Re: A thread not for the easily offended
Posted: 11 Jun 2013, 13:24
Nope.Tribble wrote:Bwahahahahahahahahaha he would not have been amused
An archive of the South African PCFormat forums.
https://tuhinga.ron2k.za.net/pcformat/
Nope.Tribble wrote:Bwahahahahahahahahaha he would not have been amused
And that's the joke.Anakha56 wrote:Spoke to a couple of Afrikaans people here at work and they say that it is correct. Depends on how you want to take the translation at the end of the day.
/I really did not know the above. I always news prys as price thats why I had to ask...
Hey Stu some movement in the field . Could be a bowel movement but hey baby steps... BTW Time lapse video if you follow the link...Scientists grow human liver from stem cells, hope to relieve transplant woes
Stem cell research has resulted in several important breakthroughs in medicine, such as rebuilding the larynx and regenerating spinal cord connectors. Now the liver, one of the most highly sought after organs on the donor transplant list, could get some serious stem cell assistance as well. A team of scientists led by Takanori Takebe of Yokohama City University has successfully created a miniature version of the human liver with the help of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are derived from adult somatic cells. They developed the iPSC into generalized liver cells called hepatocytes, at which point the researchers mixed in endothelial cells and mesenchymal stem cells, left the petri dishes alone for a couple days, and voila -- an extremely tiny version of a human liver, said to be the first-ever functional human organ grown from stem cells, was born.
The liver "buds," as they're known, measure five millimeters long and are the sort you would find in human embryos shortly after fertilization. When implanted in mice, the baby livers managed to perform all the functions of their adult equivalents. The researchers' next step would be to generate liver buds that are a touch closer to normal liver tissue -- like the addition of bile ducts -- and to see if they can mass produce them by the tens of thousands. Don't go wasting your liver just yet though, as it'll likely be years before the likes of you and me will be able to have a lab-grown liver in our bodies.
You're not quite following the argument here, are you?Anakha56 wrote:Hey Stu some movement in the field . Could be a bowel movement but hey baby steps...
which are derived from adult somatic cells
No one objects to research with adult stem cells, which can and has achieved results quite apart from embryonic stem cell research.Anakha56 wrote: And you are not following the argument that an achievement made in one related field can yield results in the other .
Progress!Stem cell breakthrough restores sight to damaged retina
Blind mice have been able to see once more in a laboratory experiment that further boosts the fast-moving field of retinal therapy
Blind mice have been able to see once more in a laboratory exploit that marks a further boost for the fast-moving field of retinal therapy, according to a study published on Sunday.
Scientists in Britain used stem cells — early-stage, highly versatile cells — taken from mice embryos, and cultured them in a lab dish so that they differentiated into immature photoreceptors, the light-catching cells in the retina.
Around 200,000 of these cells were then injected into the mice’s retinas, some of which integrated smoothly with local cells to restore sight.
The rodents were put through their paces in a water maze and examined by optometry to confirm that they responded to light.
Embryonic stem cells “could in future provide a potentially unlimited supply of health photoreceptors for retinal transplantations to treat blindness in humans,” Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) said in a press release.
...
Anakha56 wrote:Progress!
Mice embryos, human embryos - chalk and cheese.taken from mice embryos
Stuart wrote:Anakha56 wrote:Progress!Mice embryos, human embryos - chalk and cheese.taken from mice embryos
Not at all. This is an ethical debate. I have an ethical problem with killing humans. Rats, not so much.Anakha56 wrote:Stuart wrote:Anakha56 wrote:Progress!Mice embryos, human embryos - chalk and cheese.taken from mice embryos
*sigh*
Splitting hairs really?
Well, yes, that is exactly what the big ethical debate is about. Prolifers argue humanity from conception; pro-abortionists argue humanity from some undefined point (or at least a point on which not everyone agrees). That's exactly why there is a debate. The argument is that it is wrong to use human embryos for research because you are, in effect, killing a human for research purposes. Using adult stem cells or even animal stem cells is not the same thing.Anakha56 wrote:Erm but a embryo is hardly human? This is going to be one of those discussions as to what defines a human isn't it?
I disagree!Anakha56 wrote:to start talking about metaphysical and what could be or could not be then the argument falls into a realm that will benefit neither side.
So is that a problem? I mean it is clone from a piece of skin so does that mean whomever they cloned it from they have killed that persons twin?Breakthrough: stem cells from a cloned embryo
Date
May 15, 2013
Scientists have used caffeine to achieve a stem cell breakthrough that many researchers thought impossible but that could lead to new therapies for many crippling diseases.
A US team used a human skin cell to create a cloned human embryo from which they were able to extract embryonic stem cells, a world first.
Even a hardened pro-abortion atheist like Peter Singer would disagree with you here.Anakha56 wrote:For me once the embryo develops into something akin to human (start of legs & arms & such) then its human. Before that stage and definitely at a stage of a couple of days there is nothing human about it. What is the definition of a human?
Consistent with his beliefs, by the way, Singer is not only pro-abortion, but also pro-infanticide.[The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognise that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life.
That's at least an honest and consistent viewpoint. Dead wrong, of course, but it takes the argument to its logical conclusion.I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn't mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.
Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection – but also by taking active steps to end the baby's life swiftly and humanely.
Human versus animal.Anakha56 wrote:And how does the fertilized egg (4-5 days) be more important than a chimpanzee (or any mammal for that fact) fertilized egg?
So a an egg from a human mother, fertilised by the sperm of a human father can "decide" to fuse into an elephant?Anakha56 wrote:At that stage they are all a bunch of chemicals trying to decide what they are going to fuse into.
Cloning is another issue entirely. I'm not sure that I'm prepared to enter into that debate.StarBound wrote:...maybe I am missing something. The topic is abortions or whether cloning is acceptable?
Follow the link for further reading.New meta-analysis checks the correlation between intelligence and faith
First systematic analysis of its kind even proposes reasons for the negative correlation.
More than 400 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Greek playwright Euripides wrote in his play Bellerophon, “Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.”
Euripides was not an atheist and only used the word “fool” to provoke his audience. But, if you look at the studies conducted over the past century, you will find that those with religious beliefs will, on the whole, score lower on tests of intelligence. That is the conclusion of psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman of the University of Rochester and Judith Hall of Northeastern University, who have published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review.
This is the first systematic meta-analysis of 63 studies conducted in between 1928 and 2012. In such an analysis, the authors look at each study’s sample size, quality of data collection, and analysis methods, then account for biases that may have inadvertently crept into the work. This data is next refracted through the prism of statistical theory to draw an overarching conclusion of what scholars in this field find. “Our conclusion,” as Zuckerman puts it, “is not new.”
“If you count the number of studies which find a positive correlation against those that find a negative correlation, you can draw the same conclusion because most studies find a negative correlation,” added Zuckerman. But that conclusion would be qualitative, because the studies’ methods vary. “What we have done is to draw that conclusion more accurately through statistical analysis.”
Setting the boundaries
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