November 24, 2007

...As Nature Intended

I don't believe there's anything natural about harvesting eggs and creating embryos through SCNT. Nor is there anything natural about fertilizing eggs outside the womb and cryopreserving them. What do I mean by natural?
Present in or produced by nature
Not produced or changed artificially; not conditioned
So you can understand my amusement by a post at Women's Bioethics Project that takes issue with the recent developments in stem cell research. The post seeks to negate this research by pointing to potential problems:
The only problem with this is that it also creates tertomas which are nasty little creatures - effectively a germ cell tumor which may contain hair, teeth, bones, eyeballs, torsos and hands.
This has already been shown to occur with embryonic stem cells. But wait, it gets better. Here is what they suggest:
instead of trying to create human embryonic stem cells from someone's nose or foreskin, let us do the research on embryos as nature intended. (emphasis definitely mine.)

1 comment:

Letitia (The Damsel) said...

The last comment--UNBELIEVABLE!

I guess it isn't common knowledge that embryonic stem cells used in therapies have produced tumors in many instances?