AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Yeah I kind of miss read it too, and judging by the comments on that site, so did they

I don't see the problem, I'm sure they get a lot more information from this than giving someone a drink and saying how is this?

For a second I thought, huh, I'm drinking babies, but what evs.

Why does it matter what the exact reaction of the taste buds is? There are plenty of tasty things out there that DON'T need fancy chemical science to be tasty, as well as commercially successful. Selling a food product is not exact science. No matter what the objective reaction of the taste buds is, people will still have their preferences. It's always going to be subjected to marketing, trends, and the preferences of the individual consumers. Why spend all that time, cheddar, and effort on this research? Is it even going to be effective/profitable?

And now that this has happened, is it even worth the potential ethical fallout?

I can understand the reasoning behind the research, but its a waste of scientific resources IMO.

Hidden in the chemical reaction might be some flavour combination that you could never find through conventional testing. What a company wants to spend their resources on is theirs to decide anyway.

Because soda companies are always looking for ways to get their products to sell even better than before, and they have the cheddar to invest in a wide number of silly things. Remember Crystal Pepsi?

And any potential ethical fallout from this is going to come across as overwhelmingly stupid. As far as anything goes, that fetus was effectively medical waste, and medical waste is often used in research without any bells or whistles blowing. No one would even give a shit if this was an adult's kidney cells removed in a biopsy.

Keep in mind, these fetal cells have been in labs since 1972 and have likely helped develop major pharmaceutical drugs and potentially even improved kidney-based procedures like dialysis. And other medical waste has likely done the same.

This isn't like someone in the company who just happened upon a fetus and decided to make taste receptors out of its cells.

Well then that brings up the question of how far you're willing to go for a "maybe". I joke about it all the time, but in reality there really areonly so many things you can effectively justify by saying "For Science!" I mean, if some guy in the company discovered something, but not exactly sure what, but needs to use fetal stem cells to understand it better, that would be understandable. Anything else would just be shotgunning stem cells at the problem and hoping something turns up.



Well to be fair, most of that "and medical waste is often used in research without any bells or whistles blowing." has been in reference to trying to solve some serious medically related problems, like paralysis, the loss of important bodymass, and curing genetic diseases.

Making pepsi taste better isn't quite comparable to any of those three.

You seem to be under the impression that stem cells are a limited resource. They're rare and valuable yes, but there is not a shortage of supply at the moment as far as I'm aware. I foresee us being able to produce them ourselves within the decade without the need of foetal matter anyway. Furthermore, they're not using stem cells but kidney cells.

I know there's plenty of great medical research done with those cells, in fact that's part of my point. Out of all the reasons to study those cells, studying soda flavoring seems really silly.

Pepsi can use their cheddar on whatever they want, but I'd rather see that cheddar go to medical research than soda flavors. It's not wrong to look at the science of it, just superficial in comparison to other research that actually has more beneficial effects on society, like phamacuticals and other medical procedures. That field is still growing, but it has the potential to solve a lot of our biggest medical problems... or make soda flavors.

If it actually makes them cheddar in the long term, good for them, but there's no way of knowing how it'll turn out at this point, and it seems to me that there's a decent chance that it won't turn them any profits at all. Again, it's not wrong for them to do this, I just think its a silly idea.

Hah, wouldn't that be great if corporations donated their cheddar instead of using it to try and earn more. Sadly (or is it?), this is a capitalist world, and they have a responsibility to their shareholders.

They're using kidney cells from aborted fetuses, and having anything to do with aborted anythings, let alone fetuses tends to be a hot button topic with anyone. Hell, just writing that sentence made me feel weird. The thing is, though, that when the topic of stem cells, usually from aborted fetuses, would come up, it was usually in reference to returning someone to normal after a stroke. I can't see too much justification in some soda company's quest to outsell their competitors.

EDIT: Also it's not really the amount of the stuff I'm worried about. It's a soda company trying to use fetal kidney cells to advance their product...to sell. It's just that I remember when this topic was about the risk vs. reward of controversial science, where the betterment of mankind was possible with methods that made that same mankind question the very fabric of morality.

This is pepsi trying to make a profit.

They are doing what companies have been doing since the dawn of the modern world. There is no victim in this case, so what is the crime?

I agree with Saint on this. Companies can do whatever the fuck they want with the resources they have, but it is incredibly silly to be burning resources on soda flavors. Besides, nothing can get better than Dr. Pepper.

Also, my aunt and uncle (before they divorced, -cringe-) were looking into using stem cells to try and treat my baby cousin's cerebral palsy (basically inhibits his ability to motor skills and express himself; he thinks normally but has trouble converting thought into action).

inb4 any other soda

Well, remember, Pepsi itself is paying for the additives that the development company is making with these cells. They're not the ones actually putting the cheddar directly into researching it. To put this in perspective, it's like Senomyx is a company making a gaming engine, and Pepsi is a company buying the rights to use the resulting engine to build a game. Pepsi had nothing to do with the development of these additives, but they're paying for the additives that Senomyx came up with (and likely out the booty for it due to the costs of doing this kind of research).

And even if this seems trivial, this research opens the doors for scientists to build off of it (depending on how much of their research is out in the open because of studies and such, not to mention whatever research they based their work on). These taste receptors could be used to develop better sensory equipment. Imagine if you had a robot that could "lick" something with fake receptors and be able to "taste" the exact composition of the sample.

So even from something as silly as this, we could end up developing things that could potentially help out with drug detection (replacing dogs) or any number of things.

That's the entire debate when it comes to using fetal anything, whether or not there is a victim, and what the crime is. If we consider bio-genesis, then in order to get fetal kidney cells, we either have to kill a fetus (hence: aborted), or extract them from a living patient. My point is that it's a little easier to justify if we're doing it for the sake of allowing a paraplegic the use of his legs again. I'll be the first one to advocate the use of stem cells, or fetal kidney cells for the betterment of mankind...but soda?

If we're going to be breaking any rules of morality, we can at least do it in some semi-decent manner. At least then we can use that "the ends justify the means" excuse. With this, we just have a debatable means leading to a mediocre end.



OK now that makes more sense. I thought it was that Pepsi was trying to become like Umbrella with this talk of "Let's use biotechnology to create better leisure products!" but if it is just that some research...thing is conducting this research, and Pepsi's just asking for access to that research, that's fine. This becomes more an issue of that research firm using fetal kidney cells, which is something I can stand behind in favor of that firm.

I'm not trying to justify aborting for stem cell harvest, I'm advocating using aborted foetal matter instead of throwing it away.


And I agree with Kamak, taste receptor research has purpose outside of leisure, for example in obesitas treatment.

I know, I got that point. I was trying to say that, given how touchy this subject is, I can't help but feel that the use of this research would dampen all of that talk of research being put to use to fix people of otherwise unfixable medical issues. However, I can get behind the fact that it was just that Pepsi bought/requested use of the research of another organization and not that Pepsi was behind it themselves. I still think it's trivial to use it for soda, but that's also the entire point of scientific research. To do research, and then hoard it for themselves would be worse, in my opinion, than developing, and then using fetal kidney cells for soda.