OT: Stem Cell Research - fer it or agin it?

But your logic suggests that since homicide is a crime not worshipping a god should be as well.

I always assumed that Fred (Mr) Rogers was an atheist as he was so kind and gentle. I was surprised to learn he was a Presbyterian minister.

That's what all the fascists say.

I've heard that sex is involved somehow.

The system is there, and it's already working in ways far too complex for any living scientist to begin to explain. If anybody understands how cellular machinery works, where is the cure for AIDS, where is the malaria vaccine, what causes autism, why do we have 5 fingers on each hand? Of course you can't see how the genome can do the things it does; nobody can, so far.

But you can apparantly, given that situation, confidently state what mechanisms you are certain it is *not* using, which is downright impressive if you think about it.

"Although it is hard to imagine that an appendage-like structure sticking out of the eye would be adaptive in times of stress, Vercelli says that epigenetic change clearly can be environmentally induced in a heritable manner, in this case by alterations to Hsp90. The morphological variations in the eye were probably only the most obvious of many phenotypic differences caused by the chromatin changes.

In a written commentary, evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci said that Ruden's experiment was "one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that epigenetic variation is far from being a curious nuisance to evolutionary biologists."10 Pigluicci doesn't go so far as to say that the heritable changes caused by Hsp90 alterations are Lamarckian, but Ruden does. "Epigenetics has always been Lamarckian. I really don't think there's any controversy," he says."

John

Perhaps that merely proves their morals superior to your own. All too many anti abortionists are also pro death penalty and pro war.

Lamarckian?

What proof have you that the DNA doesn't contain sequences which reject its own failed attempts to clone itself?

That's a vile rumor. Don't you believe it.

John

Once they decided they could force motorcyclists to wear helmets, it became obvious there was no limit to their abuses.

John

If anybody can spot any logic hiding in that last statement, I'd appreciate their pointing it out.

John

When lacking evidence either way, I tend to assume that DNA is capable of encoding any algorithm that is useful and not forbidden by physical law. That idea makes some people angry.

John

You're totally ignoring (denying) Sentience - the feeling-side of Life.

Until you can understand that, and experience your own, you will never get the answer.

Good Luck! Rich

Or put you in prison for failing to pay the bribe money to the insurance lobbyists' toadies.

Thanks, Rich

Homer's ignorance should be punishable by death ;-)

...Jim Thompson

You obviously aren't reading widely enough.

AIDS,

Being worked on.

Being worked on - one of my old acquaintances from graduate school was occupied with that druing the 1990's, but the malaria parasite has had its own development program running for the past few million years now.

It looks as if it might be a problem with the mirror cells - see the November 2006 Scientific Amercan

Because the homobox genes divide up the hand into nine segments across

- each segment has its own unique label, and the cells in each segment express the appropriate genes in the appropriate order. Getting that mechanism sorted out has kept biologists busy for the last twenty years and won them a few Nobel prizes.

There are - of course - finer divisions within the nine transverse segments which form skin, bone, muscle and tendon, and there is also segmentation from the finger-tips back to the wrist but the homobox genes sort all that out as well.

Rather less than absolutely accurate. We know a lot about how the genome does the things it does, and we are well on the way to finding out a lot more.

If the genome hasn't got access to the information that it would need to do anything useful with the mechanisms you hypothesise out of your blissful ignorance, my confidence becomes less impressive, but more plausible.

Snort. Minor stuff being puffed by the creationists for the usual reasons. Of course the mother's mitochondria and immunities get passed on to her children in parallel with the genetic information. So what?

Yeah, responsibility sucks, don't it?

John

I'll settle for consciousness; it seems to work for me.

John

I'd appreciate your summary of my position on the war in Iraq. I was a little uncertain about it, so maybe you can clear things up.

John

OK, that's your right - you do have Free Will, after all, which is essentially the same as Sentience, much like Free Thought is essentially the same as Consciousness. It's just that Consciousness is electric, and Sentience is magnetic, so they're at 90 degrees to each other - all the interesting stuff happens where they interact. They can kinda be mapped onto the complex plane (albeit, Creation is a lot more complex than a plane! ;-) )

I'm sure nobody would call, say, an ameba "conscious", but it's certainly sentient - "sentient" means, after all, "able to sense" or "having senses", and I like to think of it as "having sense", but I diverge.

If you poke an ameba with a needle it will flinch. If you offer it a euglena and a piece of sand, it will preferentially eat the euglena. Clearly, the euglena tastes (and probably feels) better than sand.

That sort of thing. :-)

Have Fun! Rich