2002-04-18 03:49:23

Under the right conditions, that cell could be programmed to divide and develop into an entirely new representation of you. Mom and Dad could thus use any cell you are willing to spare to have a whole new child, which would be your twin.

Yet do we fret over lost cells? No. We shed them in huge quantities without thought. We slough them off and they whither and die, unmourned, despite their potential.

Why are stem cells any different?

"It is a truism that the blastocyst has the potential to be a human being. Yet at that stage of development it is simply a clump of cells. ... An analogy might be what one sees when walking into a Home Depot. There are the parts and potential for at least 30 homes. But if there is a fire at Home Depot, the headline isn't 30 homes burn down. it's Home Depot burns down."

Dartmouth neuroscientist -Michael Gazzaniga

I happened to catch the Oprah Winfrey show the other day. Michael J. Fox was on. He's beginning to shake quite a bit, as he loses control of his body due to the death of his dopamine producing cells via Parkinson's disease.

I think George Bush should hire a few people with Parkinson's disease to help him out around the white house. I think he should have to look into the face of those with debilitating disease on a regular basis, and ask himself, why is he forbidding stem cell research to go forward.

Currently fertility clinics store pre-embryos for implantation into couples struggling to have children. The business of dealing with fertilized cells is tricky. A small clump of cells can easily die or succumb to abnormalities. Implantation occurs when the pre-embryos are between 2 and 8 cells. If not used right away they are frozen.

These tiny clumps of a handful of indistinguishable cells hold amazing potential for research. Yet these little pre-embryos are the source of anguish and controversy surrounding stem cell research. If unused, the clinic will thaw the cells and let them die. George Bush thinks of them as sacred, yet he is completely removed from the reality of what they are - a small clump of a few indistinguishable cells. They will die no different than the cells on the end of a hair that falls from your head.

Since George Bush isn't about to elect a Minister of Mourning to go around to fertility clinics and read last rights over lab trash cans containing little plastic tubes of unused pre-embryos thawing to their certain death, I think we should mourn them collectively. It helps to have an image for something when it is being mourned. But pre-embryos are much too small to be seen. However, next time you see a stray grain of salt on the table, consider that approximately 10,000 pre-embryos could fit within the volume of a salt grain. See how much meaning you can attach to each one.

Better yet, mourn for all those whose lives will be spent, like Michael J. Fox, losing their body from debilitating disease one day at a time until they die, because George Bush doesn't realize the difference between a person and something 1/10000 the size of a grain of salt.