Comments Posted By Sue Dohnim
Displaying 11 To 19 Of 19 Comments
Thanks for the great feedback, Rick and TheMaryHunter (and/or Penelope... the Internets can be confusing!)
I was doing some online research of my own about the subject when I ran across something that I had not thought about before.
Because there is another set of DNA besides the potential patient's involved in a stem cell line, the donor stem cells must be tissue-matched against the recipient, just like in transplant procedures.
So the embryonic stem cell therapies being touted to the public today are pipedreams, for the most part. The truly promising goal would be to take cells from the patient, somehow make them into embryo-like stem cells (i.e. pluripotent) and treat the patient with those cells. That way there would be no need for tissue-matching or fear of rejection; the cells would for all intents and purposes be the patient's own cells.
Of course, the sticky wicket is genetic disease. If you've got an organ problem that's caused by your DNA (possibly juvenile diabetes, for instance), then the type of therapy I mentioned above doesn't work. Then it's necessary to do what basically amounts to a cellular transplant, with all of the requisite tissue-matching and anti-rejection drugs.
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 27.05.2005 @ 09:07
Good post all around, except for gratuitous I.D. bashing.
About embryonic stem cell research:
- There are currently no laws that forbid embryonic stem cell research.
- The "restrictions" that everyone talks about are simply criteria for receiving federal funding for research. In other words, having taxpayers foot the bill for such activity.
- There are already 78 stem-cell lines that can be used in federally funded embryonic stem cell research. These are available without all of the same strings attached to harvesting fresh embryos for new stem cell lines.
- Adult stem cells are producing results where embryonic stem cells are not, so much so that there is more privately-funded research going on in this area than in embryonic stem cells. Private companies only fund research when they see hope of returns on investment.
So why is there all of this screaming to grab more embryos? What can be done with these stem cells that can't be done with the others mentioned above? And if it holds so much promise, why isn't private industry jumping into it with both feet instead of panhandling from the government?
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 26.05.2005 @ 08:28
Pat does love him some good Mein Kampf, I guar-ron-tee!
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 12.05.2005 @ 07:36
ATTACK OF THE KILLER POTATO HEADS
As for peer reviewed ID theories, well…if you can show me an article in
“Nature” or some other recognized journal and not whatever standards used by Cambridge Press to publish the book you linked to, I’ll gladly change that statement.From a link on the page I linked to originally:
-- M.J. Denton & J.C. Marshall, “The Laws of Form Revisited,” Nature, 410 (22 March
2001): 417; M.J. Denton, J.C. Marshall & M. Legge, (2002) “The Protein Folds as
Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural
Law,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 219 (2002): 325–342.
This research is thoroughly non-Darwinian and looks to laws of form embedded in nature to
bring about biological structures. The intelligent design research program is broad, and design
like this that’s programmed into nature falls within its ambit.Like I said earlier, about 60 seconds of Googling. I'm sure better stuff could be found if one spent more time on it.
Here's a nice little FAQ entry from an ID advocacy website that hits on most of the arguments you've used against ID. Once again, a click from the first page of a Google search.
Please don't let prejudices get in the way of learning. Things like a heliocentric solar system and a cure for common stomach ulcers go undiscovered if we allow that to happen.
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 9.05.2005 @ 08:10
I lied. Sorry, my bad. It was Richard Dawkins who said in The Blind Watchmaker:
Measuring the statistical improbability of a suggestion is the right way to go about assessing its believability.
That's what I get for typing stuff from memory.
And I’m afraid your argument that ID doesn’t necessarily mention God so it’s not faith but scientific inquiry doesn’t fly very far. Who or what is the “I” in Intelligent Design but a Supreme Being? Simply not mentioning God isn’t good enough.
Why does there need to be a "who"? It's possible that we simply do not fully understand the true nature of what we call intelligence.
There are many instances of "organic" systems, such as lassiez-faire capitalism, that are formed from intelligent component entities working together in an uncentralized, undirected fashion, but with simple rules that were in and of themselves designed to benefit the system as a whole.
Even entities at the sub-atomic level seem to "decide" things.
So there's not necessarily a big bearded guy in the sky who does everything. Like Spinoza thought, it may be that the sky itself is smart and does it all.
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 8.05.2005 @ 22:29
1. There has been no serious peer review of any article or theory published by an ID scientist. Not one article in any recognized, respected scientific journal. The reason is simple:
There’s no way to evaluate a theory that posits the notion that ID and ID ONLY is responsible for evolutionary changes. There’s just no way to evaluate evidence based on faith.
In a few seconds of Googling, I found this about ID peer review.
Also, if I understand it correctly, ID doesn't definitively state that there is a supreme being, so your statement about "evidence based on faith" is incorrect. Among other things, ID posits that the probabilities of morphological changes exceed the observed time frame of their appearance. The evidence is the study of these probabilities; mathematics is not faith.
Stephen Jay Gould said himself that this was a proper way to evaluate neo-Darwinism, though he was too weak in mathematics to defend it well.
When the probabilities for an event exceed the limits of random occurrence, the only other force we have observed as causing such an event is an entity with intelligence.
There may be a third sort of force or agent, but we have not observed it.
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 8.05.2005 @ 15:32
Not all religious people are Christians, and as you've illustrated so well, everyone who values human life is not necessarily religious.
I was doing research on Dr. Ronald Cranford and came across this uncannily-timed online presentation from the U.S. Holocaust Museum. It's about how the medical community from the post WWI era slowly forgot its proper role in society. It's definitely relevant to so-called bioethics today.
In reference to hatred of religion and its role in the inhumanity in German doctors, I found this chilling account (WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS) of the actions of Dr. Josef Mengele:
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 3.04.2005 @ 13:52One morning in July 1944 I spotted my mother among a long line of women moving toward the gas chamber. Mengele called me in and gave me an errand to the crematorium. He knew I would see my mother go to her death. A couple of days later he asked me if I still believed in God.
WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF DEATH
That may be, superhawk, but you'd think CNN would keep that quote around somewhere. It even disappeared from the Google cache.
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 20.03.2005 @ 10:46
Gibbs' comments seem to have disappeared off of that CNN page. I verified that the quote had been there originally by using Google. What do you suppose this means?
Comment Posted By Sue Dohnim On 19.03.2005 @ 23:10
