Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
A new report in Nature says that a California company has found a way to extract stem cells from embryos without destroying them. It's not perfected yet, but apparently has some promise. I'll make a bet: even if the technique is perfected and stem cell lines can be created through that technique without destroying any embryos, even ones that will be thrown out anyway, the religious right still won't accept embryonic stem cell research. Everyone sing along with me:
Every cell is sacred, every cell is great. If a cell is wasted, God gets quite irate."
Comments
Ed, you forgot to close your italics tag. It's messing up the rest of your front page.
Posted by: W. Kevin Vicklund | August 23, 2006 4:08 PM
Ed,
That was a pretty damn funny song. Did you make it up?
Posted by: Daniel Morgan | August 23, 2006 4:19 PM
Or, better yet: even if the technique is shown to be completely ineffective, lawmakers will decide to fund the hell out of it at the expense of more promising and proven techniques.
Posted by: Nick Anthis | August 23, 2006 4:19 PM
Daniel - was that sarcasm?
If not... the song is from Monty Python's movie "The Meaning of Life"
Lyrics can be found here: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/monty-python/every-sperm-is-sacred.html
Posted by: Cheeto | August 23, 2006 4:24 PM
The attitude of the religious right is pretty straightforward: this is an area where man is not meant to interfere. But most don't know why that is such a challenge to their beliefs. They feel the itch, but aren't sure why it itches. There is a reason. As we are more and more able to manipulate the development process, it will be more obvious -- well, it already is obvious, but obvious to the broader public -- that the development process is natural. With the covers pulled back, there is no magic point at which the religious right can point and say, "there is where the soul enters." Without that, people start to wonder where the supernatural element is to the soul. And then the whole ball of yarn starts to unravel, until there's just nothing left of their theology at all. This kind of revealed religion desperately needs the notion of a soul, and not just a set of cognitive functions, tied to the brain, but something magical, something that only their god creates, something that cannot be explained by biology, something that can be saved or damned separate from the body. No soul, no religion. No magic in the development process, no soul. So they want to keep the covers on development.
Posted by: Russell | August 23, 2006 4:31 PM
I'll take that bet. Stem cells without destroying embryos would cut the Gordian Knot that tied up George Bush back in '01 when he came up with his contrived compromise. I can't help but think it would be welcomed.
Of course, I also believe that the invention of an artificial uterus for the gestation of unwated fetuses will end the dilemma over abortion.
Am I naive? We are talking about people who protest a vaccine against cervical cancer, after all.
Posted by: Grumpy | August 23, 2006 5:17 PM
You're naive. The religious right would oppose an artificial uterus.
Posted by: Russell | August 23, 2006 5:33 PM
Oh, great, Grumpy. With all the children languishing in foster care, unadopted, you want to bring even more unwanted children into the world?
Look, the only way to reduce abortions is through massive contraceptive openness and education. And that won't happen until after Jebus arrives on his pale horse with the rapturing and the kicking and the biting and the Oh Glaven!
Posted by: Stogoe | August 23, 2006 5:37 PM
I particularly loved this line:
"It does not solve the ethical dilemma," Doerflinger says. "It'd be irresponsible to claim now that this is totally safe."
Why? Well, because:
the fact that the experiments leading to his recent advance--although done to develop a technique that would preserve embryos--actually destroyed embryos in the process
You just can't please some people
Posted by: frank | August 23, 2006 5:55 PM
You forgot to mention the biggest elephant in the room: if you are SUCCESSFUL in creating these new lines of stem cells, then each and every one of those stem cells is a sacred little life waiting to be born with just the right conditions.
In other words, if you succeed, you lose.
Posted by: plunge | August 23, 2006 8:12 PM
I hate to disappoint you Ed, but as a Fundie myself, this sounds like great news if this research can produce the same thing as scientists were trying to extract by destroying an embryo to carry out what looks like at this point to be not much more than speculation and "possibilities." If this pans out, and what the pro-ESCR have predicted about the usefulness of these cells, everyone wins. I hope this method is perfected because at that point, no ethical dilemma exists and everyone would be blessed.
"Every cell is sacred, every cell is great. If a cell is wasted, God gets quite irate."
...haven't held too many funerals after clipping my nails Ed.
Also -- you're right, Titus is the man. A few years back, I coordinated a Comedy Central/USO show on the base where I was stationed at the time. Titus hosted that particular episode and I got a chance to spend a couple days shooting bumper scenes at various training areas. The guy is a rip and a good sport too. A few hours before we shot the show, I took him down to the MP K-9 training area, he puts on the dog suit, takes off with two Belgian Malinois on his tail, gets tackled against a fence with these two dogs ripping at him and it turns out he winds up with his forehead busted wide open. The entire crew was in absolute soil-drawers mode, but this guy clams them down, zips out to a plastic surgeon in La Jolla and is back in time to host the show with some great unplanned material.
Posted by: Glib Fortuna | August 23, 2006 8:29 PM
"I hope this method is perfected because at that point, no ethical dilemma exists and everyone would be blessed"
What's the ethical dilemma now? The pool of frozen embryos potentially available for study by scientists includes blastocysts destined for one of two fates: Medical research or the garbage can. We'd be "blessed" if the religiously obtuse would acknowledge this and quit screwing with near-certain progress toward various disease cures and ameliorations.
I need to dig up the Bible verse that describes the Lord's edict about not using our God-given brains to improve the well-being of humankind while harming no one. Must be in Leviticus or Deuteronomy with the other really crazy shiznit.
Posted by: kemibe | August 23, 2006 9:18 PM
Glib-
Nice to hear you're semi-rational about it, but I doubt everyone will be. I still maintain my bet will pan out for plenty of people on your side of the issue.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | August 23, 2006 9:32 PM
I clicked on Glib's name above and went to the site without ever looking at the website addy. When I got there I was amazed at the vapid nonsense I was reading so I looked up to the adress and couldn't believe I had stumbled on the 'stop the aclu' site. That explained it.
Posted by: GH | August 23, 2006 9:42 PM
"Every cell is sacred, every cell is great. If a cell is wasted, God gets quite irate."
I don't think Glib realizes that the original is "sperm."
Posted by: kehrsam | August 23, 2006 9:57 PM
Ed, I'm not a fundy, but I know a number of fairly thoughtful ones (including in my own family). There may be some loud voices who would react as you predict, but I'm guessing they'd be quite the minority of fundies. Most fundies are actually pragmatic about most science/technology that could be used to improve their own lives (as opposed to science that seeks to explain biological and cosmological origins, which they tend to utterly fear). The death/use of single cells, as long as an embryo isn't harmed, shouldn't bother them in the least, and probably won't. (To compare a similar issue, I don't think I've ever heard a fundy argument against the killing of cancerous cells with radiation b/c by God those cells are living tissue and deserve every chance we can give them to follow their normal life course as determined by God.) For someone who at least claims to want to combat overinflated (and misleading) rhetoric (especially straw men) in the public sphere, you do come very close to supplying your own nearly-as-overinflated claims.
No, the interesting reaction will be to see how those fundies, who spent all that energy trying to claim that adult (instead of embryonic) stem cells actually were considered to hold the vast potential, will have to backtrack if this method is shown to be vastly more successful than the ASC methods that Bush has allowed to be funded.
Posted by: indecisive | August 23, 2006 10:37 PM
"The death/use of single cells, as long as an embryo isn't harmed, shouldn't bother them in the least, and probably won't."
indecisive, read my comment above. Do these fundies you know understand that embryonic stem cells from frozen blastocysts used in clinical research have been shuttled through a process that ensures that their only other disposition is to be thrown out? No one is scouring wombs for ESC, and no uterus is being denied a potential guest.
kehrsam -- I just watched The Meaning of Life again the other night and suspect Ed may have as well. That scene is easily the film's best, and ends uproariously with the self-righteous protestant's declarations from his breakfast table.
Posted by: kemibe | August 23, 2006 11:06 PM
SURPISE!!!!!!
Bush Administration Invents New Excuse To Oppose Embryonic Stem Cell Research: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/24/bush-embryonic-stem-cells/
Posted by: matthew | August 24, 2006 11:34 AM
I'm not sure some of the commenters here are quite grasping the point raised by plunge: If successful, this technique might just be creating new embryos from the old ones, with the same full potential to develop into humans, much in the same way identical twins are cloned. How, then, is that different from the original stem cell research to which the religious right is objecting?
I of course accept the possibility that the stem cells from this technique don't have the "same full potential" I mention above, for reasons X, Y and Z. I don't know enough about it. But is it safe to assume they aren't far removed from that ability? If so, I think that's close enough for the majority of the fundamentalist opponents.
Posted by: rrt | August 24, 2006 11:44 AM
matthew, while I am completely for ESC research (as anyone with any sort of understand of biology), it amazes me how quickly the comments on that post went into reductio ad hitlerum...
/* goes off to secure the doors against attacks of the Hitler zombie */
Posted by: Peter Z. | August 24, 2006 9:59 PM
They're baaaaaaack....
http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/2006/11/the_return_of_ethically_sound.php
Posted by: Nick Anthis | November 22, 2006 6:40 PM