GOD."

Sad thing is, you just know that's somebodies opinion out there.

Anyway, hooray for this guy, hopefully it can lead to some breakthroughs.

The funny thing is that you can refute that by simply saying "If God didn't want us using them, why did he give us stem cells?"

 

[TaboriHK]

That's what I mean. The religious people who believe the use of stem cells are wrong are typically the ones who will try to force their opinion on everyone else. That's the main issue here. Not believing in a God, but believing in it to such an extent that it obscures your view of the world and leads you to be a total prick to everyone who doesn't agree with you 100% of the time.

If you couldn't tell already, I'm an atheist and in all honesty, I don't really see the good religion can do for people, but my lack of religious beliefs don't have anything to do with my opinion on this matter... well, they kinda do, but you know what I mean.

I don't try to force an opinion on anyone and I take issue with anyone that does, religious or not and I will especially take issue with it if it harms another in the process.

That was my initial point, though I incorrectly assumed that people would make the distinction. Religion in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It just tends to quite often propagate ignorance and intolerance, which IS a bad thing. I personally find that a thousands-year old book makes for fascinating mythology and little more. The bible was not written by people who believed in women as equals, that homosexuality is okay, or that questioning the system is a good thing. And because of that, it is irrelevant to my life. But some people take other things from it that I don't that does benefit them, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

Everyone who is saying that "the vast majority of naysayers are NOT religious", or that "the vast majority is only religious because the majority of people are religious" doesn't really know what they are talking about... sorry.

Religion is the sole basis as to why this is still an ethically shaky issue. You could be an Atheist and be against stem cell research, but the reason why you are against it is one of religious origin, instilled in our minds by family, friends, or shitty documentaries.

Otherwise, you would feel no compassion for a god damn embryo.

I mean seriously, do you weep for each wasted "potential child" every time you fap as well?

I might if I ejaculated fertilized embryos capable of cellular proliferation and differentiation into a fully-formed human. Alas, I only squirt haploid spermatozoa. My wife also only ovulates haploid eggs. I guess your testes operate differently than mine.

I'm not opposed to stem cell research. In fact, I think that we should be funding it... heavily. But you do realize that you're basically suggesting that people shouldn't be sad when a woman miscarries, right? Go tell a woman who miscarried that her grief is over the death of a "god damn embryo" that she shouldn't feel compassion for. Let me know how that turns out. I'll foot the hospital bill.

I know exactly what I'm "basically suggesting".

Miscarriages don't have to be a traumatic experience. Trauma is entirely in the mind. My mom had a miscarriage before she had me and my sister, and neither one of my parents gave 2 shits (True story). Both of my parents are whiny and emotional all the time, but neither one cared about a pre-lifeform with no sentience what-so-ever...

I guess you could say that for them, it was a "no-brainer". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No, but seriously, you can use as many big words as you want to describe pre-human life. None of them will change the fact that, no matter what animal classification we are looking at, the embryo is NEVER considered to be the same.

An embryo is not a human. It cannot think, it cannot process data, and it would be much better used to save a life with previously established roots and responsibilities.

 

[Kukakkau]

Eh, it's a little of both. It requires a bit of a unique setup for both the donor and patient, so we're nowhere close to having a pharma mass-producing it.

While this is true it will become a massive deal when controlling and improving growth of stem cell cultures becomes more advanced. And then mass production will become a possibility of certain cultures (such as this HIV resistant donor) can be mass produced.

I'm really glad my uni course has done a lot on HIV and other infections, as I can actually understand all the medical jargon in the OP.

 

[Sonicron]

This should be the long-awaited "Wake up and go screw yourselves" call for any and all opposers of stem cell research.

 

[Julianking93]

That was my initial point, though I incorrectly assumed that people would make the distinction. Religion in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It just tends to quite often propagate ignorance and intolerance, which IS a bad thing. I personally find that a thousands-year old book makes for fascinating mythology and little more. The bible was not written by people who believed in women as equals, that homosexuality is okay, or that questioning the system is a good thing. And because of that, it is irrelevant to my life. But some people take other things from it that I don't that does benefit them, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I may not agree with you completely on that but I'm glad we at least understand each other now.

Religion isn't the problem here. The problem is people who take things too literally and who aren't stable enough to take care of themselves, let alone tell other people how to live. That's the biggest problem I have here. Not that I hate religion or hate God or anything like that because I don't. What I can't stand are the types that act like they know what's best because of what a book tells them to do and the second there is even a slight threat of that being taken away, they act out in protest, anger and sometimes violence.

 

[TaboriHK]

Religion isn't the problem here. The problem is people who take things too literally and who aren't stable enough to take care of themselves, let alone tell other people how to live. That's the biggest problem I have here. Not that I hate religion or hate God or anything like that because I don't. What I can't stand are the types that act like they know what's best because of what a book tells them to do and the second there is even a slight threat of that being taken away, they act out in protest, anger and sometimes violence.

Exactly. And this behavior is not limited to religious people, it just so happens that in this case, they're the ones of this personality type who are hindering progress.

 

[SimuLord]

I'll say this---a formerly HIV-positive woman could come up to me and say "Stem cells cured me", I'm still not having sex with her.

Now, if this becomes widespread and stories and reproducible experiments confirm it...

Well, at that point the gods will be like "shit, what do we have to do to get rid of these people we created? They're like cockroaches!"

 

[higgs20]

This is just another reason why I can't understand why people get all pissy over stem cell research.

I'd like to see those anti stem cell research groups refute this now.

they will always find a reason to refute stem cell research, in the end it all comes down to ' designer babies OMG ' 'won't somebody please think of the children' and the old favourite 'man should not meddle in GOD'S DOMAIN'

EDIT: oh and the fact that the best source of stem cells is foetuses so they think stem cell research is one step away from abortions becoming common place and probably profitable. personally i'm not really for abortions but it's not like it's the only way to get stem cells, just seems silly to demonise the whole process.

 

[Julianking93]

[
Exactly. And this behavior is not limited to religious people, it just so happens that in this case, they're the ones of this personality type who are hindering progress.

Precisely. That was pretty much what I was trying to get across from the beginning :3

 

[SinisterGehe]

Stem cells save lives. fact. yet people area against them?

so theres another reason why religion need to GTFO of modern society.

It would be wrong to make a unborn child a hero that saved someones life and therefor making hes/hers existence meaningful and important... /sarcasm

I hope this goes ahead, gets researched and it would save millions of lives. Then I can go and ask, how many lives did your god save today, by killing a poor child before hes/hers time. Or to those non-religious people, how many lives did you save when you signed that petition or stood int he protest to stop this amazing research.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

I read this last year, and I'm only cautiously optimistic, and here's why:

While the main targets of infection of HIV are immune cells, which would need to be almost completely eradicated by chemotherapy prior to marrow transplantation in order to prevent persistence of leukemia, there are other cell types that can be infected.

Depending on how long the patient had been infected, there could be other tissues which still harbor infection. These tissues have a relatively slow rate of replication and cell turnover, which would result in a low, possibly undetectable, viral load.

While the traditional opportunistic infections (AIDS) would not occur in this situation, due to the donor cells' resistance, some of the AIDS-associated illnesses that are due to direct viral effect may. A few examples include progressive multifocal leucoencephalopathy, HIV nephropathy, and AIDS dementia complex. None of these illnesses have been definitively linked to an opportunistic infection, and they are believed to occur due to the action of cell types which are relatively long-lived and slowly-replicating (read: resistant to chemotherapy).

This patient is certainly a breakthrough in the study of the virus and associated illnesses, but until he's been followed for years (possibly decades) after this treatment, we won't know whether he'll eventually develop complications of infection. Even if he lives a long, HIV-associated disease-free life after this, marrow eradication/transplantation will probably never really be an economically viable alternative to traditional HAART therapy. It's not even a reasonable alternative in a "money is no object" scenario unless we just happen upon a way to procure large amounts of CCR-5 negative marrow of various HLA types.

tl;dr Encouraging, but potentially merely anecdotal, story. It may guide future research, but this particular case is unlikely to lead to a widely available cure during the lifetime of anyone reading this.

Pfft, you and your facts and reasoned response. Don't you realize that this topic is about Christians holding back all scientific development, and that aborting babies is the key to a world without disease?

Get with the program.

 

[Moon_Called]

Well, this is pretty damn awesome. But the guy still has leukemia, right? =/
Amazing step forward, but still, sucks for him.

Stem cells save lives. fact. yet people area against them?

so theres another reason why religion need to GTFO of modern society.

Right. Let me compare this with an analogy.

"People on Xbox Live are such racist bigots. The other day I was playing Halo and I swear the only people I met were 14-year-olds calling me a f****t. This is obvious proof that all gamers are also racist bigots. Therefore video games should be banned."
Is this true? Obviously not. If I were to say this on these forums, I'd probably get laughed off the internet.

Kindly dismount your vertically inclined equine and quit making judgments based off of stereotypes. Just because a few members of a group are dicks, doesn't mean the rest of the group is. I'm a Christian, and I think this is just awesome.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Right but this is where numbers come into play. Nonreligious and religious types can have the same desire to change policy. But religious types are in a much better position in terms of resources and organization to start groups that WILL affect policy, not just complain about it. An atheist against this could print flyers or start a website, but a church can reach out to a built-in community and do 95% of the work for them by creating form letters for them to mail out or sign. Only organizations actually get anything done in this country, for better or worse. Individuals with passion can only get so far, and no non-religious group will approach the kind of resources any major denomination's chapters could summon very easily. It's religious institutions that can create a campaign from nothingness to back in the first place.

The religious are the only ones that can make the actual difference, you're right about that. But if we were to go back to the original argument and your original statement, which by this point is pretty much irrelevant given the additional information, they aren't the only ones who get pissy. On my part, I may have inferred it wrong and insulted your intelligence, you have my apologies for that.

 

[lacktheknack]

This is just another reason why I can't understand why people get all pissy over stem cell research.

Not people. Religious people. Big difference.

I'm not people? NOOOOOOOOOES-

 

[spidermounky]

People who argue against stem cell research really boil my blood.

It's one of a few things that could set me off on command. I just don't understand the moral issue at all. It doesn't register with me.
Fuck I'm of the persuasion that they should grow an exact clone of use from birth. Lobotomise it and keep it in a farm somewhere so if and when anything goes wrong with us. We can just take what we need from it and keep on trucking. Then inject the thing with ton's of stem cells and see if it grows back. If so..... Profit.

Ok maybe that's a bit farfeched... but I can dream can't I.

i doset mater who the stem cells came drom as long as there human because they are like a blank slat its sort of why they work

 

[TaboriHK]

Right but this is where numbers come into play. Nonreligious and religious types can have the same desire to change policy. But religious types are in a much better position in terms of resources and organization to start groups that WILL affect policy, not just complain about it. An atheist against this could print flyers or start a website, but a church can reach out to a built-in community and do 95% of the work for them by creating form letters for them to mail out or sign. Only organizations actually get anything done in this country, for better or worse. Individuals with passion can only get so far, and no non-religious group will approach the kind of resources any major denomination's chapters could summon very easily. It's religious institutions that can create a campaign from nothingness to back in the first place.

The religious are the only ones that can make the actual difference, you're right about that. But if we were to go back to the original argument and your original statement, which by this point is pretty much irrelevant given the additional information, they aren't the only ones who get pissy. On my part, I may have inferred it wrong and insulted your intelligence, you have my apologies for that.

I never took it negatively, I think a few of us are writing in shorthand and expecting other people to naturally know what fills in the blanks when that doesn't usually happen in an internet discussion, especially a controversial one.

 

[PhiMed]

Everyone who is saying that "the vast majority of naysayers are NOT religious", or that "the vast majority is only religious because the majority of people are religious" doesn't really know what they are talking about... sorry.

Religion is the sole basis as to why this is still an ethically shaky issue. You could be an Atheist and be against stem cell research, but the reason why you are against it is one of religious origin, instilled in our minds by family, friends, or shitty documentaries.

Otherwise, you would feel no compassion for a god damn embryo.

I mean seriously, do you weep for each wasted "potential child" every time you fap as well?

I might if I ejaculated fertilized embryos capable of cellular proliferation and differentiation into a fully-formed human. Alas, I only squirt haploid spermatozoa. My wife also only ovulates haploid eggs. I guess your testes operate differently than mine.

I'm not opposed to stem cell research. In fact, I think that we should be funding it... heavily. But you do realize that you're basically suggesting that people shouldn't be sad when a woman miscarries, right? Go tell a woman who miscarried that her grief is over the death of a "god damn embryo" that she shouldn't feel compassion for. Let me know how that turns out. I'll foot the hospital bill.

I know exactly what I'm "basically suggesting".

Miscarriages don't have to be a traumatic experience. Trauma is entirely in the mind. My mom had a miscarriage before she had me and my sister, and neither one of my parents gave 2 shits (True story). Both of my parents are whiny and emotional all the time, but neither one cared about a pre-lifeform with no sentience what-so-ever...

I guess you could say that for them, it was a "no-brainer". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No, but seriously, you can use as many big words as you want to describe pre-human life. None of them will change the fact that, no matter what animal classification we are looking at, the embryo is NEVER considered to be the same.

An embryo is not a human. It cannot think, it cannot process data, and it would be much better used to save a life with previously established roots and responsibilities.

Assuming your version of events that occurred before you were born is accurate (not a safe assumption, due to you being unable to "process data" at the time), your parents' experience is atypical. The vast majority of people who have miscarriages give at least two shits. All emotions are "in the mind". That doesn't make them inherently invalid.

You are arguing a school of thought (the name of which escapes me) that suggests that someone who has completed their maturation is more valuable than someone who has not. Under this school of thought, if a car is about to strike two people, one of whom is a 25 year-old man with a graduate degree and one of whom is a 2 year-old, assuming you only have time to save one, it is more ethical to save the 25 year-old. The reasoning is that the 25 year-old is "complete", and therefore more valuable to society.

Also, by this reasoning, infanticide is a much less serious crime than homicide, because infants are incapable of reason. Taken to extremes, advocates of this school of thought would say that euthanasia by request of a conscious Nobel laureate is a worse crime than drowning a newborn.

Most people don't feel this way. I don't care to argue ethics right now, but I will say that I am thankful that most people do not ascribe to this school of thought. Most parents (at least the good ones) would find any economic hardship difficult to resolve with this mindset.

It's unfortunate that you aren't comfortable with my big words. I'm not sorry, but it's unfortunate. Semen still isn't a fetus, and your analogy is still weird.