HomoSapien

The Pioneer 10, after 31 years in space has finally grown silent.
The last message was received on Jan. 22, took some 11 hours to reach us and that was traveling at the speed of light, and came from some 7.6 Billion miles away.

And I see the SO-16, (a new star) after being tracked for nearly eight years made a nearly perfect U-Turn, traveling 52 million miles per hour proving almost conclusively that there is a black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

What else, whats this...Sea Lions. Yes, the US Navy will be using Sea Lions able to dive to 650 feet as protection for our boys in the sea. Apparently during the Vietnam conflict, seven dolphins were used. No joke.

mmm....one of the main planners and builders of Stonehedge may have come from......Switzerland. Yes the Bronze age archer may have hailed from the Alps.

and finally Stem Cell research. Stem Cells are blank cells, there not liver or heart or anything cells. However they can be prompted with todays technology to become any one of the body's cells. The implications are staggering....death to diabetes, heart problems, etc. In fact preventive use of stem cell might mean the destructin of disease all around.

The problem seems to be where we get them from. There seem to be four ways, but the first two are the most controversial. Abortions clinics and all those millions of embryos from fertility clinics about to be thrown out.

Yes, we could use Adult Stem Cells, but they are not as versatile.

And we clone just embryos, and take their stem cells, which would give rise to producing embryo farms for harvesting...kind of creepy, eh?

However, from the religous right.."foul" is being called. This again brings up the age old question, when does life begin? What do you mean "blank" Cells? etc, etc.

I don't have the answer...but if we are gonna throw those embryos away, I say, use those stem cells baby!

MyKell

I do not think it's a question of when "life" begins as much as it is a question of when consciousness begins. I mean a bacterium is a "living" organism and noone ever feels bad for experimenting on it.
I don't think a human embryo with a central nervous system as complex as that of an earthworm feels anything. Therefore, from an ethical and moral point of view outside religion, it seems reasonable to conclude that human embryo farming is legitimate. Afterall, no one feels guilty experimenting with invertebrates, right?