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[Truean]

I've got to say, I still think cloning humans for organs is unethical.  Stem cell research?  Yes please.  Clone babies: insta-horror right there.

PPE: Never mind, read the link and it looks fine.  Once we get into surrogate mother territory is when I start getting really nervous.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/04/04/doctors_grow_bladder_cells_and_produce_rebuilt_organ/
There's no baby involved.

They just take the stem cells, make them divide a lot and literally grow a kidney and only a kindey, or a bladder, or a lung or whatever. It's just the organ and only the organ. And hey, even the people who think "life begins at conception," can't complain because there's no conception. Ergo, no life.

There's a growing trend that everything is for sale. Apparently, that includes ethics, morality, and human dignity.

Never mind that there is also more chattel slavery around the world than at any other point in history, despite being illegal in every single country.  I guess it's only illegal for poor people, because the law is for sale, too.

Here's the basic principle we all need to look at.  Anything that can legally be traded is just another thing that the upper class can take from the lower class.  A poor enough family will even have members sell their own lives, so that the rest can have some material ability to survive.

Unfortunately people are entirely to blame for the "law-is-for-sale" stuff. I've repeatedly showed how it could be affordable but basically people just don't wanna pay anything ever. They somehow expect perfect justice despite never paying anything at all to support it. Same goes for Roads and other infrastructure. It's been neglected and surprise, surprise.... It's wearing out with nothing to support it. Justice is a tangible thing and you feel it as the lack of it weighs you down every day.

And, traditionally yes, this is how slavery started in many areas. Someone was too poor to have any kind of a living, so someone put them into slavery. Other methods existed such as military capture, etc,etc, but the debt slavery thing was real. Moreover, if you were born to a slave, then you were a slave yourself in the overwhelming majority of cultures. This meant that generations of slavery could be incident to one single unpaid debt hundreds of years ago, and thus people were bound for a debt they weren't alive to have incurred.

The notion of "everything is for sale," is pretty much, "I'm rich so I get it and you don't." This is bullshit even if you don't take into account the unequal way people are paid, or not paid for lots of things they do. Throw people in debt, rack up infinite interest at 30% which is no longer usury because the credit card companies rewrote the laws, and you basically own them.

[ChairmanPoo]

That's not cloning, that's tissue engineering.


That being said: distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning (which would pretty much involve just cygotes).

[Truean]

That's not cloning, that's tissue engineering.


That being said: distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning (which would pretty much involve just cygotes).

Long as you're not buying an organ off a person, I'm fine with calling it whatever. That said, you probably got the terminology right and I got it wrong.

[Descan]

There's this one story of a guy who was on dialysis, and got his kidney regrown, not by stem cells, but through a 3D printer. Here's the TED Talk where the lead scientist discusses it, and brings out the patient.

And another of a group of rabbits who's penises were regrown after being damaged, and were fully functional afterward.
Here's the article about this one.

So yeah, this stuff is getting done. In multiple ways, too!

[Levi]

There's this one story of a guy who was on dialysis, and got his kidney regrown, not by stem cells, but through a 3D printer. Here's the TED Talk where the lead scientist discusses it, and brings out the patient.

And another of a group of rabbits who's penises were regrown after being damaged, and were fully functional after ward.
Here's the article about this one.

So yeah, this stuff is getting done. In multiple ways, too!

That is pretty awesome.  I hope in another 20 years they will have tech to give me some extra arms or something. 

Edit:  Also robo-eyes.  My eyes are painfully inadequate.  I can't even see the UV or IR spectrum.   

[GlyphGryph]

And then we wrap it right back around.

Your brain still won't have a mental map for the new arms, and you'll end up wanting them amputated.

[Descan]

There was another article about monkeys who were given mechanical limbs to use. Their brains were hooked up to a machine that scanned, and then articulated an arm according to that scan. They were able to use the arms perfectly fine, as far as the engineering would let them, and there was no "limb rejection" from it.

The original monkey arms weren't amputated either, so it's entirely new limbs.

Now, granted, they didn't feel anything from the limb, they could just use it. But still.

[ChairmanPoo]

Yeah, it'd probably be manageable one way or the other.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As far as we can tell, the brain is versatile enough to adapt to having the nervous system modified.

[Tellemurius]

As far as we can tell, the brain is versatile enough to adapt to having the nervous system modified.

depending on the type of work done on it. You can range from 3 months to 2 years before you see results.

[kaijyuu]

Gamers, harassment, female Bioware writer, entitlement, etc.

Bit old but I've a couple things to say on this.

First off, I can't swallow that this is entirely, or even mostly, motivated by sexism. Understand that hardcore fans of things love to find scapegoats. The quoted attacks against this developer are very, very similar to ones I've seen against writers and developers in world of warcraft, of which I used to be an active member of its community. Trying to defame people on twitter/etc is quite common. I remember one case where the forum goers organized a harassment movement against one of the community mods, constantly calling their home phone, ordering pizza, spamming their facebook, etc. In this case, the victim just happens to be a woman. Sexism certainly plays a part but it's being rather overblown.

Secondly, the writer of that article keeps using "nerd" as an insult, and that makes me angry.


There are plenty of good points in the article but pinning it all on mysogyny instead of entitled and demanding fans is a bit off base.

[Leafsnail]

The GOP is not crazy.

I don't think statements about anti-choice people being "cruel" are actually true or helpful at all.  I'm pretty sure they don't actively enjoy inflicting harm upon people as the article seems to suggest.

Not to mention there's nothing saying you can't have crazy beliefs and yet have the power or influence to act on them.

I would actually vote for someone who wanted to make donating your body and organs after death the default position. I'd accept it if there was an opt-out for religious or personal reasons, but I think that a lot of people want to, or at least would be willing to donate their organs and body after death, but never get around to the necessary paperwork.

Yeah, this is actually being proposed in the UK at the moment I think, since it was found that most people who aren't on the organ donor register aren't on it because they've never got around to putting themselves on it for whatever reason.  I was wondering if it could be set up so that opting out of donating your organs means opting out of receiving them, but...

[ChairmanPoo]

Here we have that, but the family is asked beforehand nonetheless, if they want to opt out.

[Frumple]

I don't think statements about anti-choice people being "cruel" are actually true or helpful at all.  I'm pretty sure they don't actively enjoy inflicting harm upon people as the article seems to suggest.

Not to mention there's nothing saying you can't have crazy beliefs and yet have the power or influence to act on them.

Cruelty =/= sadism. That said... yeah, the ones leaning that way that I've met do, in fact, partake in a sort of vicious glee when they get through those cruel laws, so maybe there's a bit of both going on.

Article's main point was that calling them crazy dismisses the fact that they're working inside a coherent and directed plan and system -- it's just one that's malicious and cruel. They're being very systematic and logical in going about what they're going about, it's just working off some reprehensible axioms.

It's probably not helpful in the sense of meeting things half way, but it definitely strikes me as something that is helpful in the sense of identifying and preparing to counter what they're doing, instead of dismissing said actions and letting them go about it unnoticed.

On a personal bright side, I don't think I've called the social conservative groups insane before (barring specific examples that are actually demonstrable, bleh), just massively hypocritical and backwards (in a bad sense). If I have slipped up there, th'article reminded me to stop calling it crazy and start calling it what it is -- backwards and vicious

Anyway, totally in for default organ donation. I'm kinda' surprised there's people reporting trouble with it in the states, though. In Florida, it's mostly just a "Yes" answer (or a checked box, I forget which exactly) when you get your drivers license (or it might have been social security card, I'unno. Got both at same time.), at least where I'm at. Might be tougher in other places, I'unno.

[Lysabild]

Gamers, harassment, female Bioware writer, entitlement, etc.

Bit old but I've a couple things to say on this.

First off, I can't swallow that this is entirely, or even mostly, motivated by sexism. Understand that hardcore fans of things love to find scapegoats. The quoted attacks against this developer are very, very similar to ones I've seen against writers and developers in world of warcraft, of which I used to be an active member of its community. Trying to defame people on twitter/etc is quite common. I remember one case where the forum goers organized a harassment movement against one of the community mods, constantly calling their home phone, ordering pizza, spamming their facebook, etc. In this case, the victim just happens to be a woman. Sexism certainly plays a part but it's being rather overblown.

Secondly, the writer of that article keeps using "nerd" as an insult, and that makes me angry.


There are plenty of good points in the article but pinning it all on mysogyny instead of entitled and demanding fans is a bit off base.

Eh, I hate how games are becoming easier and more console based, I hate dumping down and skipping combat do sounds lame, but I also love heavy story and I love how progressive Bioware is sexually, so the whole article seems to me, to just see what it wants to see, not what is actually there.

But neh, me and feminists are +/-