In a watershed moment for one of the most contentious areas of science and American politics, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for the first-ever human trial of a medical treatment derived from embryonic stem cells.
Geron Corp., a Menlo Park, Calif., biotechnology company, is expected to announce Friday that it received a green light from the agency to mount a study of its stem-cell treatment for spinal cord injuries in up to 10 patients. The announcement caps more than a decade of advances in the company’s labs and comes on the cusp of a widely expected shift in U.S. policy toward support of embryonic stem-cell research after years of official opposition.
“This is the dawn of a new era in medical therapeutics,” said Thomas B. Okarma, Geron’s president and chief executive officer. The hope that stem-cell therapy will repair and regenerate diseased organs and tissue “goes beyond what pills and scalpels can ever do.”
The potential and promise to this remains great, and hopefully this will be the beginning of the payoff for years of research.
And just as a side note, but this is something that really gets overlooked a lot. When that plane went down in the Hudson last week, and not one person was killed, even your host used terms like “miraculous” to describe the events. This caused more than one person to make comments like this:
Many, many commendations to the pilot for making the right decisions quickly, keeping his head and allowing his training to take over. He literally saved 150 lives.
The same to the crew and passengers for getting themselves out of a hellish situation quickly and orderly.
However, what I can’t stand is the talking heads that call it a “miracle” that the plane stayed together and was able to float long enough to get everyone off. No, it wasn’t an f’ing miracle! It was at least 100,000 man-hours of research, design and testing that built a machine that supposed to do that, with another who-knows-how-many hours of science research backing up that design.
I heard some anchor (maybe on MSNBC) talk about that being a miracle and almost lost it. Another example of the lack of respect for science and engineering among many parts of the population.
Call it a miracle (if that’s you’re persuasion) that it happened in one of the busiest waterways in the world, so that help showed up quickly. But don’t call it a miracle that a piece of technology that many people spent their entire careers creating worked like it was supposed to.
While I still think the plane landing was miraculous when you consider the combination of events that had to take place to have it occur without injury (What if the engines had gone out earlier in the plane’s ascent? What if there had been a different and less skilled pilot or crew? What if it had been a different airframe? What if there had been ferries in the way? What if the water had been rocky? And on and on.), the point is duly noted.
Should stem cell research lead us to a day in which the paralyzed can once again walk or that there is a cure for Alzheimers or cancer or Parkinson’s, it will be miraculous. However, that miracle will be the direct result of millions of hours spent by people in labs, squinting through microscopes in cold metallic labs with bad fluorescent lighting and only the dull hum of machinery to keep them company.
Bob
As someone who once worked in Michigan’s legislature to try to get our stem cell ban overturned, I know of the promise of stem cell research and have listened many times to those who could benefit.
In November, Michigan not only voted to elect Obama, but we also overturned one of the most restrictive stem cell laws in the nation. Amen.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I guess God miracles those who miracle themselves.
Personally, I think of the term "miracle" as a metaphor-ish term meaning "really amazingly good thing happening against all odds" or the like. As John said, though, the point is noted.
BDeevDad
As someone with Parkinson’s Disease, this brings a great big smile to my face and a middle finger to the Bush administration.
Neue Internetprasenz
My dream is to use gene splicing and solar-nuclear explosions to create that funny "Destroy Superman!" guy from Superman IV, but until that happens, this science is just as said.
jibeaux
Exactly, a point I tried to make about 12 times in that thread and people just kept getting pissed off and saying it implied an antipathy to science/pilots/safety regulations.
I read it just the other day in reference to a cancer treatment drug which an oncologist had referred to as a "miracle." I’m fairly certain he was not signaling his love of Jesus and antipathy to science with that remark.
Ian
Lab work isn’t nearly as bleak as you make it out to be ;) Of course it varies from lab to lab, just like any office, but usually you’re surrounded by smart, curious people… which helps to keep pettier impulses in check and make for a better work environment.
The Other Steve
People don’t understand miracles. They think it’s magic. That someone snaps their fingers and it just happens.
It’s not. It’s simply something happening for the good that one really didn’t expect. A plane landing on water with no injuries is miraculous. God didn’t snap his fingers and make it happen, it’s more complicated. Rather the miracle is the fact that on that plane that day was a pilot who was incredibly competent and made it happen.
I blame this on the evangelicals who have tried to take a literal interpretation of the bible. It makes the concepts too rigid.
demimondian
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
You intend to be joking, but you’re right, actually. Penicillin was a "miracle drug" — but it ignores Fleming’s dedication in turning it into a reality and saving lives with it. Chemotherapy is a "miracle" — but that ignores the millions of people, doctors and patients alike, who’ve given their lives to making it better. Stem cell repair will, someday, be a miracle, hailed as such by any number of Right Wing preachers…who will conveniently ignore the fact that the miracle will have happened because good people, believers and non-believers alike, refused to reject the fact that, at the end of the day, we make our own miracles.
jenniebee
@jibeaux: that’s the way it’s being used, but it still points to a deficiency in modern English usage, that we’re unable to express rational and scientific achievement without reference to religious metaphor. It’s especially disheartening since this represents something of a devolution in the language – not long ago it would have been called a "triumph of modern scientific achievement" or "the great benefits of human progress." Even sadder, that’s how the late Victorians would have said it. We just don’t think about science or history or human "progress" as a vector that always moves toward a better and brighter tomorrow anymore, for good or ill.
The Grand Panjandrum
Miracle = Preparation + Opportunity.
srv
Some miracles are when people don’t do the right things and it still works out.
Like when an Airbus pilot fails to hit the ditch switch before a water landing and still ends up the hero.
Desargues
Miracle: God nearly killed me for no reason, until he decided to spare my life.
jibeaux
@demimondian:
I can’t believe I’m getting sucked into another pedantic and pointless argument — go interwebs! — but it doesn’t matter how rational and logical and scientific you are, things happen which are out of the ordinary and cannot be predicted. You may make your own miracles, but miraculous things can also happen quite independently of your own actions. You can call it luck, or kismet, or the way of the universe, and it is all those things, but sometimes when a good thing happens that is extraordinary and amazing, people will call it a miracle. And that’s o.k.
The miracle that I am hoping for is that I will win the lottery. It may seem like a pretty ordinary miracle, but what you don’t know is that I never buy tickets.
ccham44
I want to point out that in John’s original post he used the word miraculous, yes, but also mentioned the research work and science involved too.
My comment was about this guy on MSNBC who seemed to be specifically referring to the design of the plane itself as a miracle.
In any event, good on the folks at Geron. This will be an exciting story to follow. Here’s hoping for a lot more announcements like this, now that we’ll once again be funding research based on reality and not based on what makes the wingnuts feel good.
Zifnab
First, hundreds of thousands of man hours in research and development don’t sell newspapers. If it turns out someone on that flight ate a burnt piece of toast with the Virgin Mary on it, THAT’S front page stuff.
Second, am I the only person who looks at this plane crash and is horrified that it happened at all? These incidents have become increasingly common in the last few years. Flight 1404 in Denver happened just last month. Flight 268 occurred just three months earlier.
Yeah, bird strikes like this are rare, but the other two are clearly mechanical. People shouldn’t be shouting "miracle" when a plane goes down. There is a fundamental problem in air transit when planes catch fire or landing wheels go out. When you plow all these man hours into making flying safe, you get fantastic results. That’s not a miracle. But events like these should be moments to reevaluate safety, not mindlessly clap our hands and thank Jesus.
Mazacote Yorquest
There’s nothing I like better on a sandwich than 10,000 Man-hour Whip.
Poetry– read it, learn it, know it.
Shygetz
Okay, so if people doing their jobs properly and having it work out is a "miracle", what would we call it if a statue of Jesus started bleeding out of its hands and eyes? It’s not like we’re running out of words here…why not reserve "miracle" for those things that really are miracles, and call things like the Hudson River landing "amazing" or "fantastic" or just the old generic "wonderful"?
jibeaux
Sure we are. Scientific progress, scientific breakthroughs, technological marvels, cutting-edge technology, etc. etc. The point is that sometimes there is a scientific breakthrough, and sometimes there is a scientific breakthrough with an undefinable, unquantifiable, possibly unexplainable "value added" that really causes people to marvel. I do not think that in our quest to be scientific, rational, and logical, all of which I wholeheartedly support, that we need to systematically destroy our sense of wonder at the unpredictabilities and vagaries of life.
Media Browski
Obama is building a tesseract from the dark ages to the 21st century.
NonyNony
@jenniebee:
Meh. The religious folks stole it from the Romans, because if I remember my bits of Latin correctly, the word "miracullum" (sp?) basically meant "wonderful" or "awe-inspiring" or something similar without necessarily having a religious context.
As John says above, he uses the world "miracle" to mean things that are highly improbable, usually positive outcomes, but not really divinely manipulated ones. That’s fairly common usage in my experience – when I call something a "miracle" I don’t mean that "goddidit" unless I’m describing an event from the Torah, the Eddas, Bullfinch’s, the Bible or some other book that has a god as a protagonist.
gopher2b
Great news. I’m going to go ahead and say it: one has to ask whether these types of breakthroughs will come in the future if we have universal healthcare by 2012. I don’t think so but that’s just my opinion.
(And for those of you who respond that Bush banned federal funding of stem cell research…I know…and its not a counterargument to point it out).
Mazacote Yorquest
"what would we call it if a statue of Jesus started bleeding out of its hands and eyes?"
A health hazard.
Gus
Aside from the pedantry of the miracle/non-miracle argument, this story reminds me that Obama’s election was a good thing. I’ve been a little cynical about him, but this is a perfect example of a policy that will have wonderful, tangible results. This is a policy that might not have been changed under a McCain/Palin administration.
Shawn in ShowMe
that’s the way it’s being used, but it still points to a deficiency in modern English usage
I’ll go you one better, it points to a deficiency in American thought. When fanciful Bible stories are still the the basis for so many people’s worldview, even if it’s just as metaphor, how can you expect the word "miracle" not to to have a religious connotation?
Michael D.
On another topic, proof of the stupidification of American kids.
THAT was just on CNN.
Shygetz
Which leaves us the words "wonderful", "unexpected", "unexplained", etc. If you think scientists don’t experience a sense of wonder, you’re nuts. For a scientist, the sense of wonder is immediately followed by a drive to figure it out, a drive that the term "miracle" implies is worthless as "miracle" does not just imply something unexplained, but rather something unexplainable.
TheFountainHead
@Zifnab: Zif, Mechanical failures and bird strikes do happen. Period. There’s no safety rigor known to man that can prevent this. The point of all the research and manhours is to produce EXACTLY the result we saw in the Hudson. The researchers and engineers have to assume catastrophic failure and work from there to preserve as much life as possible. You cannot engineer "zero failure".
demimondian
@jibeaux: OK, look. By those standards, I’m a walking miracle — on a dark morning in 1985, the car I was driving hit a patch of black ice, spun, and went over a snow-covered guard rail, rolling thirty feet down the cliff on the left side of the highway.
I walked away.
Was that a miracle? No — I was incredibly lucky to be only superficially injured, but, no, it *was not* a miracle. It was the result of a lot of human things going right, from the engineers at GM doing a bunch of design, to a bunch of blue-collar welders building a safe automobile frame, to the simple fact that I always buckle my seat belt. It wasn’t the result of my personal sky ghost reaching down to save me, and to believe that it was would be self-aggrandizement of the worst kind.
Either as a scientist, an engineer, or a Christian, the abuse of the term bothers me. It takes away the responsibility to be prepared to survive — to make sure that your pilots know how to respond in a crisis, to make sure that you’ve developed anti-mosquito nets for kids in Africa, or to simply click your seat belt.
demimondian
@Mazacote Yorquest: I would call biohazard mitigation, myself.
NonyNony
@Shygetz:
Because [voice of Morbo] LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY [voice of Morbo].
Words get "misused" all of the freaking time. And then the misuse becomes common enough that it is no longer a misuse, and in fact sticking to the "true" meaning can become a confusing misuse of the word.
That’s just how language works. You can’t stop it. You can’t throw your hands up and say "NO! IT CAN’T MEAN THAT! YOU ALL HAVE TO STOP IT NOW!" Vocabulary shifts. Meaning shifts. Try reading some books written in the 1800s to see just how much vocabulary has shifted in the last century, let alone over a longer span of time. You can’t stop it. You can bitch about it. You can drive yourself nuts over it. You can resolve to only use things the "proper" way yourself. But if the language is going to shift that way, the language is going to shift. It’s just how it is.
BDeevDad
You all are a bunch of party poopers. My daughter being alive is a miracle: any amazing or wonderful occurrence.
Did she need some help considering she was born some assembly required (5 surgeries, a feeding tube, trach and hearing aids)? Yes! However, I can still be amazed at the fact she is here.
Albert Einstein:
Media Browski
General response to science/miracle debate:
Miracles, science and magic are all the same thing when you understand technology.
Incertus
@jenniebee: Go back far enough in the etymology, though, and God stops being a part of the meaning of the word. It has its roots in "to make smile," which certainly applies in these cases. I know–you can’t divorce from the current usage, but I think that the people who are freaking over it need to relax just a little on this.
jibeaux
And if you want to see it that way, it’s fine. I am not in any way denying that the safety of the frame and your seat belts contributed to your safety. I have no problem with that. I just happen to think it is also absolutely fine to think "Wow, I’m glad I have a good safe car and buckle my safety belt, but even still I could have easily been killed or injured in that wreck. If I had been going even a tiny bit faster I might have flipped end to end down that embankment. If I had gone off the road over there by the overpass instead of the embankment I would have plummeted 50 feet onto concrete. I am certainly thankful to be alive. What a miracle."
It’s all of course rooted in the eminently logical facts that a) you can still be hurt or killed in a safe car, and b) you can still walk away unscathed from a less safe car.
Shygetz
That’s just it…miracles aren’t a party. Your daughter still being alive is a lot of things, but there’s nothing unexplainable about it.
I’ll ask again…if we allow the usage of "miracle" to shift to anything good and unexpected, what word do we use for the truly unexplainable?
Shawn in ShowMe
It’s not like we’re running out of words here…why not reserve "miracle" for those things that really are miracles, and call things like the Hudson River landing "amazing" or "fantastic" or just the old generic "wonderful"?
You’re calling for restraint in a society known around the globe for its excess and hyperbole. That’s like hoping for fewer reality shows. Not gonna happen.
demimondian
@NonyNony: Um…no.
One of the hardest things to get non-linguists to understand is that odd fact that *we* are the language. It exists only to the extent that it has speakers, and, like Humpty Dumpty said, "The question is who is the master, me or the words." Language change isn’t some mythical thing driven by you favorite storm spirit, and it’s not something about which we need to be passive.
Kind of like, say, airplane design.
Peter J
The Big What if for landing a normal plane on water seems to be if you do a crooked landing and dip one of the wings into the water. Those landings generally end up with the plane breaking up.
Guess that falls under the less skilled pilot what-if though :)
Incertus
@Michael D.: I deal with kids in her age group all the time–it’s my job–and I’d say she’s about average. Now if that scares you, take an honest look back at yourself at age 18, with no real life experience, and no real ability to distinguish bullshit from accurate information. She just hasn’t learned to look at the long view of things yet.
Incertus
@Media Browski: That’s what Heinlein said–technology complicated enough that you don’t understand it is magic.
BDeevDad
Mysterious?
shpx.ohfu
In a little noticed Executive Order issued this morning following on the FDA’s approval, President Obama decreed that all Republicans have an "R" tattooed on the back of their neck so that none of their lives will accidentally be saved by the use of dead baby juice.
grendelkhan
Or, as Dan Dennett might say, thank goodness.
demimondian
@Incertus: Sigh.
That’s Clarke. Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It’s one of his three laws. [cite: “Profiles of The Future”, 1961]
Tim in SF
I’d just be happy to get my hearing back.
tinyurl.com/bxozs7
Tim in SF
I’d just be happy to get my hearing back.
tinyurl.com/bxozs7
demimondian
@BDeevDad: The truly unexplainable?
How about "fake"?
Shawn in ShowMe
@demimondian
Other than in a few blog posts, where is the public outcry against the misuse of the word "miracle" in non-miraculous circumstances? The "n" word has been dying a slow death because due to a widespread public outcry, among blacks and whites.
I don’t see the same thing happening with "miracle". If anything the country has become more religious in the face of hard times, as Obama aptly pointed out.
Shawn in ShowMe
@demimondian
The science and magic observation was made by Heinlein in his 1942 story "Waldo". I didn’t know it either til’ I googled it. Incertus with the obscure reference FTW!
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@demimondian: You intend to be joking, but you’re right, actually.
I intended to be joking and right. :)
srv
@demimondian: Before you worship all those engineers, perhaps you should worship the creator, Nader, first.
demimondian
@srv: I do, man, I do. He’s unsafe at any speed.
Wile E. Quixote
@Shygetz
Well personally I’d call it something like:
But that’s just me.
Incertus
@Shawn in ShowMe: Sweet! I wasn’t sure whether or not to trust my memory. It’s been a while since I read it, and when Demimondian said that, I started to doubt myself. Thanks for verifying.
canuckistani
They have Far Side cartoons, too.
Paul L.
Time to use the progressive’s "unproven" talking point for embryonic stem cell research.
Such as this Obama statement
bago
So, falling asleep in a server room with the sounds of hundreds of fans creating a polyphonic cacophony is neat.
Ed Drone
The reliance on miracles reminds me of the guy caught in a flood. A row-boat came by, but he said, "No, my God will save me." Later, a power boat came by, in the rising water, but he said, again, "My God will rescue me!" and refused to get in the boat. Next came a helicopter as he clung to the rooftop of his house, but he refused rescue, awaiting the miracle from his God.
When he drowned and passed over to the Promised Land, he confronted God — "Where were you? I waited for your rescue, but I drowned!"
God answered, "What did you want? I sent two boats and a chopper!"
Ed
les
@Wile E. Quixote:
OK, that’s a fucking winner.
Gus
Actually those missile systems have been proven not to work.
Krista
Oh for the love of fuck, are we arguing semantics again?
Some people are going to use the term "miraculous" without giving it any underlying religious meaning. And some use the term "miraculous" while fully imbuing it with its original theological definition.
And yes, there are those of us (including myself) who bristle when some mythical deity is fully credited with the results of man’s hard work, ingenuity and luck. Not everybody who uses the term "miracle" is doing that, however. And by assuming that they are, it just makes us look like fussy jerks.
So, deal with it. Stick with "phenomenal" or "incredible" or "what the flying fuck are the odds of THAT happening again?" for your own usage, and let other people use "miracle" if they want to. Life’s too short for this kind of silliness.
Wile E. Quixote
@Paul L.
Ok, here’s my challenge for everyone who thinks that the missile defense system works. We take all of you guys, everyone in Congress who voted for it and the contractors who built it and put you in a pen out in the middle of nowhere, or, as the Germans would say am Arschderwelt. We will call this location "Camp Ground Zero". Then we fire a bunch of missiles at Camp Ground Zero and see if the missile defense system can intercept them. And when I say missiles I don’t mean some candy-assed PoS Scud derivative like the ones possessed by that sawed-off little retard Kim Jong Il. I mean that’s weak, being able to knock down a Scud isn’t anything to brag about. Hell, that’s like being able to beat Charles Krauthammer in a foot race, or being able to beat George W. Bush at Scrabble. No, for a real test we need to use real, honest to God made in the U.S.A missiles and fortunately we have a bunch of them in the form of the Trident C-4.
The C-4s, which are pretty freakin’ awesome, are currently being phased out and replaced with the the even more freakin’ aweome Trident D-5. It would be fairly easy to take a boatload of C-4s, remove the reentry bodies and replace them with inert reentry bodies and then send the boat out to hide in the Pacific. Then we start firing the missiles at Camp Ground Zero and see how well the system works.
The way I see it this is a win-win situation. Hell, it’s chock full o’win. It’s wintastic. It’s winneriffic. It’s das Ueberwin! We have to get rid of the C-4s anyways and at the moment these impressive machines end up being destroyed, their nozzles crushed in a car compactor and the propellant is burned. If you’re a bubblehead on a boomer or one of the guys at LMSC who builds these this has got to be kind of depressing. I mean nobody I know in the submarine service or at LMSC wants to ever have to launch those missiles but on the other hand these guys do go through a lot of training and have worked pretty hard to make sure that these missiles will perform as advertised. Under my proposal we could, in one fell swoop get rid of the C-4 missiles, thus ensuring our compliance with the START treaties, boost the morale of naval personnel and LMSC engineers, provide an excellent training opportunity for the submarine force, test our missile defense system and allow those such as Paul L. who have endured years of mockery, prove their support for the missile system by standing at Camp Ground Zero, secure in the confidence that Ronald Reagan’s dream has been realized.
Any true patriot who really believes in missile defense would happily go to Camp Ground Zero, secure in the knowledge that the missile defense system they championed would protect them. Anyone who wasn’t willing to go to Camp Ground Zero is obviously a terrorist lover who hates America and wants to move to France and have gay sex with Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud "Fuck you. I do not look like Bob Denver" Ahmadinejad.
So what’s it going to be Paul? Are you going to be a man and a patriot and go to Camp Ground Zero? Or are you just going to get nekkid, grease yourself up, get down on your hands and knees and be the meat in that hot, sweaty, Chavez/Ahmadinejad sandwich?
Trollhattan
Am I supposed to mock Michael J. Fox here? I’m pretty sure somebody is supposed to (reading my talking point card set).
Anyhoo, good first coupla days in office, I’d say. It’s as though…somebody invited a whole bunch of adults to run the show and they actually did. Damn.