Posted by alexandra_k on September 4, 2021, at 16:30:21
In reply to nz is not rule of law, posted by alexandra_k on September 4, 2021, at 15:57:12
I think I get what the problem is, with the abortion thing in the US. Why it is so controversial and genuinely polarising, I mean to say.
They are harvesting organs from foetuses. For science research. And they are likely removing foetuses that are... Theoretically... Not viable outside the uterus... But, well... They could even be treating the women for their cervical cancer at the same time... Removing the uterus with the foetus. I mean... Why wouldn't you if there isn't any law or whatever to prevent it?
That is the worst of it... But that is the (likely true) concern that people have. That those kinds of things are going on. That they are changing the way they are performing the abortions to try and have more viable organs or cells or whatever for scientific research purposes.
That is to say they are potentially or possibly or by the way sort of... Harming or doing things that are not clinically what is best for the woman they are performing the abortion on.. Because they are more focused on harvesting the foetus from the woman.
That is to say these poor women...
Who were.. Perhaps denied more timely access to their abortions... Because of the desire to harvest more fully formed organs... More cells... They aren't being harmed (no affront to women's rights) that they are forced to carry the foetus to full term... But they are being harmed (an affront to women's rights) that they are forced to carry the foetus for longer than they would be likely required to carry it if there wasn't incentive to harvest more cells from the embryos or harvest organs.
That is to say... It isn't that the scientists are using left-overs. It is that the procedures are being done (and women are being denied access to preventative birth control, plan B after pill birth control, oral medication to induce sponaneous abortion relatively early as a relatively non-invasive procedure a woman can do in relative solitude on her own terms birth control, very early abortion where a little suction or aspiration can be applied... in order for a much more significant or substantive late term operation, basically...
the foetal heart is one of the first (maybe the first in fact) organ to develop. that's why 'foetal heart beat' makes sense. it prevents organ harvesting of foetuses. where that provides a... perverse incentive to oppress particularly poor women in all the ways that Roe v Wade was designed to prevent.
And I haven't even considered anything about the benefit or good to the foetus (the rights of the foetus would increase with development). just from the perspective of the rights of the women who are having these operations.
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i think the court is doing the right thing in holding off declaring the texas law unconstitutional. waiting for a case to come through to ask them to decide on it once they have seen it play out in a case, i mean to say.
and it is an interesting idea to have the 'bounty hunting' thing of it. i foreseee...
'have you been denied access to a TIMELY ABORTION? call 0800 999 9999 today!' sorts of cases. perhaps class actions against particular clinics. it will be interesting to see if it results in better access to timely birth control and preventative birth control. it will be interesting to see if the change has an effect on... by removing an incentive for those things to be difficult to access, i mean to say.
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i get that there are also problems at the other end. but i never really thought them through properly until more recently.
i did not know you could only grow fertilised eggs for up to 14 days before you had to implant them or halt development or destroy them. becuase it would take 14 days for a relseased egg to travel to the uterus and implant.
it likely did seem to be non-sensicle, really. from an ethics point of view i mean. hard for me to see what is ethically problematic about allowing a 14 day fertilised egg to continue developing up until the organs develop (week 4, say)... hard to justify that when you are allowed to remove them once the organs have developed. the idea is that removing them will kill them -- but why think that? are there actual laws about them not being allowed to keep them alive in jars of amniotic fluid? you cannot tell me that nobody has tried.
whether or not it is still attached to the donor / mother by way of umbilical cord...
or some kind of machine to filter things as a mechanical mother. notn quite a dialysis machine but you get the idea...
you can't tell me nobody has tried...
anyway...
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i was reading about humanised rats. you destroy the immune system the usual way and then you implant foetal cells so the rat gets a 'humanised immune system' apparently. that is to say the cells start looking like human cells with human receptor types and so on.
or...
do you?
what you do is you create 'franken-cells' i will call them. weird amominations of cells that would never exist in nature. and we learn all about franken-cells and try and apply those findings back and...
i see now why aspects of medical knowlege... trying to learn the immunology stuff... feels like... like i am being given a 500 piece puzzle trying to see the overall lpicture and the pieces are all pieces from different puzzles. so they don't actually fit together and there actually isn't an overall picture. what cytokines do and so on... and i think i see, now, that it is not just because we are not clear about which species our finding pertains to... but because so mjuch of the science has been diverted towards studying franken-cells.
and it is like...
there was this thing about how trying to learn about the natural social behavior of different kinds of monkeys (say) by studying ones kept in labs doesn't tell you anything about the natural social behaviour of the different kinds of monkeys. because it isn't natural for monkeys to be kept in labs. so you are studyign franken-monkeys that dno't have the... who aren't afforded the luxury of displaying any of their natural behaviour. not really.
did you see the recent picture of the panda eating it's baby? wasn't it? what human zoo keeper is going to let mummy panda eat her baby! oh my god! save the baby! take it away from it's mother! bad mother! she must have forgot her normal social behavior.
it was likely not until they managed to film mummy panda in the wild giving birth to observe natural behavior in that way that they learned to let them do that in the zoo. then we go 'oh that's how they do in fact the baby will die if we prevent it' and then we go 'gee i wonder why i wonder what that does' and likely she's giving it a mouth-bath in antibiody a. yeah.
anyway...
so my point is that it turns out us 'helping' the pandas in zoos was just us helping ourselves to pandas and they were harmed at our expense. because we didn't listen to the pandas. because, you know... if a lion could talk we would not be able to understand what it says. and no panda you can't just hold your baby in your mouth and say you just want to lick it a little for some inexplicable reason and have us believe you aren't going to eat it. m'kay.
tastes like chicken. looks like baby bird. mmm hmm.
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so of course they are doing gene knock out human embryos. i imagine they implant them in graduate student volunteers. there's nothing to prevent it -- right? then they can have abortions at... well... 1 week. 2 weeks. 3 weeks. 4. no? that's the way things will go now?
that's the concern now. how to regulate that.. i guess the woman are giving informed consenting decisions. some may even choose to carry to term if they can.
give birth to a single gene knock out baby. see what effect the gene has. see if there's a signle enzyme deficiency or...
it's something to do, i guess.
franken-science. helping humanity? i don't really see it...
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i think Singer was right... 20+ years ago. about how most of the experiments that get through ethics boards really are of dubious value scientifically.
i think that that genuinely does make them ethically problematic.
i wouldn't want to sit on the ethics boards / committees.
but it is disturbing that with all the goverment and federal and so on research grants that there are... that they don't invest in the good research. i don't undersetand why they keep the dubious (both ethically and scientifically) in business. i don't understnd why they enable them.
in many cases science is 'fishing'. i get that. but then why not find ethically responsible ways to do that?
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there is this thing about how if you love it then where is the harm?
say some rich harvard cell biologist decides to implant a gene knockout embryo she made herself to 'see what would happen' or to see if particular things... maybe short stature... maybe pointy ears... maybe intellectual handicap. maybe heart defect... could be induced. just to have a see. for the purpose of helpling people. you see. and helping science advance. adding a factoid in the science textbooks. and she promises to look after it. to feed it and hold it and so on. it will be much loved. like a pet. really. where is the harm? it will be loved and provided for and appreciated more than most babies are. right?
i still think there is something wrong or disturbing about that. why would you wish harms on something where those harms could be prevented? why wouldn't you want your baby (everybodies baby) to be the healthiest they could be? why would lyou want to create franken-babies. just to see.
?
I don't think that is scientific curiosity. i think that is quite something else.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1116820
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20210821/msgs/1116821.html