Awesome Stem Cell Article from the Charlotte Observer

[DanCa]

This miracle is bigger than politics

TOMMY TOMLINSON
CHARLOTTE OBSERVER


We use "miracle" all the time for things that don't deserve the word.
A last-second touchdown, a $20 bill in the street, a parking space
next to the mall entrance at Christmas -- those aren't miracles.
Stem cells are miracles.

A fertilized egg, at 5 to 7 days old, turns into a bundle of
shapeshifters. Each stem cell can turn into a building block for any
human tissue -- a brain, a spinal cord, a kidney or liver or lung.
In a woman's womb, those cells become babies.Under a scientist's eye, those cells unlock the keys to healing the body and curing disease.They contain the indefinable power to create life -- and to save it.Which is why the issue of stem-cell research goes beyond politics, and into the tissue of the heart.

Sen. Bill Frist, loyal majority leader for President Bush, broke
away from the president Friday on the stem-cell issue. Frist, who's a doctor, said he'd support more federal spending on stem-cell research. (Some private firms do similar work, but federal
money would make the research much broader.)Four years ago, Bush limited federal spending on stem cells to work that had already started. At the time, reports said there were as many as 78 of those stem-cell lines.But Frist says only 22 lines are still available -- and some of those are wearing down after repeated experiments.

Other scientists are working on adult stem cells and umbilical-cord
cells. So far they don't show the promise of cells from embryos.
This all comes back to when life begins, and the value we place on
those little bundles of cells. The ground slides under you no matter where you stand.Some scientists have talked about creating embryos purely for research -- in short, for spare parts. To me that seems cruel and unnatural.But couples, with the help of doctors, create embryos all the time for in vitro fertilization -- in hopes of creating a life. Sometimes, when they succeed, there are embryos left over.

To me, they were created out of love and hope, and it seems right
that they should be used to give hope to someone else. Scientists believe stem cells could hold the secrets to healing spinal-cord injuries, treating Parkinson's, reversing diabetes, even curing cancer.Those same stem cells made every one of us. They wired the network of our thoughts. They paved the pathways of our emotions.
They flexed and morphed and made us into people who disagree and
change our minds and reach out in the hope that we will one day
understand.We have the ability to create life and destroy it, and to do one to serve the other. That is more than politics. It gets to the core of humanity.And so as we debate stem-cell research, we should give the issue the work and thought and heart that it deserves.We are talking about miracles.

[Maple]

1. Link

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/12267898.htm

[shraby]

2. Only one thing wrong with the article

they don't become embryos until they are implanted in a womb. Without a womb they are a collection of cells destined to be a collection of cells, nothing more, nothing less.

[DanCa]

3. Agreed

But I thought that's what he meant by "under a scientist watchful eye"