http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44943#

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

What evidence do you have that the blastocyst is non-sentient?

It has no nervous system. (Duh!)

which initiated their transformation into cancer cells.

Read again – they aren’t cancer cells any longer, they are free-living eukaryotic cells, bacteria if not Bacteria.

@ Todd:

No, not viruses, see above. To evolve from a cellular life form to a viral life form will take some doing, the usual route is probably that viruses are derived selfish gene assemblies. But some viruses are complex as cells, has AFAIU a full complement of metabolic pathways and look suspiciously as if they evolved as more of a whole from cells, see Mama and Mimi viruses. And famously Mama viruses can be infected by a virus, hence their name.

OTOH human cells contain viruses and can presumably spawn viruses more directly by that route. Elements from retroviruses that have become “stuck” in the germ cell line can potentially become “unstuck” again, before they are destroyed by mutation. Dunno if it has been tested yet. (But see Greg Bear’s “Darwin” series, “Darwin’s Radio” and “Darwin’s children” for a novelization of such a pathway (with some tossed in speculation about extensive gene regulation AFAIU).)

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. Again, ESC research is not being halted and was not halted during the last 8 years. Although Obama’s reversal of Bush’s policy will make it easier to do the research, there are still Congressional restrictions which will need to be overcome.

I do not know if the blastocyst possesses sentience or not. It is an interesting concept to regard “sentience” as a definition of our humanity.

@Kim Poor–
I wish only the best for you in your disease. I hope that a treatment is found somewhere, ESC or otherwise.

As far as Torbjorn’s comments on the HeLa cell line, those cells did not become viruses. They were cervical cells which became infected with an oncogenic strain of the human papilloma virus which initiated their transformation into cancer cells. They did not become viruses.

Actually, despite your reading of that article, reprogrammed adult stem cells, as far as I understand, approach, but do not match, embryonic stem cells. I just heard a bit of information about stem cell research the other day from the head of the Department of Regenerative Medicine at the hospital in which I work. Using the analogy of a ball rolling down a hill, he stating pretty clearly that adult cells can only be pushed so far up the hill, leaving some paths inaccessible, while embryonic stem cells are at the very “top” of the hill, having all potential paths open to them.

So, I stand by my comment that there are limitations to stem cell lines derived from non-embryonic sources.

Also, Torbjörn, thanks for posting that info about human cells becoming viruses.