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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
After years of failed attempts, researchers have successfully generated stem cells from adults. The process could provide a new way for scientists to generate healthy replacements for diseased or damaged cells in patients
In this case, cells from a 35-year-old man and a 75-year-old man were used to generate two separate lines of stem cells. The process, known as nuclear transfer, involves taking the DNA from a donor and inserting it into an egg that has been stripped of its DNA. The resulting hybrid is stimulated to fuse and start dividing; after a few days the “embryo” creates a lining of stem cells that are destined to develop into all of the cells and tissues in the human body. Researchers extract these cells and grow them in the lab, where they are treated with the appropriate growth factors and other agents to develop into specific types of cells, like neurons, muscle, or insulin-producing cells.
I am in total support of stem cell research. I wish more countries would get on board. But it would need to be heavily regulated for humanitarian reasons.
Cue the "stood on the shoulders of giants" speech from Jurassic park Posted via RS Mobile
I am in total support of stem cell research. I wish more countries would get on board. But it would need to be heavily regulated for humanitarian reasons.
Cue the "stood on the shoulders of giants" speech from Jurassic park Posted via RS Mobile
Plenty of countries are researching it, those that don't usually do not have modern science capable of doing so or the US
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I know faith, religion, and stuff like that are not really popular nowadays but does anyone else think scientist are going too far? I love science(i'm studying to be an engineer) and I know this stuff will save millions of lives but when does it end? When we become immortal and destroy our gene pool? How can we truly live when there is no death?(I know it sounds corny but it's how I feel.)
I know faith, religion, and stuff like that are not really popular nowadays
really?
REALLY?!
stop thinking your neighbourhood is representative of the world - you want bible belt, go to abbortsfood, mission, all the hick areas - they love jesus over there.
look at the influx of islam into the western world, the fights between the Jews and Palestines (which is a land/religion thing), almost every conflict in the world has religion as the foundation.
Just because less people appear to be religious in, say, Vancouver, doesn't mean religion and faith aren't that popular.
I appreciate where you're coming from, but i think you worded it poorly.
I know faith, religion, and stuff like that are not really popular nowadays but does anyone else think scientist are going too far? I love science(i'm studying to be an engineer) and I know this stuff will save millions of lives but when does it end? When we become immortal and destroy our gene pool? How can we truly live when there is no death?(I know it sounds corny but it's how I feel.)
im surprised religion has lasted as long as it has in this day and age, but to answer ur question.....No
I know faith, religion, and stuff like that are not really popular nowadays but does anyone else think scientist are going too far? I love science(i'm studying to be an engineer) and I know this stuff will save millions of lives but when does it end? When we become immortal and destroy our gene pool? How can we truly live when there is no death?(I know it sounds corny but it's how I feel.)
Nope.
Religion is only useful to primitive people. Like monkeys believing in monkey-jebus.
Edit:
Life expectancy has greatly increased over the thousands of years, so it's only natural we push the limit of science and our bodies.
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Originally Posted by rsx
Nope.
Religion is only useful to primitive people. Like monkeys believing in monkey-jebus.
Edit:
Life expectancy has greatly increased over the thousands of years, so it's only natural we push the limit of science and our bodies.
What I am worry about is if no dies then those who are in power/rich will live forever, getting richer and richer while the poor will die off and will have even of a lesser chance to moving up in society...... Not to mention we will ran out of supplies (food, water, shelter........) is just a mess.
What I am worry about is if no dies then those who are in power/rich will live forever, getting richer and richer while the poor will die off and will have even of a lesser chance to moving up in society...... Not to mention we will ran out of supplies (food, water, shelter........) is just a mess.
Yeah, because figuring out how to be immortal is totally easier than figuring out how to harvest those tangle items.
Science has questions that may never be answered whereas religion has answers that may never be questioned.
Yeah, because figuring out how to be immortal is totally
Science has questions that may never be answered whereas religion has answers that may never be questioned.
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As cool as it is, there is a lot of social implications and issues that arise from development like these.
A black market could and will be spawned from this, harvesting stem cells from newborns, infant-farms, or even kidnapping women who are late into their term.
While the rich can afford a longer life, it will come at the expense of a lot of third-world suffering.
You can impose as many rules as you want to protect people from being exploited, but as history has proven (ie. organ-harvesting) people will find a way if it pays well enough.
I'd hate to bring politics in, but Bush's decision wasn't completely baseless when he banned stem cell research.
I know faith, religion, and stuff like that are not really popular nowadays but does anyone else think scientist are going too far? I love science(i'm studying to be an engineer) and I know this stuff will save millions of lives but when does it end? When we become immortal and destroy our gene pool? How can we truly live when there is no death?(I know it sounds corny but it's how I feel.)
Death is inevitable, no matter how much you extend your life. The inevitability of you being involved in a fatal accident is 100% given enough time (and when you're immortal, time is all that you have). You can say, death is always around the corner.
So as for living 'forever', that'll never happen. even if you live ridiculous length like 100,000+ years... that is a drop in the ocean compared to "forever". It only seems long now, but i guarantee you, when you turn 100k years old, you'll look back and wonder where the fuck time went.
for argument sake, ok say you are super lucky and live till the end of time. you will still not survive the heat death of the universe, or some super nova or whatever. some cosmic catastrophe will destroy you eventually. You CANNOT escape death of the physical body.
as for over population, we already are over populated lol. but populations are tapering off, or so the experts say.
as nations rise in quality of life, and technology, reproduction of humans slows down. that's a historical fact based on statistics.
with the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence, labor and people will become more and more useless to the economy. fewer and fewer people will be needed as robots take over almost all jobs over the course of the next few generations.
technology will spread. and life expectancy will lengthen yet again. but the population will actually drop over the long term, as long as technology and robotics/AI continue to rise at the current rate (exponential).
today, the people of wealthy nations have fewer and fewer reasons to have children, and the people of tomorrow's wealthy nations will have EVEN FEWER reasons.
gene pools problems and all those things will occur, and when they occur (and only when they occur) will we focus our technologies attention in that direction to "fix" it or "modify" it.
don't worry dude, we'll be able to manipulate genetics like we do robotics, and since everyone is guaranteed to be some sorta cyborg in the future, i don't think those concerns really matter. they're super petty. we will have figured those things out or figured a way to "cope" with any disadvantages it has.
literally humanity will have a new standard of "human" that you will find strange and probably uncomfortable. but no one cares, cuz we'll just be old people mumbling about "back in the good ol days".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoc
As cool as it is, there is a lot of social implications and issues that arise from development like these.
A black market could and will be spawned from this, harvesting stem cells from newborns, infant-farms, or even kidnapping women who are late into their term.
While the rich can afford a longer life, it will come at the expense of a lot of third-world suffering.
You can impose as many rules as you want to protect people from being exploited, but as history has proven (ie. organ-harvesting) people will find a way if it pays well enough.
I'd hate to bring politics in, but Bush's decision wasn't completely baseless when he banned stem cell research.
yes, while the rich can afford XXX, it will come at the expense of the rest of the world suffering.
when has that statement ever been NOT true? everything good in life, starts at the top, and trickles to the bottom after the technology gets abundant enough that it becomes cheap and economical to mass produce for the rest of the people.
as for your concern with the black market, yes, that is true. but the black market is always around and people will always exploit whatever cracks and chinks in the armor they can find.
THAT'S GOOD. people have to exploit things in order for us to notice the "loop holes" or "cracks" and so we can move forward to patch them.
everything great, always has its drawbacks. but in the short term where it may cause new problems while we figure ways to apply the technology and expose the disadvantages... in the long run (longer than 1 current human life cycle) we will fix those disadvantages and benefit greatly.
exploitation is moving forward.
think of it like a digital attack on a system. you wouldn't NOT implement a new system just cuz you're afraid of loopholes and cracks right? you implement it and you get the "bad guys" to reveal those cracks and you fix them. and then you release a new system, and rinse and repeat. before you know it, you have adapted and self improved.
in the long run, none of those concerns matter, the technology getting invented and applied is more important than any short term moral concerns or fears. those things will be ironed out in time, especially over the long term (100's or 1000's of years).
look at the big picture, all of humanity, of all of the future. not just your own petty 80 year life. you are just a cell in the body. cells grow and die everyday. as long as the future body survives and is better adapted to survive in this crazy cosmic reality, that's all that really matters. They'll be smarter, stronger, and faster than us. they'll figure it out, or pass it onto the next generation (who will be better fitted to figure it out).
Last edited by Ulic Qel-Droma; 04-23-2014 at 11:45 AM.
as for running out of food and water, that ain't gonna happen. the problem right now is the world doesn't have any easy way to get food to most of the population. and most food is wasted. it's a logistical problem. not a supply problem.
even if we become constrained of food SUPPLY (not logistics)... we already have the technology to make cheap food. just the rich societies would rather not look that direction (ie. in-vitro meats, eating farmed bugs, soylent, japanese invented eating recycled shit). if food supplies did become tight, those alternative things i just listed (plus many more im missing), will be heavily funded and the perceptive unappealing nature of those foods will change.
over the course of time, things will always equalize. the only way humanity will truly get fucked is if some global disaster happens, and the destruction happens faster than we can figure out a solution (ie. a huge asteroid hits earth).
not even global warming (at its worst) or a full on nuclear war will kill off mankind, it will only slow us down for a few generations as we figure out how to adapt and cope.
i'm confident, as long as humanity doesn't kill itself off within the next 150-250 years (or go into another dark age), we'll be too complex and intelligent to stop at the small scale. the only way to get rid of us completely would be to destroy earth and our solar system in some cosmic disaster (before we learn to adapt to living off planet).
humans are like spores. you can only get rid of spores if you sterilize the entire area.
humans+technology=new born god.
Last edited by Ulic Qel-Droma; 04-23-2014 at 12:01 PM.
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