Moral Choices in Medicine

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:13 pm

Note: I'm not posting this to make any point. I think this is an interesting moral dilemma. You may disagree. I still think it was a great discovery no matter how it was discovered. It does come from a pro-life web site but I think you are all mature enough to filter out any bias that would cause.

New Depression Drug Likely Made With Cells From Abortions

Anyone who has ever suffered with depression, or know someone who has, is cheering. Depression is devastating and debilitating and curing it would be a great achievement. But that is not what caught my eye. It is that this drug was tested with Neuralstem’s cell line. A cell line that, with a little digging, looks to have come from an aborted fetus. From a Bloomberg press release:

The researchers used a line of neural stem cells developed by Neuralstem Inc., a closely held biotechnology company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company developed the line from fetal tissue donated by a woman who underwent an elective abortion at 8 weeks.

The stem cells, taken from an area near the developing spinal cord of the fetus, have the theoretical ability to develop or differentiate into any of three cell types found in the nervous system. The cells were kept alive in culture and chemically manipulated to keep them from differentiating.

So the question is, would it be ethical to take this drug for depression if it becomes an FDA approved treatment? The manufacture of the drug itself does not require aborted fetal tissue. It was only discovered and developed using cells that look to be obtained from an elective abortion.

I think this situation may be analogous to that of vaccines. Many vaccines are created with cell lines that originated from an aborted fetus. Cell lines MRC-5 and WI-38 are common cell lines used to produce vaccines for rubella, polio, hepatitis A and chicken pox. MRC-5 was developed from lung cells from a 14-week-old male fetus that was electively aborted in 1966. The WI-38 line was derived from a female fetus that was aborted in 1964.

Many people often argue that using fetal cells from an aborted fetus is morally acceptable because the fetus was going to die anyway. The Catholic Church rejects this argument. If an organism must be intentionally destroyed to harvest cells, then the cells are morally tainted. If these fetal stem cells had come from a natural miscarriage, then it would be morally permissible for parents to donate these cells to research. The morality of fetal cell use is analogous to that of organ donation. If the patient died of natural causes or a traumatic event, then is is morally permissible to use their organs for the benefit of others. It is not morally permissible to intentionally and prematurely end a person’s life and then take their organs for donation. Using fetal stem cells from aborted fetuses is analogous to using organs from death row inmates or victims of euthanasia.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:27 pm

Wait, the argument at the end is bullshit. It is saying that it is morally wrong for death row inmates to want to donate organs after their death or that people that have opted for euthanasia are somehow tainted? What is wrong with them?

The arguments within it are bullshit too. If you say that cells are morally tainted if you destroy an organism to get them, then all meat is morally tainted because you destroy the organism to get them. And if it is only morally permissable to use cells from a natural death, then it is only morally permissable to use all foods had come from a natural death.

As such, everyone except those that eat animals that died from accidents is evil since harvesting grain destroys the plant and the potential new plants from the seeds, while getting beef destroys the cow.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:39 pm

And even goes to plants--they're alive, too. If you're going to say it's wrong to kill something to eat it, then that applies, too.

Basically, either all life is sacred, or no life is.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:27 pm

Maxus wrote:Basically, either all life is sacred, or no life is.

don't forget option C: just babies and white people.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:38 pm

No really, the Catholic Church is just that retarded.

If you become an organ donor, and then murder someone, when you are put to death, they think it's bad to use your corneas to make people see.

Killing people is fine. Using dead people's corneas is fine. But if you kill a person for some reason besides getting their cornea, then you can't use the cornea.

Nevermind that this is pretty much directly contradictory to the principle of double effect.

No one thinks that if you shoot a terrorist you can't obtain the benefit of not being blown up. No one thinks that you have to nuke cities after you finish with successful police work.

But goddam it, depressed people have to choose to stay depressed, and blind people have to stay blind.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:39 pm

Harvesting grain also kills small rodents and other animals that enjoy living in fields.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:44 pm

This doesn't even make sense. Were diabetics somehow morally tainted before we could synthesize insulin? The insulin used to come from humans, and now it comes from bacteria. Bacteria that we have spliced the genes - from humans - into. How about dwarves? Was Human Growth Hormone evil before we could harvest it from something other than a human? Is it still evil now, because the people we took the gene from are now dead?

The entire line of reasoning is stupid. There is no moral issue with using corpses to save lives. Corpses are dead, living people are people. The thing where religious people get so bound up in their rituals that they equivocate failing to go through arbitrary motions in the arbitrary grief rituals of the dead with actual people actually suffering and dying in the real world is a lack of perspective so total that I am at a loss for words.

-Username17

LargePrime · Post by **LargePrime** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 6:26 am

"Neuralstem Inc., a closely held biotechnology company" tells you how they developed there new wonder drug?

Bullshit.

I think someone got paid for a hit piece.

http://www.drwile.com/lnkpages/render.asp?vac_abortion
This suggests the shit they are saying about Catholics is deliberately misleading. Catholics can take these vaccinations.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:47 pm

Okay, riddle me this one, Batman: If unborn undifferentiated cells can be considered a living baby BEFORE the abortion, then how is it that a bunch of thriving undifferentiated cells are considered a dead baby AFTER the abortion? You can't have it both ways, numbskulls. By Christian troll logic, abortions that result in stem cell harvests aren't actually abortions at all.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:34 pm

Jigoku, If I shoot you in the head and take your heart and transplant it how can you say you are dead when your heart is still alive?

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:44 pm

Please don't.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:46 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Please don't.

Please don't ask him those types of questions.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:51 pm

Pretty sure I was asking Batman, who definitely would not have talked about shooting me.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:04 pm

Slightly different, but kind of related. A link to the Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments.

This paper addresses the serious ethical problems of using tainted data from experiments on patients who were murdered and tortured by the Nazis in the name of "research." In particular this paper will address: the scientific validity of the experiments; the medical competence of the experimenters; the social utility in using the experimental data; case studies of proposed uses of the Nazi scientific data; the policy consideration involved when scientists use immorally obtained data; the condition and guidelines as to how and when the data is to be used; and the issue from the victims' perspective.

This project was undertaken with the utmost caution. The reader should be aware that the moral climate in the Jewish community is unforgiving to those who find any redeeming merit from the Nazi horrors. Anyone who dares suggest the historical lessons which can be learned from the Holocaust, or from the victims' suffering, risks being labeled a heretic or a sensationalist bent on distorting history for personal gain. Many in the community seriously fear that insights might replace condemnation of the Nazi evil.2

May provide some perspective on the intitial research being discussed....Or just muddy the waters surrounding the issue. The fetus being discussed was probably not terrorised before being aborted. At least I hope it wasn't.

link

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:44 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Pretty sure I was asking Batman, who definitely would not have talked about shooting me.

Yes, but you know the Joker, always ready to put words in Batman's mouth.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:13 pm

I'm all for critiquing the validity of the information, but the answer to using Nazi research (assuming it was performed competently and with validity) is quite as obvious as using aborted fetuses to do research now.

Which is better: World with Holocaust, or World with Holocaust + X, where X is a good thing obtained from Nazis.

Now, whether there is actually any significantly useful thing to obtain from their studies, I'm not sure, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out there isn't. But pretending that anyone driving the Autobahn must have replaced their horror with the Nazis with utility is being an idiot in an exactly identical way to the last sentence of that quote.