I am happy that President Obama reversed President Bush's decision to ban stem cell research. I believe that every life is important but I also feel that there is no gaurantee that the embryos would mature enough to be a viable life.
I feel that regardless of religious beliefs, the good of the many in most cases out weighs the good of the one but in the case of medicine the needs of the one help push forward the research that helps us deal with the needs of the many and we need to explore options that we may not always agree with. we have shown in the past that under certain conditions we will forego ethics so we can save a live during war time which means we cannot pick and choose our battles with medicine as long as we don't intend to hurt anyone.
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Friday, April 4, 2008
When will people worldwide have enough clean safe water
When will people worldwide have enough clean, safe water to drink? This is a very relevant question especially given the population growth. It is also something that affects not just people but the world as a whole. The one thing that everyone has to realize is that the time frame is based on factors that people have learned to control some of it based on attitudes with given societies and some is based on what we have learned in the way of science and nature.
When it comes to attitudes based in our various societies, there are a plethora of things that have to be dealt with some of which is the mentality of the leaders in a given geographical location in regards to whether or not they think of the environment as a way of helping or hurting the people who live in their countries. Some countries are more open to doing what it takes to help the environment while others use the environment as a way to hurt others.
There are also governments which believe that clean drinkable water isn’t a priority due to other things going on in their country that they would rather focus on.
With regards to science and nature we have progressed far enough to make an honest attempt to reverse the damage we have caused and can cause. The technology that we are capable of engineering doesn’t discern between the variations of clean or dirty, it just treats everything as if it needs to be treated.
Clean drinkable water, every living thing on the planet depends on it to some degree. The only two ways water can be effectively cleaned is to either let the Earth do her jobs in cleaning the water, or to have us take a more proactive approach to actually cleaning the water in ways that doesn’t take one problem and transfer it from one place to another.
One good way of dealing with creating clean water is how we have learned how to deal with our waste water that flows to the water treatment plants in many metropolitan areas. The process usually included the separation of the water itself from the sludge and trash that accompany the incoming water along with treating the water with environmentally friendly cleaners which include things that attack the bacteria and other things that can make plants and animals sick.
After the sludge is removed it is processed in a way that neutralized the bacteria and such that would be detrimental to the land environment while turning it into beneficial fertilizer that can be sold for gardens and for farming. The process itself is in essence just the speeding up of the decay process that nature has and therefore the facility can capture the methane that the process creates, which allows the facility to use the methane as fuel which allows the facility to reduce the amount of energy they need to buy from a power plant therefore reducing the power created by fossil fuels.
Besides cleaning waste water, we are capable of desalinating ocean water to create clean drinkable water which can be used in municipal drinking water and in the irrigation of farmland. The one problem with this that it is expensive along with needing a lot of energy to produce, a good way of offsetting the energy needs of the process would be to place the desalinization plants in areas where we can get the environment to help create the energy.
One good place to build a water desalination plant would be to build them where there the sun is the hottest and that is out the longest. This way you could use the solar energy, and you could possibly convert the heat to energy both to offset the cost associated with the process. Other good ways to offset the energy production needed would be to design the facility to use the water itself to create the energy.
We have to find ways of creating clean drinkable water without creating environmental problems elsewhere in a geographic region or globally.
When it comes to attitudes based in our various societies, there are a plethora of things that have to be dealt with some of which is the mentality of the leaders in a given geographical location in regards to whether or not they think of the environment as a way of helping or hurting the people who live in their countries. Some countries are more open to doing what it takes to help the environment while others use the environment as a way to hurt others.
There are also governments which believe that clean drinkable water isn’t a priority due to other things going on in their country that they would rather focus on.
With regards to science and nature we have progressed far enough to make an honest attempt to reverse the damage we have caused and can cause. The technology that we are capable of engineering doesn’t discern between the variations of clean or dirty, it just treats everything as if it needs to be treated.
Clean drinkable water, every living thing on the planet depends on it to some degree. The only two ways water can be effectively cleaned is to either let the Earth do her jobs in cleaning the water, or to have us take a more proactive approach to actually cleaning the water in ways that doesn’t take one problem and transfer it from one place to another.
One good way of dealing with creating clean water is how we have learned how to deal with our waste water that flows to the water treatment plants in many metropolitan areas. The process usually included the separation of the water itself from the sludge and trash that accompany the incoming water along with treating the water with environmentally friendly cleaners which include things that attack the bacteria and other things that can make plants and animals sick.
After the sludge is removed it is processed in a way that neutralized the bacteria and such that would be detrimental to the land environment while turning it into beneficial fertilizer that can be sold for gardens and for farming. The process itself is in essence just the speeding up of the decay process that nature has and therefore the facility can capture the methane that the process creates, which allows the facility to use the methane as fuel which allows the facility to reduce the amount of energy they need to buy from a power plant therefore reducing the power created by fossil fuels.
Besides cleaning waste water, we are capable of desalinating ocean water to create clean drinkable water which can be used in municipal drinking water and in the irrigation of farmland. The one problem with this that it is expensive along with needing a lot of energy to produce, a good way of offsetting the energy needs of the process would be to place the desalinization plants in areas where we can get the environment to help create the energy.
One good place to build a water desalination plant would be to build them where there the sun is the hottest and that is out the longest. This way you could use the solar energy, and you could possibly convert the heat to energy both to offset the cost associated with the process. Other good ways to offset the energy production needed would be to design the facility to use the water itself to create the energy.
We have to find ways of creating clean drinkable water without creating environmental problems elsewhere in a geographic region or globally.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
embryonic stem cell research, politics and religion
When it comes to medical research, more specifically embryonic stem cell research and presidential politics, the current president is playing to what our country calls the “Christian Conservatives” and their views on religious beliefs. The problem with that is the fact that some issues that the “Christian Conservatives” rather than looking at all beliefs they run with a specific belief on an issue that they either agree or disagree with and try to have a one sided debate with it.
The current president has made it a point to side with the “Christian Conservatives” on the embryonic stem cell research debate even though there are beliefs that to some degree contradict their stance.
Stem cells from my understanding are the cells that designate what is what in our body and we can use these stem cells to recreate pieces of that specific type of tissue. Embryonic stem cells are unspecified stem cells that haven’t been assigned a specific type of tissue to make and therefore have the ability to be told to create any type of tissue in the body. This gives us the opportunity to learn how stem cells work in general before they become specific to a type of tissue and to see what can and does go wrong in the creation of the different types of tissue so we can learn how to correct it.
The problem isn’t the research itself but rather the mentality of the people setting the public policy in government concerning medicine and research. These people who include the president try to put medicine and religion at odds with each other even though they go hand in hand due to religious doctrine. Religion states that it is our duty to heal the sick, which is were medicine comes into play.
It is understandable that many of the “Christian Conservatives” take a stance against embryonic stem cell research based on their religious beliefs. This is due to Christianity stating that life begins at conception and that we are not supposed to kill. At the same, there is a flip side to those as well. Religious doctrine not only states that we are not supposed to kill religious doctrine also states that we are supposed to learn, to heal the sick and to gain wisdom.
We cannot gain the wisdom needed that comes from learning if we place restrictions on what we learn or how we learn due to it going against one specific religious belief. By placing limits on what we learn and how we learn it when it comes to medical research we are hindering our ability to allow the medical community to do its job and in some cases we essentially are killing the people who we are in charge of healing because we are choosing to stand around and watch them die rather than learning how to heal them.
Where we are taught religion long before we are taught about government and politics we inherently put our religious beliefs into our politics. The people who were trusted to right the foundation of our country knew this and when they were writing the United States Constitution, they tried to limit the influence of both religion and government over each other. There will always be people including politicians who feel that there is no such writing in the constitution and others that feel that religion has no place in government at all.
Presidential politics is about running the country as effectively as the individual can run it given both domestic and international issues that relate to the people and the government, not using the Presidential podium as a pulpit to preach religious doctrine and limiting what we can do based on his own views on religious doctrine. The president if he uses the podium as a pulpit on the subject of embryonic stem cell research, belittles the researchers trying to do their jobs and he is forgetting that at one time many of the medical advancements we have achieved have come about even with religion being against it and how these advancements have helped us everyone including the people who didn’t believe in the advancement of medicine.
The has to be some sort of medium between secularism and religion when making decisions for the country as a whole since the country is a melting pot of cultures and religions rather than treating the country as if there is one culture and one religion.
Yes, in essence religion doesn’t permit us to kill, but at the same time if we choose not to do the Embryonic stem cell research then we are choosing to kill far more people that have illnesses we have no treatment for that may have had a cure stemming from that research.
The current president has made it a point to side with the “Christian Conservatives” on the embryonic stem cell research debate even though there are beliefs that to some degree contradict their stance.
Stem cells from my understanding are the cells that designate what is what in our body and we can use these stem cells to recreate pieces of that specific type of tissue. Embryonic stem cells are unspecified stem cells that haven’t been assigned a specific type of tissue to make and therefore have the ability to be told to create any type of tissue in the body. This gives us the opportunity to learn how stem cells work in general before they become specific to a type of tissue and to see what can and does go wrong in the creation of the different types of tissue so we can learn how to correct it.
The problem isn’t the research itself but rather the mentality of the people setting the public policy in government concerning medicine and research. These people who include the president try to put medicine and religion at odds with each other even though they go hand in hand due to religious doctrine. Religion states that it is our duty to heal the sick, which is were medicine comes into play.
It is understandable that many of the “Christian Conservatives” take a stance against embryonic stem cell research based on their religious beliefs. This is due to Christianity stating that life begins at conception and that we are not supposed to kill. At the same, there is a flip side to those as well. Religious doctrine not only states that we are not supposed to kill religious doctrine also states that we are supposed to learn, to heal the sick and to gain wisdom.
We cannot gain the wisdom needed that comes from learning if we place restrictions on what we learn or how we learn due to it going against one specific religious belief. By placing limits on what we learn and how we learn it when it comes to medical research we are hindering our ability to allow the medical community to do its job and in some cases we essentially are killing the people who we are in charge of healing because we are choosing to stand around and watch them die rather than learning how to heal them.
Where we are taught religion long before we are taught about government and politics we inherently put our religious beliefs into our politics. The people who were trusted to right the foundation of our country knew this and when they were writing the United States Constitution, they tried to limit the influence of both religion and government over each other. There will always be people including politicians who feel that there is no such writing in the constitution and others that feel that religion has no place in government at all.
Presidential politics is about running the country as effectively as the individual can run it given both domestic and international issues that relate to the people and the government, not using the Presidential podium as a pulpit to preach religious doctrine and limiting what we can do based on his own views on religious doctrine. The president if he uses the podium as a pulpit on the subject of embryonic stem cell research, belittles the researchers trying to do their jobs and he is forgetting that at one time many of the medical advancements we have achieved have come about even with religion being against it and how these advancements have helped us everyone including the people who didn’t believe in the advancement of medicine.
The has to be some sort of medium between secularism and religion when making decisions for the country as a whole since the country is a melting pot of cultures and religions rather than treating the country as if there is one culture and one religion.
Yes, in essence religion doesn’t permit us to kill, but at the same time if we choose not to do the Embryonic stem cell research then we are choosing to kill far more people that have illnesses we have no treatment for that may have had a cure stemming from that research.
Monday, May 14, 2007
drug research
When dealing with prescription drugs, we are at the mercy of the drug manufacturers when it comes to price. This is due to the cost of the actual research and the promotional material geared towards the doctors that would be prescribing the medication.
Drug companies, should be more open to sharing information with each other in ways that would not compromise their intellectual property but in a way that would significantly cut down the duplication of research on compounds, that can drive up the costs of the end product, even if it means some sort of library that would document the research done, procedures including a list of materials not protected by law, and both the positive and negative outcomes of the research.
When it comes to promoting to doctors, the drug companies should not be lining the pockets of doctors to get preferential treatment for the medication. it is one thing to advertise the new medication it goes against the oath that the doctors take if they are paid to push a specific drug over something that has a proven track record.
The drug companies do make samples that they give to doctors for which are given to patients and should be given to the patient to try before having them go pay for a prescription for the medication so that way it is know if there will be a reaction to the drug before the person pays for medication they may not be able to use.
Drug companies, should be more open to sharing information with each other in ways that would not compromise their intellectual property but in a way that would significantly cut down the duplication of research on compounds, that can drive up the costs of the end product, even if it means some sort of library that would document the research done, procedures including a list of materials not protected by law, and both the positive and negative outcomes of the research.
When it comes to promoting to doctors, the drug companies should not be lining the pockets of doctors to get preferential treatment for the medication. it is one thing to advertise the new medication it goes against the oath that the doctors take if they are paid to push a specific drug over something that has a proven track record.
The drug companies do make samples that they give to doctors for which are given to patients and should be given to the patient to try before having them go pay for a prescription for the medication so that way it is know if there will be a reaction to the drug before the person pays for medication they may not be able to use.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
bio-tech
Given the recent convention for the Bio-Tech field and the bio-lab being built on the campus of Boston Medical Center, it is easy for many to assume that all we are trying to accomplish with the Bio-Tech field is weapons grade bacteria and virus's or animal cruelty supposedly in the name of science.
By no means am I trying to say there hasn't been animal cruelty or that we are not looking for weapons grade material but they are not the only things to have come out of the Bio-Tech field. If every protester were to look at the advancements that we have made in treating medical and physical conditions both human an animals in recent years they will see they themselves have had medical procedures done to them that potentially were tested on people or animals for which they are protesting.
The Bio-Tech field is more disperse than the protesters would have us believe but if you want to boil it down to weapons grade materials, we are not the only nation to have those materials and some of them can last for years in the environment, you might want to think about it this way:
If we are capable of using bio-warfare tactics; they are capable of using bio-warfare.
By no means am I trying to say there hasn't been animal cruelty or that we are not looking for weapons grade material but they are not the only things to have come out of the Bio-Tech field. If every protester were to look at the advancements that we have made in treating medical and physical conditions both human an animals in recent years they will see they themselves have had medical procedures done to them that potentially were tested on people or animals for which they are protesting.
The Bio-Tech field is more disperse than the protesters would have us believe but if you want to boil it down to weapons grade materials, we are not the only nation to have those materials and some of them can last for years in the environment, you might want to think about it this way:
If we are capable of using bio-warfare tactics; they are capable of using bio-warfare.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
medicine and religion
when it comes to medicine and medical research I feel that it is an integral part of our society to the degree that healing people even shows up in religious text. There are many who mean well but end up choosing one side of the issue of medical research over the other due to either religious grounds or due to not believing that medicine should work that way.
I feel that even though my own religious beliefs state that killing is not allowed, the belief to heal supersedes the belief against killing due to the fact that if we do not learn to heal the sick we are essentially killing the very people we need to heal.
In the United States there is a moratorium on using federal money to do embryonic stem cell research even though it is legal. Even though the wording does not specifically state that it is due to religious beliefs, it was made clear in statements that religious beliefs were at the heart of the issue. I think that it is a view that is far too rigid to be acceptable in mainstream religion and mainstream medicine.
If everyone held that view we would still be practicing medicine like it was practiced at the time of the plague. At one time it was blasphemous, open up the human body to perform any type of medical procedure. Until the Vietnam war American medicine prohibited different types of medical treatments from being tried. During that war techniques that had, had a moratorium on them became common place in the MASH units and are not common place in society.
Now we are in a similar situation as right before the Vietnam war with a moratorium on specific things that could potentially help the sick, more specifically the embryonic stem cell research.
In order to heal the sick and to protect life, we must learn to find out why we get sick and die so we can learn how to heal and to protect. to tell someone that is deathly ill that it is against your beliefs to do the research to keep them from dying is basically telling them you are killing them which also goes against beliefs.
I feel that even though my own religious beliefs state that killing is not allowed, the belief to heal supersedes the belief against killing due to the fact that if we do not learn to heal the sick we are essentially killing the very people we need to heal.
In the United States there is a moratorium on using federal money to do embryonic stem cell research even though it is legal. Even though the wording does not specifically state that it is due to religious beliefs, it was made clear in statements that religious beliefs were at the heart of the issue. I think that it is a view that is far too rigid to be acceptable in mainstream religion and mainstream medicine.
If everyone held that view we would still be practicing medicine like it was practiced at the time of the plague. At one time it was blasphemous, open up the human body to perform any type of medical procedure. Until the Vietnam war American medicine prohibited different types of medical treatments from being tried. During that war techniques that had, had a moratorium on them became common place in the MASH units and are not common place in society.
Now we are in a similar situation as right before the Vietnam war with a moratorium on specific things that could potentially help the sick, more specifically the embryonic stem cell research.
In order to heal the sick and to protect life, we must learn to find out why we get sick and die so we can learn how to heal and to protect. to tell someone that is deathly ill that it is against your beliefs to do the research to keep them from dying is basically telling them you are killing them which also goes against beliefs.
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