Is the author’s argument valid or invalid, sound or unsound, strong or weak? Explain how you determined this.

Question

When a human embryo consists of not more than 64 cells, its cells are, like a young dog, able to learn new tricks. If injected into a diseased kidney, they take on many of the properties of ordinary kidney cells, and may help the kidney to perform its normal function. This seems to hold for any organ, even any kind of cell. .

Answer 1

This is, in essence, the basic theory involved in stem cell research.

Is it valid, sound, strong? If only we could conduct more federally funded research...

Alas, we cannot. Looks like scientists are going to have to haul themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Answer 2

A strange way to put it, comparing to teaching a dog new tricks, but what the author is talking about is stem cells.

Stem cells are the kinds of cells that can become any cell in any part of the body. At that point in an embryo, each of the cells is poised to become some part of a fetus, but isn't yet.

Answer 3

Invalid, unsound, weak. He is comparing embryonic cells to a young dog. Young dogs do not take on properties of kidney cells when injected into a diseased kidney.

Answer 4

it's a valid argument (in that the assumption is correct), but it is weak in that it doesn't explain how this occurs. it doesn't mention that stem cells are undifferentiated at this state. in other words, the author doesn't offer any facts to back up the argument.

Answer 5

Are you asking this re: philosophy and logic or biology?

In any case, the problem with your question is that statement is not an argument from a philosophical standpoint.