Posted on 01/11/2007 11:35:22 PM PST by RWR8189
WASHINGTON -- When President Bush announced in August 2001 his restrictive funding decision for federal embryonic stem cell research, he was widely attacked for an unwarranted intrusion of religion into scientific research. His solicitousness for a 200-cell organism -- the early embryo that Bush declared should not be destroyed to produce a harvest of stem cells -- was roundly denounced as reactionary and anti-scientific. And cruel to boot. It was preventing the cure for thousands of people with hopeless and terrible diseases, from diabetes to spinal cord injury. As John Edwards put it most starkly and egregiously in 2004: If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher Reeve will walk again.
This kind of stem cell advocacy did not just shamefully inflate its promise. It tended to misrepresent the basis for putting restrictions on embryonic research, insisting that it was nothing more than political enforcement of the religious fundamentalist belief that life begins at conception.
This has always been a tendentious characterization of the argument for restricting stem cell research that relies on the destruction of embryos. I have long supported legal abortion. And I don't believe that life -- meaning the attributes and protections of personhood -- begins at conception. Yet many secularly inclined people like me have great trepidation about the inherent dangers of wanton and unrestricted manipulation -- to the point of dismemberment -- of human embryos.
You don't need religion to tremble at the thought of unrestricted embryo research. You simply have to have a healthy respect for the human capacity for doing evil in pursuit of the good. Once we have taken the position of many stem cell advocates that embryos are discardable tissue with no more intrinsic value than a hangnail or an appendix, then all barriers are down. What is to prevent us from producing
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
bttt
Sheesh, even John Edwards didn't go that far.
(How's that for hyperbole?)
By the way, I believe Charles Krauthammer is wheelchair bound. Can anyone verify?
That's about the same as Spector's, LOL!
"It will have turned out that Bush's unpopular policy held the line, however arbitrary and temporary, against the wanton trampling of the human embryo just long enough for a morally neutral alternative to emerge. And it did force the country to at least ponder the moral cost of turning one potential human being into replacement parts for another. Who will be holding the line next time, when another Faustus promises medical nirvana if he is permitted to transgress just one moral boundary?"
He is wheelchair bound. Was paralyzed due to an accident in his freshman year at college.
"He is wheelchair bound. Was paralyzed due to an accident in his freshman year at college."
I understand that he's wheelchair bound because of MS.
No, Krauthammer was paralyzed in a diving accident. Here's a link to a bio on him.
http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-krauthammer
I, myself, have MS, and I bet you're thinking of Neil Cavuto...he has MS.
If you want to see a really interesting interview with Cavuto, go to www.faceofms.org and search alphabetically for his name. He recorded 3 short interview and his struggle with the disease and they are fascinating.
This debate may be a dead one soon, unless I am not understanding the article linked below:
Scientists Discover New, Readily Available Source of Stem Cells
He seems to understand that all needs to not warrent the means of obtaining them.
ping to myself at work
He speaks about his cancer in his interview at the facesofms.org site. He said that when he started having MS symptoms, he thought his cancer had returned. Also since his Mom had died of a brain tumor, he was worried it might be that, but instead, he was diagnosed with MS.
Given half a chance I'm sure he would have. Specter and Edwards are among the slimiest, sleaziest politicians yet spawned.
...however, I didn't know his position on abortion...
..and I stand amazed he can defend the right to life of stem cells, but not babies in the womb.
Seems a huge disconnect.
All the amniotic stem cell success in the world won't stop the cult of death mongers from trying to destroy unborn life wherever it may be.
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