All that's being discarded is an opportunity for research

Wait... I missed it. Where's the "unborn child"?

i saw it wink at me!

I think in the audio I heard... "I'm very cold daddy. Help!"

Incredible. Well done, DefCon.

Aargh, that's horrible!

I mean, handling the biohazard trash without gloves? What're they thinking!?

http://sexdrugsanddna.com/blog/?p=82

Cryopreservation of embryos occurs about five days after fertilization. At that point, normally fertilized blastocysts have a total of 58.3 +/- 8.1 cells. (Development. 1989 Nov;107(3):597-604.) The "baby" is .1mm - .2mm large.

A Human Blastocyte looks like this: http://www.advancedfertility.com/pics/day%205%20blastocyst.jpg

Not to be confused with a sheep blastocyte: http://www.ars.usda.gov/images/docs/3243_3427/SheepBlastocyst.jpg

Did anyone get a good look at the scientist's face? If so, call 911 because it is pretty clear to me that he is a MURDERER!

Judging from the way they handle biohazard (bare hands) I suppose we can expect embryos to be washing up on the beach soon! Sci-fiers could run with that.

Poor little Timmy. I guess they'll have to return that baseball mit.

You know, the religious right (meaning the hard-core part that drives this agenda, as opposed to all the weakly-committed people who go along with it) actually does think IVF is itself bad and should either be banned or the embryos given to women who are willing to "adopt at the embryonic stage of development". If you can stand it, go read freerepublic whenever this comes up.

However, as a pratical political matter, the leaders of the movement know that attempting to ban IVF is a political non-starter.

It is a shame that these fundies love death so much that they are trying to stop the area of research with the greatest chance at curing most causes of death. ESC could potentially greatly extend the average life span.

Are they having a population problem in the after life or something? Why are they actively trying to kill us? Every day they successfully stop ESC research 300,000 people die. That number should be foremost in everyone's minds. 300,000 people a day die. Anything that can reduce that number should be researched and funded at the highest levels possible.

"...curing most causes of death..."

Um, no. I'm all for expanded stem cell research, and I think it will be of great and lasting benefit to humanity.

But "most causes of death" includes things like car accidents, typhoid, TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS, murder and suicide. None of which are going to be impacted in any way by the results of stem cell research.

"300,000 people a day die. Anything that can reduce that number should be researched and funded at the highest levels possible."

I agree; anything that can be done to reduce this death toll should be done (disclaimer: if you have a screwball, idiotic or "creative" idea involving caste systems, bigotry, forced labour, torture or anything else highly unpleasant, don't do that).

However, I'd really like to see a reference for that 300,000 / day figure.

By most causes of death, I mean aging. Almost all the problems people die from are symptoms of aging. Heart failure, stroke, cancer, ect. With stem cells we could replace most of the cells/organs in our bodies with new one. The brain is the really big problem.

ESC take a short cut in curing the problem of aging, which is just a defect that natural selection can not select out, by replacing damaged tissue with new healthy tissue. The real path to fixing aging is the SENS proposal by Aubrey de Grey. Aging can be seen a 'cured' when we can add 1 healthy year of life for every year of research.

I will be back with links to backup the 300,000 people die a day figure. Please visit www.imminst.org for a lot better scientific explanation of this topic. I am a computer scientist, not a biologist.

I think I was a little high, sorry. I found a few places that say 100,000-150,000 and all say that the US Census is there source, but provide no link back to it. I will keep looking.

In the mean time here a documentary on defeating aging. It is 1:45 long, but very interesting.
Exploring Life Extension.

Ok I had to do some inference my self.

This says that in 1996 the crude death rate per 1000 was 9. If there are about 6 billion people in the world then (6,000,000,000 * 0.009)/365 = 148,000 deaths per day. This is world wide from all causes. In the western world the leading cause of death is aging. In the third world you still have problems like malnutrition, dehydration, contagions, ect. to worry about. Those are all political problems that could be solved today if we had the resolve.

If you turn the volume all the way up, you can hear it screaming.

That... was extremely effective. I DEMAND that this be turned into a TV commercial and broadcast on national television. It's simply too good to pass up. This is how to tell people that throwing away unused embryos is stupid.

All we need is a few hundred thousand dollars.

I DEMAND that this be turned into a TV commercial and broadcast on national television

You really want to see the FCC burned to the ground by the Parent's Television Council, eh? :)
I can just picture all of the right-wingers gasping in shock and horror at that video, then praying for the soul of that poor child...

Personally, I'd like to see more 'Snowflake' babies. Seems like an appropriate option for these little embryos.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/28/national/main712541.shtml

And, guess what? They actually turn into babies! Who would have thunk it??

Hi, Forthekids--

I'd like to politely ask you why you think spending tens of thousands of dollars on implanting these embryos is a better use of finite resources than using those resources to feed, clothe, educate, and shelter already-existing children here and elsewhere in the world. Certainly, people are free to spend their money any way they care to, but I'm curious as to what analysis goes into a decision such as the one you advocate.

(Was that nice enough, PZ?)

Ah, I see now!

You're right. What's all the fuss about? All you're doing is tossing a bunch of cells in the trash. You don't see them and even if you did they sure wouldn't look human.

Reminds me a bit of those old black-and-white movies from WW2 showing bulldozers piling concentration camp victims into big pits. They were just bigger bunches of cells. Didn't look very human either by that point.

Such a putz. It's 58 cells! Yes human cells but it's not an unborn child.

Did I see that you were also a supporter of the death penalty?

Oh, Ian, go adopt a post-birth fetus if you're that interested in saving children. I'm not a fan of IVF (I think it's expensive and vain, but I understand the impetus for genetic immortality), but what is shown here is not a child. It's spare ammo.

I remember the morning I woke up to find I had ejaculated during my sleep. The horror I felt knowing all of that potential life had just been sacrificed by my overactive mind and uncontrollable bodily reaction to the thoughts I unconsciously entertained. Even more horrendous is seeing various products that are sold throughout this country--in pharmacies anyone can go into--that absorb the expelled egg during a woman's menstrual cycle. Does anyone care? Who are you Nazis/Communists/Liberals/etc. that would allow all of this potential life to just be thrown away, washed in a washing machine, flushed down a toilet? I for one am glad we have serious, rational people like Mr. Spedding to provide such apt analogies.

I call Godwin.

- JS

And, guess what? They actually turn into babies!

Under the right circumstances, an embryo can, with luck, develop into a baby. So can an unfertilized egg or sperm (with only a little more luck and work). So can, with a lot more intervention, a somatic cell. So what? None of these things is a baby and none will be without a lot of time, energy/food, and protection. Why worry about any of them when there are so many real, living, breathing, thinking people in the world to be concerned about?

"Hi, Forthekids--

I'd like to politely ask you why you think spending tens of thousands of dollars on implanting these embryos is a better use of finite resources than using those resources to feed, clothe, educate, and shelter already-existing children here and elsewhere in the world. Certainly, people are free to spend their money any way they care to, but I'm curious as to what analysis goes into a decision such as the one you advocate."

I think it's an interesting alternative way to use the embryos that are at the moment in 'limbo'.

Also, please be aware that I am quite undecided as to which 'side' I support regarding the stem cell research controversy. I see good arguments from both sides.

Though, when I see people discuss this issue as some of the commenters on this post do, I get a bit irritated at the arrogance and disregard for people with opinions that may not line up with their own.

Instead of treating the other side with distain, perhaps it would be better to sympathize with them just a bit. Might actually help your cause...

Kinda hard to sympathize with people who scream "NAZI MURDERER!!!" at any suggestion that an embryo is not, in fact, a human being.

Forethekids said:
"Instead of treating the other side with distain, perhaps it would be better to sympathize with them just a bit. Might actually help your cause..."

It would also help if the anti-stem cell research side of the argument empathized with us a bit. We (I at least) see the issue trying to save some cells at the cost of very many real living humans. People are dying and we argue about semantics. As this video shows they are already getting thrown out, the least we could do is give them some dignity by saving others.

I agree with you that this is a fundamentally more difficult topic then lets day gay marriage. We defiantly need a line of what counts as human life and what we are willing to research. Of all the logical places to draw that line are past the blastocysts stage of development for sure.

I get a bit irritated at the arrogance and disregard for people with opinions that may not line up with their own.

The point is that many anti-stem-cell-research folks have opinions that don't line up with other opinions that they themselves hold, such as that couples aren't abetting murder when they go for IVF. At best such constellation of beliefs is inconsistent, and at worst it is hypocrisy. Frankly, I personally feel very disinclined to take the opinions of the irrational and/or hypocritical all that seriously (at least as arguments to be rationally challenged, rather than positions to be politically defeated).

Forthe(potential)kids

It might be easier to quell our disdain if the opinions you espoused actually employed logic and reason. The fact is that it is not a kid, as has been pointed out to you in posts. It is no more a child than a lone sperm, or egg, or hair follicle. Only their potentials are different. Real people that are living have eeg activity, circulating blood, metabolism, etc.. That clump of cells does not. How do you dismiss this line of reasoning, logically?

Though, when I see people discuss this issue as some of the commenters on this post do, I get a bit irritated at the arrogance and disregard for people with opinions that may not line up with their own.

What, you mean like equating IVF clinics with Nazi death camps, as earlier on this thread?

Or were the responses that you received in some way not polite?

With all due respect,

Where are the Nazi Death camp references? I'm somehow not seeing those. I find 3 on this thread, none of which apply to the inferences being made.

A caller to The Randy Rhodes Show a month or so ago posed an interesting question for those who consider a 0.1mm blastocyst to be the equivalent of a child:

A 2-year old kid and a test tube containing a frozen blastocyst are in danger -- I think the caller suggested an imminent collision with a car. You are only able to save one. Which one do you save?

A few follow-on questions that further illuminate the issue (and, I hope, show how much we're all the same, despite the moralizing, name-calling, and rhetoric):

Would your decision change if the test tube contained 10 blastocysts? 100 blastocysts? 1,000 blastocysts?

In fact, is there ANY number of blastocysts that would make a thoughtful, compassionate person rescue that frozen test tube of possibilities over the tangible, living-and-breathing child?

OK, so the next logical series of questions is: There's a 2-year old child who is terminally ill with a terrible disease. If it provided a significant chance to save that child's life, would you be willing to sacrifice a blastocyst? 10 blastocysts? What chance would be enough for you to consider it significant? What if the illness affected 100 children? 1,000 children?

Now, obviously, in the former situation letting the blastocyst be destroyed guarantees that the child will survive and that's not the case in the latter. But the former situation leads to the inescapable conclusion that a child is fundamentally more important than a clump of cells smaller than the head of a pin.

So like the old joke about offering someone millions of dollars for one night of sex, we've already agreed on what you are; now we're just haggling about the price...

BTW, my handle has nothing to do with stem cell research. It's the same one I use on other sites and I don't like the idea of people switching handles everywhere they go. That's seems rather trollish to me.

Some of you make the point that the other side can be just as vicious. No doubt. But, it seems like the madness has to slow down somewhere. I know I'm at the wrong site to suggest that, but it's just a thought.

oh alex

reading is hard.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/all_thats_being_discarded_is…

keep trying, you'll figure it out. and to forthekids, your handle alone tells me you've more than made up your mind. as well, i come from a group (the liberal empiricist end of things) who are regularly called traitors or nazis or fascists or terrorists by any and all right wing commentators, politicians, hell even by our president. i will beg your forbearance if i've lost a bit of my tolerance for being accused of hating my own country a bit of late, and hope you understand that right now what i want to do is (mostly) kick james inhofe in the shins. hard. and yes, that's only one example.

Hey robert green,

I'm a friendly. Try reading some of my posts. My question was on the level. I did read that post earlier and it slipped my mind. I did a page search and came up with 3 hits. Sorry I made you work.

Actually, I don't think I'm the one who should apologize.

PS I took a lot of effort for me not to flame your smug/insulting response.

Reading may be hard, but restraint is harder. Cheers, Alex.

Dave C., that hypothetical child / blastocyst problem is interesting and useful, thanks for posting.

As for you, Robert G., I do feel your pain. I have been called some interesting names just for being from Massachusetts. Heh.

With all due respect,

Where are the Nazi Death camp references? I'm somehow not seeing those. I find 3 on this thread, none of which apply to the inferences being made.

I was refererring to Ian H Spedding's post above, which I read as a pretty unequivocal reference.

mmWave,

Thanks. Got. Also, thank you for the civility. I did read that post earlier and it slipped my mind. I did a page search for "nazi" and came up with 3 hits....none of which applied.

Equating this to the death camps is way off base...without a doubt.

Why not just take cionvicted criminals on death row and experiment on them, like the atheist Red Chinese Commies do?

Give me an objective reason why they should die without benefiting the rest of us.

Agent,

That is a completely different thread posted yesterday. The main difference is this:

Those prisoners are not POTENTIAL human life. The embyo is. When you kill someone, you are destroying active, cognitive, emotive life.

That is the main distinction that has not yet been refuted logically in this thread. My guess is that because it can't be.

Destroying kinetic human life is not even close to being the same as potential human life. If you think it is, please, explain.

Whomever said this should be a commercial is dead on. This is not a big deal at all and should be shown to the populace at large. Maybe it'll clear the images of toddlers being eaten out of their thin skulls.

All this fuss over THIS? Utterly pathetic.

For the commercial:
I can see it now, the caption should read: "And this was to be used to cure spinal chord injuries, but the 'right' thing to do is something different" - cut to the trash-can shot.

In fact, that's not what the RR is worked up about. Most of them are completely mute on the fate of the surplus embryos and the whole idea of IVF. It's only the use of embryos for research that agitates them. IOW, as hard as it may be to comprehend, there's even more hypocrisy than usual in the RR's position on this.

Steve_C wrote:

Such a putz. It's 58 cells!

And we're what - 100 trillion cells? So how many cells minimum do we need for a human being, professor?

Yes human cells but it's not an unborn child.

The cells are human, alive, the offspring of human parents and unborn. That's an unborn child.

Did I see that you were also a supporter of the death penalty?

I'm a fan of Star Trek, too. Is there a pattern here?

Maybe someone can fill me in a little here... this isn't my field, after all, and there are many people here who will be able to put me straight.

I was under the impression that the whole point about embryonic stem cells is that they're undifferentiated; that is, the embryos we're talking about show no structure whatsoever.

Is that correct, or do I have that wrong?

Stogoe wrote:

Oh, Ian, go adopt a post-birth fetus if you're that interested in saving children.

On balance,I prefer cats.

But there must be a few couples somewhere who'd like to adopt. It wouldn't hurt to ask around, would it?

JS wrote:

I call Godwin.

Did he reply yet?

Anyway, I have my appeal all lined up. I never mentioned Nazis by name and it was just a mention of an image that popped into my mind.

Dave Comstock wrote:

A 2-year old kid and a test tube containing a frozen blastocyst are in danger -- I think the caller suggested an imminent collision with a car. You are only able to save one. Which one do you save?

Oh, please, not that old chestnut!

It's not difficult. You save the 2-year-old under the same lesser-of-two-evils rule that allows abortion where the mother's life is at risk. The mother and the child have established lives outside the womb involving attachments to other people. Their loss would be far more devastating than that of blastocysts.

Would your decision change if the test tube contained 10 blastocysts? 100 blastocysts? 1,000 blastocysts?

Nope.

In fact, is there ANY number of blastocysts that would make a thoughtful, compassionate person rescue that frozen test tube of possibilities over the tangible, living-and-breathing child?

I can't think of any.

OK, so the next logical series of questions is: There's a 2-year old child who is terminally ill with a terrible disease. If it provided a significant chance to save that child's life, would you be willing to sacrifice a blastocyst? 10 blastocysts? What chance would be enough for you to consider it significant? What if the illness affected 100 children? 1,000 children?

Are we talking about sacrificing the blastocysts to provide an immediate cure for the 2-year-old or just to support ongoing research which may not bear fruit in time to save the child.

Either way, those blastocysts were not created ex nihilo. They have parents. You should ask them first.

Now, obviously, in the former situation letting the blastocyst be destroyed guarantees that the child will survive and that's not the case in the latter.

That's not quite what you said before. It was "significant chance" not "guarantees".

But the former situation leads to the inescapable conclusion that a child is fundamentally more important than a clump of cells smaller than the head of a pin.

If it's a direct choice between the two then yes, under the lesser-of-two-evils rule. What was your point?

Alex:
Real people that are living have eeg activity, circulating blood, metabolism, etc.. That clump of cells does not.

Say, for the sake of argument, that in we have the technology to perform cryopreservation of whole adult humans. People can be injected with cryoprotectant, and then their body temperature can be lowered to the point that metabolic activity ceases. No neural activity, no blood circulation, no cellular activity of any kind. These people can then be revived by simply slowly warming their body temperature back up to normal.

Is it ethically acceptable to simply destroy these people while frozen? I think most people would argue that it isn't; although they have no overt signs of life, when warmed up they would become perfectly functional humans.

Do you feel that an analogous argument made for embryos carries no merit whatsoever?

Ian:

Anyway, I have my appeal all lined up. I never mentioned Nazis by name and it was just a mention of an image that popped into my mind.

Right, of course. Since you never actually mentioned what you were talking about by name but merely described what you were talking about in a way that it could not possibly be confused with anything else, that gets you off the hook.

Are we talking about sacrificing the blastocysts to provide an immediate cure for the 2-year-old or just to support ongoing research which may not bear fruit in time to save the child.

So are you saying that the lack of immediacy, or that you're dealing with probabilities in either case, that somehow alters the choice to be made?

Mesk:

No neural activity, no blood circulation, no cellular activity of any kind. These people can then be revived by simply slowly warming their body temperature back up to normal.

Is it ethically acceptable to simply destroy these people while frozen? I think most people would argue that it isn't; although they have no overt signs of life, when warmed up they would become perfectly functional humans.

Do you feel that an analogous argument made for embryos carries no merit whatsoever?

That sounds a lot like a strawman. The situations are clearly not analogous, since the embryos that we're talking about do not have nervous systems, brains or blood circulation apparatus. It isn't the fact that they're frozen that is important here.

sorry, my blockquote tags got a little messed up on my last post...

Why not just start embryo factories where women can donate eggs that will never be used, men will shoot off sperm thats never going to be used, and create millions of embryos for harvesting.

Think of all the good that could be done with them.

Kind of like the factories in Brave New World.

Considering the wonderful uses to which human beings have put all scientific advances, what could possibly go wrong?

...embryo factories... Considering the wonderful uses to which human beings have put all scientific advances, what could possibly go wrong?

You tell us. Even if a mad scientist were to get his hands on a million blastocysts, what can he or she do with them that's so horrible? Make caviar?

Mesk,

Your argument fails in 2 areas that I can see.
1. As stated by mmWave - no brain ever existed, etc.
2. A person that was born, living their life, then frozen and destroyed, is not equivalant to a blastocyst, extreme pre-birth, no life, no memories or emotions or even the apparatus to support such things, being frozen then destroyed.

Goldstein,
So what's the big deal? I don't even want to guess as to how many human sperm and egg per hour are "wasted" on this planet. It sounds like to me any objection you can come up with is mostly based on emotion. Emotion that stems from your "feeling" that a blastocyst is a living, breathing, human.

The cells are human, alive, the offspring of human parents and unborn. That's an unborn child.

No, that's a blastocyst, Ian.

More than 50% of all blastocysts fail to implant.

Better get cracking collecting used tampons, Ian.

Here's what I want to know: if frozen blastocysts count as humans/children/babies, then shouldn't I be able to count them as dependents on my 1040? I'd like to see the section of tax code where dependents are specifically defined as living, breathing, post-utero humans. Cuz the wife and I could sure use the additional tax credits from all those frozen, undeveloped blastocysts we could make.

Millimeter Wave wrote:

Are we talking about sacrificing the blastocysts to provide an immediate cure for the 2-year-old or just to support ongoing research which may not bear fruit in time to save the child.

So are you saying that the lack of immediacy, or that you're dealing with probabilities in either case, that somehow alters the choice to be made?

Yes, if time constraints allow for no other courses of action, then "sacrificing the blastocysts" can be justified under the lesser-of-two-evils rule. More time could mean more opportunities to find alternative solutions.

Graculus wrote:

The cells are human, alive, the offspring of human parents and unborn. That's an unborn child.
No, that's a blastocyst, Ian.

"A rose by any other name..."

More than 50% of all blastocysts fail to implant.

All the more reason to cherish the ones that do get through.

Besides, those are accidents, not the result of deliberate human intervention. Rights are about curbing human behaviour.

Better get cracking collecting used tampons, Ian.

I may be English but I'll have you know I'm nothing like Prince Charles!

Ian H Spedding wrote:
>>A 2-year old kid and a test tube containing a frozen
>>blastocyst are in danger -- I think the caller suggested
>>an imminent collision with a car. You are only able to
>>save one. Which one do you save?
>
>[...]It's not difficult. You save the 2-year-old under the
>same lesser-of-two-evils rule that allows abortion where
>the mother's life is at risk. The mother and the child
>have established lives outside the womb involving
>attachments to other people. Their loss would be far more
>devastating than that of blastocysts.

Fair enough. Nice to know that you're not one of those "blastocyst == kid, no abortion under ANY circumstances" folks.

>>In fact, is there ANY number of blastocysts that would
>>make a thoughtful, compassionate person rescue that
>>frozen test tube of possibilities over the tangible,
>>living-and-breathing child?
>
>I can't think of any.

Again, this is a reasonable attitude. As a student of mathematics though, as the number of blastocysts in the equation approaches infinity with the kid still considered more valuable, the value of an individual blastocyst relative to the kid approaches zero.

>>OK, so the next logical series of questions is: There's
>>a 2-year old child who is terminally ill with a terrible
>>disease. If it provided a significant chance to save
>>that child's life, would you be willing to sacrifice a
>>blastocyst? 10 blastocysts? What chance would be enough
>>for you to consider it significant? What if the illness
>>affected 100 children? 1,000 children?
>
>Are we talking about sacrificing the blastocysts to
>provide an immediate cure for the 2-year-old or just to
>support ongoing research which may not bear fruit in time
>to save the child.
>
>Either way, those blastocysts were not created ex nihilo.
>They have parents. You should ask them first.

Did I -- or anyone else here -- ever say they had a problem with that? I would sure hope that the parent's permission would be required before a blastocyst was destroyed, too.

The real point here is that, unless the donation of sperm or eggs was anonymous, the contributors should be able to decide whether the blastocysts should be kept indefinitely, destroyed, or donated to science. The fundamentalist position, as I understand it, is that donating the blastocysts to science should not be allowed under any circumstances and destruction also shouldn't be allowed (although there seems to be a lot less yelling and screaming about this).

>>Now, obviously, in the former situation letting the
>>blastocyst be destroyed guarantees that the child will
>>survive and that's not the case in the latter.
>
>That's not quite what you said before. It
>was "significant chance" not "guarantees".

You misunderstood me: the "guarantee" was in the car accident situation, where there's 100% chance that you could save the kid or the test tube, but a 0% chance that you could save both.

The medical research situation, as we both acknowledge, is less black-and-white, since there's only a potential ("significant chance") for a cure, not a certainty. I'd argue that sacrificing the potential for a life (or lives) for the potential for a cure makes some sense, assuming that the contributors have no objection.

However, it sounds like this is where you would draw the line.