nature

There is nothing more calming, more beautiful than the sound of a loon at the break of dawn...o'er a lake with a thin veil of mist......

The Incurable Romantic

The Incurable Romantic

Happy again

Even when times seem bleek...around the corner comes a light and the chance to start over and renew. It's spring..the birth of newness...and time to enjoy life!!!!

Tomorrow....there is always tomorrow

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

People in Belize think it should be one of the seven wonders of the world. Dive boats visit it every day. It is protected by the Belize Audubon Society and is a Belize National Monument. It became a World Heritage site in 1997. Jacques Cousteau took the Calypso and his one-man submarines into the hole in 1972 to examine stalactites suspended from overhanging walls. The Great Blue Hole is surrounded by shallow water of Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a nearly perfect circle in the middle of a shallow reef. The atoll is located ~96 km east of the Belize mainland. It is not an easy place to reach

The Stem Cell Debate

Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788


After reading all about the Michael J Fox commercial on T.V during the World Series, I couldn't help but read a little bit more about this. Is it an ethical, religious, moral or scientific issue? One has to "start in the beginning" so to speak. What is a stem cell?...what does it do?..what are the possibilities?...and why is research being " shut down" by the Bush administration? Let's look at what stem cells are...and what they do. There are masses of information to read. So here are The basics...and I do mean basics!
They are essentially blank cells that potentially can be turned into pretty much any type of body tissue. So, for example, you could take a stem cell and in the lab convert it to a cardiac muscle cell and inject it into a heart that's been damaged by a heart attack, and the stem cells could repair the damaged muscle.
Where do they come from?
One major source of stem cells is embryos made in labs for in vitro fertilization purposes and those embryos have never seen the inside of a woman's uterus. They're in liquid nitrogen because the infertile couple already had their child and didn't need some of the leftover embryos.
Many people feel these cells could be a possible cure for many diseases such as Parkinsons, certain types of cancers. It is also believed they can help regenerate tisses for those with spinal cord and other injuries ....making the possibilities endless. However much research is still needed before we can see the fruition of any " cures".
First, let's make one thing clear: stem cells at this point have not helped a single person. Embryonic stem cells are still in the animal testing stage -- so we are right to use the word "promising." Scientists believe that stem cells are so valuable because they're more than just a "fix" that your typical drug would give. Stem cells, once converted into, if you use my previous example, cardiac muscle actually become part of the body. They replace cells in the body that have gone wrong in some way.
So why is the Bush Administation, and The " Right To Life" movement so against something that has such positive possibilities??? Their reason to oppose it is because they say life starts at conception whether that conception is done the natural way or done in a petri dish in an IVF lab somewhere. They say that these leftover IVF embryos frozen in labs all over the country could at any time be implanted into a woman's uterus and become a child and, in fact, have pointed out that some infertile couples have adopted these embryos and impregnated the wife and today have happy healthy children.
On the one hand, parents of sick children can't believe that someone would deny them a possible cure. On the other side, people can't believe that anyone would destroy a human embryo that, if implanted into a woman's uterus, could become a person.
Personally I think that anything that will help aleviate people of life threatening diseases, excruciating disablities and physical hardships MUST be persued. Only after research understands the possibilities of stem cell research can we attach any ethical decisions, or boundaries on this issue. Just my opinion.........

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
George Carlin