Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: My Chemical Romance "Mama" ::
Okay, I'm going to warn up front that this is going to get more than a little weird, personal, political and emotional in places and it has a "message" and as such may very well put people "off," but to heck with it.
Three years ago this month a good friend of mine died. He was a "new" friend, in that I hadn't known in since my school days and it is very rare indeed for someone as socially anxious as me to actually make a good new friend. I met him because of work and we sort of hit it off because he had the same sort of sick and twisted sense of humour that everyone else thought was completely insane. Well, there is an unfortunately high turn over rate in my field of employ, and he was eventually offered a sweet deal somewhere else and he relocated. We kept in touch, though, which to me was even more surprising and spoke volumes of his impeccable character as a human being, and every time he was in town, we'd get together just like always. In 2005 he was diagnosed with Lou Gerhig's Disease and six months to live. He slowly started losing control of speech and motor function and was eventually stuck in a wheelchair or bed full time. Nearly exactly six months later, February 2006, he died.
He was an active human being. He was a navy seal who did dangerous search and rescue missions during Operation: Desert Storm. He loved deep sea diving, skiing, and other exciting things like jumping out of planes. The thought of this guy confined to a bed, unable to move, disturbs me greatly. Another disturbing thought is that he inherited this disease from his father, who had died of it not that long before, and if my friend had had a son, the odds of it killing him too are terrifyingly high.
This is one of the reasons why I support stem cell research.
To me, one of the most real-life horrifying thoughts is falling victim to a physically debilitating disease, where your body betrays you completely but you still have all of your mental competence and faculties. Diseases like Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, and yes, Lou Gerhig's, turn your body into a prison. In many cases you retain all of your metal awareness until the very end. You know what is happening, and understand what is going on around you, but cannot communicate or interact in any way. The idea of falling victim to this sort of condition myself is one of the scariest things I can imagine happening to me personally. And it could happen. One day I could have a stroke, lose all voluntary motor function on my right side and be able to only say 3 words, yet still be totally competent.
We all know the main area of controversy lies with EMBRYONIC stem cell research, as opposed to ADULT stem cell research. The thing is, adult stem cells have been PROVEN to have a positive effect when treating leukemia, but adult stem cells are more difficult to manipulate than the embryonic type. The controversy of course lies in the fact that in order to get embryonic stem cells, one must destroy and embryo. The "ANTI-CHOICE" groups out there see this as amoral and are doing everything in their power to prevent any of this research from happening. Last I checked, abortions were still legal in the United States, but I guess they view using terminated fetuses for research which could potentially benefit all of mankind to be wrong. Alternatively, unused embryos from fertility clinics could be utilized, but anti-choice people STILL view this as wrong even though these embryos have never been inside a uterus and would have been thrown away otherwise (hazardous waste material=okay. use in research to cure caner=wrong and unethical. I don't get it either.). Think about it: adult stem cells can help leukemia patients, this is a fact. Who knows what cures lie in the more malleable embryonic stem cells? If you can cure Parkinson's or make all transplants safe from rejection, think of how many thousands of lives you could save! But you don't even want us to be able to check it out? To try?
Most of the problem must come from a lack of knowledge about how stem cell treatments are supposed to work. The way I understand it, and I could be totally wrong so please correct me if I am, is this (very, very simplified version): Say I had a wife and we really wanted a baby but could not get pregnant. We go to a fertility clinic which harvests my wife's eggs and my sperm and in a laboratory, they create viable embryos to place inside a surrogate womb. Now, this sort of thing may not work on the first try, so while they're harvesting eggs, they take, let's say, nine of them, and make nine embryos. They implant three of them in the surrogate and freeze the rest for later use, and happy day, one of them sticks on the first go, and my wife and I have our baby. This leaves six embryos unused and ready for the trash can. But wait! My wife and I donate them to embryonic stem cell research. The thing you have to understand about stem cells is that they create exact copies of themselves over and over again. So let's say they were able to miraculously generate a cure for ovarian cancer from one of my donated embryos. They would be able to reproduce enough of this cure and inject it into everyone afflicted with this cancer for over ten years. One embryo creates enough for ten years worth of use. An embryo which would have been discarded was able to save thousands of lives. Does this sound immoral to you?
They say that embryonic stem cells could possibly CURE many neurological diseases as well as cancers and many types of debilitating injuries such as paralysis. When our last president, "Dubya," forbade federal funding to this research, I was furious. For scientific research, no federal funding is almost tantamount to a "death sentence," in that it is the primary source of funds and very little can actually get done without it. The new United States President has said that he intends to over turn Dubya's stem cell research restrictions and I strongly hope he does so. I think of my friend who was a stand up human being who enjoyed an active lifestyle losing motor function, confined to a bed and slowly dying as his breathing became more and more difficult, all before he turned forty. I want to think there are scientists out there who are working on treatments that could have saved him so that no one else needs to suffer like that. If that cure lies in embryonic stem cells, then I'm all for it.
William the Bloody (stem cell supporter)
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