Aborted Baby Cells in Drink Research

[Jefferson]

Why? It wouldn't stop them from having happened. All that would happen is that more people would suffer unnecessarily. Imagine someone dear to you dying of cancer even though there was a known cure, just because it was researched unethically.

Imagine many people being glad that someone dear to you was murdered just because some scientists conducted experiments on your loved one's dead body. I doubt that would sit well with you.

 

[Jefferson]

Who is saying it justifies murder? I'm not. All I'm saying is, the murder already occurred many decades ago. New murders are not occurring for the research in question to go forward. Why then are you up in arms over the testing being done? At this point, it's just a cell line.

The HeLa cell line produced many miracles of science and the family was denied any compensation nor were they asked for permission to use the cells. But all of this happened back in the 50s (in the HeLa case) Scientists are not going to throw out cell lines because they originated under bad circumstances.

Would you be in favor of scientists going to sacred American-Indian burial grounds to exhume those bodies to use them for medical research?

 

[Alate_One]

Would you be in favor of scientists going to sacred American-Indian burial grounds to exhume those bodies to use them for medical research?

You guys can't seem to stop comparing apples to oranges.

I'm not talking about being in favor of doing new research on the bodies of various sorts of people without permission (though that is standard practice in medical science, that samples taken during medical procedures can be used in research).

We're talking about a cell line that's 30+ years old. It's not the body of anyone anymore, that's your fundamental disconnect.

It's as if you assume that any living cell from a person (no matter how far removed) should be treated with the same level of respect as an entire person. Do you think we should find all of the HEK cell line and give them a proper burial? :kookoo:

 

[GuySmiley]

You guys can't seem to stop comparing apples to oranges.

I'm not talking about being in favor of doing new research on the bodies of various sorts of people without permission (though that is standard practice in medical science, that samples taken during medical procedures can be used in research).

Is this old research? I don't remember, but are you against abortion in general anyway? Would it change your mind if the cells were taken from prisoners in China who were executed to political dissent?

We're talking about a cell line that's 30+ years old. It's not the body of anyone anymore, that's your fundamental disconnect.

What if the baby were aborted an hour ago? Would it change your mind? What time limit would you set and why?

 

[Alate_One]

Is this old research?

The cell line is 30+ years old. But it has been immortalized thanks to the use of adenovirus DNA. It sounded like the drink research was recent.

I don't remember, but are you against abortion in general anyway? Would it change your mind if the cells were taken from prisoners in China who were executed to political dissent?

I am against abortion in general. However, taking cells from a prisoner killed for political dissent would be the same thing as the HEK line. If you are killing the person in any way for the purpose of taking their cells (which is stupid since you can take cells from a living adult person) then you obviously are doing something very unethical. But otherwise you're basically just using a person as a cadaver.

If there was no intention to kill FOR the production of cells, then all origins of the cells are the same. The person harvesting cells is performing an act independent of the person that caused death.

What if the baby were aborted an hour ago? Would it change your mind? What time limit would you set and why?

Yes, it would change my mind if you're making something new and killing someone for the purpose of using cells in drink research.

Which is, what the title of this thread implies, which is what is NOT happening. It's not a time limit, it's primarily the intention of the people involved.

The specific case in question was a one time deal. As far as I'm aware new lines like the HEK are not being generated.

 

[Stripe]

Alate just seems to be comfortable with using dead people for whatever purpose as long as they were not killed for that purpose. Others have set their standards higher.