Word: humaneness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sight. The Guatemalan police were searching for them, so they spent a month holed up inside, waiting to resume their journey. They were not allowed to call home. For the snakeheads, who get paid only on arrival, the trip had now gone badly wrong. A dozen of their human cargo were dead, 38 others arrested, and the U.S. immigration authorities had been alerted...
...Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis, as well as to reverse congestive heart failure and heal spinal-cord injuries. But there are some aspects of this story that are brave new world-ish. Known scientifically as stem cells, Pedersen's marvelously pliable cells are derived from seven-day-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process. Although not all stem cells are produced this way, embryonic stem cells seem for now to have the greatest potential for medical miracles...
Pedersen--and the handful of other scientists working with human embryonic stem cells--uses embryos left over from fertility attempts that would otherwise be thrown away. Still, treating human embryos like so many tissue factories seems straight out of Huxley. It certainly doesn't sit well with antiabortion activists--or, in many cases, with lawmakers. In 1996 Congress banned human-embryo research by federally supported scientists, forcing researchers like Pedersen to seek private funding (most of which has been provided by Geron, a Menlo Park, Calif., biotech company...
...critics, anything that requires the destruction of human embryos--no matter what the reason--is abhorrent. Calling that "worse than abortion," Richard Doerflinger, a director of policy for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, says, "If [the embryo] is a member of the human family, you cannot destroy that being for the sake of others...
There's much more to learn, of course, and many pitfalls to avoid. Consider the case of a 52-year-old American athlete with Parkinson's disease, who in 1989--before human stem cells had been isolated from the brain--traveled to China for a fetal-cell transplant. The goal was to replace some of the diseased neurons in his brain with newly differentiated fetal nerve tissue. While that approach has been at least partly successful in hundreds of other cases, something went dreadfully wrong this time. About two years later, the man suddenly developed trouble breathing and died...