GDubbs is at it Again!
Erin pointed this out to me, and at first, I thought nothing of it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't like it at all. I'm becoming less and less tolerant of his leadership style. Have a read, then let me know what you're thinking.
The main reason it angers me may seem dumb, but I don't really care. Stem Cell research is such a new field that for it to be developed, people with a more liberal way of thinking need to be involved with deciding it's direction, not people who are conservative and against it because they don't understand it. The only way to completely understand a technology is to embrace it and let the technology find it's niche, not to define a niche for it and pigeon hole the science.
For those of you who don't know, the stem cells are the eight cells present in the blastocyst at the eight cell stage of embryonic development. Ok, now in layman's terms… the eight cells that can still develop into any tissue in the body. That being said, you can only imagine the bennefits that this kind of research can have. We could heal paralyzed people, we could restore sight to the blind, we could re-grow hearts than transplant them into patients instead of waiting on someone to die. The possibilities are endless.
Most conservatives see this technology as a step toward cloning. They also see it as humans "playing God". Personally, I never understood that phrase. God (however you believe) embodied humans with the ability to learn. With that ability to learn comes the ability to heal ourselves. Now I can see how religious folks can argue that a cloned human is a human without a soul, but I don't believe that this is the case. Maybe I should be one of these guys… Anyway, I digress…
Point is, I don't agree with GDubbs removing two of the most outspoken individuals in the stem cell field and replacing them with three individuals, one liberal and two conservatives against stem cell research to begin with…
GAH! Stupid Bush…
Ok, I leave you with this entertainment.
The End-of-the-Blog Rundown
Song of the Day – Please, Mr. Postman – The Beatles
Quote of the Day – "Those are the ones with the tails." – Li'l Steph
Hero of the Day – Kendra for coming out and playing basketball with us last night.
Beatles Trivia, Question 6
Bur first… the answer to question 5. Here's the rundown folks… Lead Singers galore.
- I Saw Her Standing There – Paul
- Misery – John
- Anna (Go to Him) – John
- Chains – George
- Boys – Ringo
- Ask Me Why – John
- Please Please Me – John
- Love Me Do – John / Paul
- PS I Love You – Paul
- Baby It's You – John
- Do You Want to Know a Secret? – George
- A Taste of Honey – Paul
- There's a Place – John / Paul
- Twist and Shout – John
Today's Question:
Still with Please Please Me…
- When was the album released in the UK (Month, Year)? (1 pt.)
- How many weeks was it on the Billboard charts? (1 pt.)
The last one was long, so this one is short. Knock yourselves out with this one folks. We'll move on to a new album next question.
As always, e-mail responses to beatles@tlmason.com
Current Mood – 
Irritated
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13 Responses to “GDubbs is at it Again!”
Frenchy on 03 Mar 2004 at 2:02 am #
Any and every human has remaining stem cells available throughout their bodies, there is no need to look to embryos. “The possiblities are endless” with adult stem cells too, it just happens to be easier to get them from embryos. Being a liberal scientist does not make you a better scientist, nor does being a conservative make you a less capable one. Letting doctors run with medical technology was common practice in early 1940′s Germany.
The pivotal point in making the decision to use embryonic stem cells is determining whether or not an embryo is a human. Bush has decided that it is. There is no scientific evidence to show that it is not.
Jimi to the C. xXx on 03 Mar 2004 at 2:49 am #
i own.
Victoria on 03 Mar 2004 at 9:13 am #
interesting stuff to think about, why would anyone do such a thing
tm on 03 Mar 2004 at 10:27 am #
I don’t care if adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells are used to help repair tissues or to grow new, but a large part of embryonic stem cell research is research into development. I failed to mention that in my post, and that’s my bad. As a bioinformatics major, the one topic in biology that interests me most is developmental genetics. Without data obtained from human embryonic stem cells, the research that can be done in this field is highly limited.
For example:
In the organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), scientists know from which cell division each and every cell in the worm’s body comes from. It is so easy for them to induce a division and cause a tumor, or to delete a cell and cause part of the organism to be missing.
Now, I’m not saying that we should go to that extreme in humans, but one can only imagine what could come from that knowledge.
Jimi to the C. xXx on 03 Mar 2004 at 11:38 am #
people need to pull their heads out of their asses. for real. one of the many aspects of this controversy that the conservatives see is that these doctors are using aborted fetus tissue to do this research (or at least trying). this in turn causes a sort of, for lack of a better word, usefulness for abortion. any way i look at it, i see abortion as a murder, but that is BESIDE THE POINT. NO ABORTION DEBATES PLEASE!!
here’s what i say: as long as abortion is legal, one may as well put that tissue to the use of potentially saving people’s lives, curing the blind, whatever. that makes sense to me.
as for playing God, if God is almighty, wouldn’t He have already predetermined this happening?? i dunno, just a passing thought.
tm on 03 Mar 2004 at 11:43 am #
Agreed Jimi, Agreed.
Erin on 03 Mar 2004 at 2:54 pm #
And just for clarification’s sake… I don’t even have an opinion on whether or not this stem cells/abortion = murder business. At all. What I *do* have a problem with is that Bush deliberately manipulated his committee to agree with him, rather than continuing on with the varied viewpoint, which could realistically have offered some further options. It’s not to say at all that conservative scientists aren’t as good at what they do as are liberal ones, but it is to say that they believe different things. Isn’t that what this country is based on–differing viewpoints and the right to disagree?
::shakes head:: I care about stem cell research, but not as much as I care about equal representation and the right to offer a dissenting opinion in any and all capacities. That is more than likely why some of these most recent issues piss me off so much… it has nothing whatsoever to do with other people or the fact that their opinions differ, it’s the fact that the government would choose to regulate them.
John on 03 Mar 2004 at 4:51 pm #
537.8, baby. I got a big kick out of smacking penguins.
Oh, we’re talking about something more serious this time? My bad.
Jess on 03 Mar 2004 at 6:09 pm #
i saw “gdubbs” and thought “dubs” which translates into “matt wawrzynski” in my brain, and then i started reading and i’m like, “tom mason! you shouldn’t be posting this about your boss on the internet!”
then i got who you were talking about.
meh. today really has been a doozie.
shotwell on 03 Mar 2004 at 10:00 pm #
i just finished a debate on stem cell research…for debate class. what you find is that these tissues are generally not looked for in an aborted fetus anymore. The embryo is used about 4 days after conception, meaning that these embryos are NOT aborted, they can only feasibly be taken from an embryo made in a fertility clinic. There are hundreds of thousands of these embryos sitting in fertility clinic freezers as we speak. These embryos aren’t going anywere. Saying they are potential life WITHOUT a potential mother is like saying I have the potential to become a lizard, right now.
Erin on 03 Mar 2004 at 11:35 pm #
Shotwell–I did a similar debate, and actually you’re right. The vast majority of the embryos are in reality taken from fertility clinics that have a glut in “supply” so to speak. There’s no “feasibly” about it–that’s almost always what they do. A big part of the debate… is that a lot of the people who donate said eggs wouldn’t want them to be used for that…
mojo on 03 Mar 2004 at 11:37 pm #
dude…you DO have the potential to become a lizard right now…if you just pray hard enough…ANYTHING can happen…
tm on 04 Mar 2004 at 8:25 pm #
574.3! HA EAT THAT JOHN!