The Gift that keeps on...

givvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvving.

Hey, so now they're out to kill stem cell research in front of a public that's as opposed to this as it was to the feeding tube gambit. Please tell me all Dems have now got their footing on how to handle this and are ready to explot the hole they just opened on the Right.

This from Yahoo:

Voting yes would amount to a "vote to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation," DeLay said Tuesday, opening debate on the bill.
But supporters of the bill said the moral obligation was for federal funding of new research that could lead to cures.
"For America to stand back because of a moral principle and not allow sound scientific research to proceed under the umbrella of the National Institute of Health, I think, is unconscionable," said Rep. Charlie Bass, R-N.H.
Sponsors predicted the bill would garner the 218 votes needed to pass but fall short of the 290 votes needed to sustain a veto. One sponsor acknowledged the difficult choice facing lawmakers.
"This is not an easy vote for many Republicans ... and some Democrats, too, because you have pro-life and other arguments," said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. "There's a lot of tide against them voting for it."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050524/ap_on_go_co/congress_stem_cells

Pledge all your frozen embryos for enlistment in the new Army for Christ(tm)!

It never does. Remember their funny math.. One letter = lots of constituents.

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research in focus STEM CELL THERAPY What is stem cell therapy?

Stem cell therapy is emerging as a potentially revolutionary new way to treat disease and injury, with wide-ranging medical benefits. It aims to repair damaged and diseased body-parts with healthy new cells provided by stem cell transplants. Bone-marrowtransplants used to treat leukaemia patients are a current form of stem cell therapy. Thereplacement bone-marrow contains blood stem cells which make new, cancer-free, blood cells.Stem cell therapy research

qDoes NOT necessarily involve cloning.
qIs in its infancy, with much work yet to be done.
qHas potential application in many currently incurable conditions.
qPromising initial results with experimental transplants in humans and animals.
qFirst clinical applications expected in 5-10 years.
qMay one day provide a source of replacement tissues and organs.

The potential benefits of stem cell therapyStem cell therapy offers an opportunity to treat many degenerative diseases caused by the premature death or malfunction of specific cell types and the body’s failure to replace or restorethem. The only hope of complete recovery from such diseases at present is transplant surgery,but there are not enough donors to treat all patients and even when rare donors can be found,this is limited to a few body parts and is very expensive. The best most sufferers of incurabledegenerative diseases can expect is treatment to delay the onset, and relieve the symptoms, of illhealth caused by their disease.In theory, stem cells could be collected, grown and stored to provide a plentiful supply ofhealthy replacement tissue for transplantation into any body site using much less invasive surgerythan conventional transplants. Scientists have already reported success with human brain tissuetransplants to treat Parkinson’s disease and with stem cell-derived mouse heart-muscle cell grafts.An early stem cell research goal is to find out how to isolate and store stem cells from differenttissues. However, adult stem cells are very rare and it not known whether they are even presentin some organs, for example, the heart. Furthermore, they are difficult to extract and grow withcurrently available techniques.At first stem cell transplants might be used to encourage the development of new, healthy cellsin patients. Later on, when more is understood about how stem cells work, it may be possible todirect stem cells to make healthy replacements for specific cell types that have become damagedor diseased and to use these for transplantation. For example, skin stem cells could generatereplacement skin for burns victims. Initially the problem of transplant rejection by the body’simmune system that complicates whole organ transplants would also apply to transplants offoreign stem cell material, so stem cell transplants would have to be accompanied by immunesystem suppressing drugs.Ideally, scientists would like to discover how to use a patient’s own stem cells to create perfectly matched transplant material, or even perhaps to grow replacement organs, avoiding theproblems of finding a compatible donor and transplant rejection by the immune system. In thefuture, this might be achieved by learning how to obtain stem cells from a patient’s healthy adultcells (see➤Research In Focus: Therapeutic use of Cell Nuclear Replacement(“Therapeutic Cloning”)).Stem cell technology will also create new ways to investigate embryonic development, develop newdrugs, and test their effects and safety on specific cell types.

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<link> http://www.mrc.ac.uk/pdf_stem_cells.pdf