Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
A reader has asked me to comment on this interesting and controversial technique for generating stem cells. Investigators in the UK are requesting permission to do this:
Collect ova from cows. This is routine, done-all-the-time stuff. The cows can’t complain.
Extract the nuclei from the eggs and throw them away, so that all you have is a lovely membrane-bound sack of cytoplasm and other organelles. People who eat hamburgers don’t get to complain about destroying potential life, so this is OK, too.
Extract nuclei from human cells and throw the cytoplasm away. These can be taken from non-reproductive tissues—epithelia, for instance, or some blood cells. This is not controversial either—you throw away human cells and nuclei every time you sneeze or brush your hair.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? Combine the cow cytoplasm from step 2 with the human nuclei from step 3, and by various finagling (and this part is actually the hardest step) reset the nucleus to a state which allows further development. Let the cell develop into a blastocyst, from which you can harvest stem cells for research. (Promise not to let it develop any further than that, though.)
Watch fundamentalists die of apoplexy. (This might be the most morally dicey part of the experiment.)
Now I’m asked what I think of this whole procedure. I can answer with one word:
Minnesota polling places are now open. You should be able to vote between 7AM and 8PM, so get out there and do it!
I’m looking at you UMM students, too. No apathy allowed. I’ll have a bowl of candy in my office—show me your “I voted” sticker, or tell me you did (I’m so trusting), and you can have a piece.
I voted 15 minutes after the polls opened, and I was the 16th voter. I think turnout is going to be good out here on the Minnesota prairies.
It was a paper ballot, too, and if a candidate’s name had a (Democrat-Farmer-Labor) after it, they got my vote. I was jubilantly partisan today.
Maybe with a little butter and garlic.
This article makes a troubling point: if cephalopods are so smart, shouldn’t we feel some guilt about eating them?
I think I actually agree with some of the ethical issues raised, and probably should hesitate to kill and eat something like the octopus. However, it also commits the sin of lumping an extraordinarily diverse clade like the Cephalopoda into one poorly characterized gemisch. Yes, the Pacific octopus is a very clever beastie, but those schools of small, fast-breeding squid that get netted and chopped up for calamari? Not so much. The article makes a mistake comparable to highlighting the brilliance of Homo sapiens, and then arguing that we shouldn’t eat cows for fear of losing the next Shakespeare. If you want to make an ethical argument against the consumption of squid, that’s fair…but don’t do it by falsely concatenating all cephalopod species into an inaccurate classification of ‘smart, tool-using problem solvers’. It just isn’t true.
I also find this weird:
This evidence has so convinced officials on the Animal Procedures Committee (APC), the experimentation watchdog in the UK, that it has recommended to ministers that the law governing animal testing be amended so all cephalopods are given the same protection as animals.
So what have cephalopods been considered until now, mushrooms?
Now look what you’ve done, O American Religion. Even thoughtful people like Shelley are getting fed up with you.
Regardless of how this vote goes this week, we can no longer ignore the elephant sitting in the corner that is religious influence on politics and government. People are not always going to be able to complacently have their ‘faith’ and their ‘science’, because in too many cases belief in one denies the existence of the other. Members of a church may have to consider challenging the precepts of the church, and individual churches challenge their association with a larger body. Basic human rights can no longer be pushed aside in the interest of ‘culture’ and ‘belief’, and the religious faithful cannot be allowed to determine how the rest of us live or die; how and when we have children; who we can love; how we dress; destroy our world in the interests of ‘being fruitful, and multiplying’; reduce our science to superstition, and bind our ethics to obscure passages in ill-interpreted religious texts.
I’d like to dream that today’s election will be the beginning of a change, but even if the Democratic party wins big, I don’t see them ever trying to chastise that elephant.
Jonathan Wells, the creationist who makes shoddy claims about developmental biology, has deigned to respond to my criticisms…but only indirectly, on another blog. It’s an interesting response, in that it once again reveals Wells’ misunderstandings of biology, and his sneaky way of inserting phony claims.
Put a little Streisand on the CD player, and then visit Sadly, No! for some pictorial motivation to get out and vote for the right people tomorrow. It’s inspiring!
We seem to have some fresh meat new creationists coming by. It’s been a while since we had such an opportunity—they seem to run away so quickly—so I’m going to remind everyone of the 3 comment rule. Please give people a chance to explain themselves before you decide to pound on them, OK? Abuse is a few doors down the hall, this is supposed to be Argument.
Along those same lines, we have a few persistent trolls who keep coming back. I kill them as I see them (these are a few so far gone that they don’t get disemvowelled, just junked), but please don’t engage them. I’m going to start trashing replies, too, just to discourage people from feeding the trolls.
Also, there are a few people who are being just plain vicious. That’s my job, and I’m beginning to resent the usurpation of my reputed evil temperament. Again, if you find yourself writing 5 snarling comments in a row, stop. Take a break. Dunk your head in some cool water. I’m not one to encourage drug abuse, but some people here need Vicodin, Oxycontin, Xanax and Percocet by the handfuls. If you’ve got to attack someone, and you can’t at least make it light and funny, go out on your front porch and yell at those damn kids instead.
We’re getting lots of comments lately, and you’ve got to stop over-reacting to the occasional jostle.
This has got to be good. I understand Cthulhu is lurking in the wings with a folding chair, too.
A while back, I mentioned this new group that had formed here in Minnesota to sponsor better science teaching, the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education. Our first big public meeting is happening this Saturday at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, at Science Education Saturday:
Some of the most popular and dynamic professors involved with evolutionary biology at the University of Minnesota – Mark Borrello, Randy Moore, PZ Myers and others – will join a panel of public school K-12 educators to present practical suggestions for the classroom, useful resources for teachers and ideas for working with students and your community.
This event is primarily aimed at educators and education students, with talks about precisely what the Minnesota state science standards require of our teachers, but I don’t think they’d turn away other interested parties. I’m not actually going to be speaking (I’m still going to insist that I be regarded as “popular and dynamic”, however, and I may have to put that on my business cards)—I’m moderating a panel discussion with the real deal, teachers who are actually on the front lines of the struggle against creationism—but Randy Moore and Mark Borello will be giving talks in the morning, and I’m sure they’re going to be excellent.
