Posted on 03/14/2009 8:50:50 AM PDT by foutsc
Embryonic Stem Cells: The science is not settled and neither are the ethical questions Both sides of the stem cell debate have brought up valid arguments, but the President is seemingly uninterested in them. In a dramatic rhetorical flourish, he has imperiously declared that he is throwing back the curtain on President Bush's scientific dark ages. Good politics, but bad for our humanity. While our still-Christian society in the US grapples with concepts like euthanasia and abortion, the President blithely brushes these issues aside. His attorney general wants us to stop being cowardly and to start talking about race, but this administration runs and hides from deep moral questions concerning life, how we view it, and what that says about us a a society. Who's the coward now? Let's put aside the ontological and meta-ethical questions, which we obviously won't settle here. The intellectual argument over what constitutes life, and if and when it may be taken, will always exist. Let's also put aside the inflated hope of embryonic stem cell research. This article from the NY Times deflates the hype and conjecture about saving Christopher Reeve and curing President Reagan's Alzheimers. Sadly, it also faces the reality that hundreds of thousand of chronically sick in this country will not get the miracle cures that some non-scientist political types have so recklessly promised them.
Where do we draw the line, and what does that say about us as a society?“People need a fairy tale,” Ronald D. G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explained to The Washington Post in 2004.
Recently, Nicholas Wade in the Science section of The New York Times summed this all up: “Members of Congress and advocates for fighting diseases have long spoken of human embryonic stem cell research as if it were a sure avenue to quick cures for intractable afflictions. Scientists have not publicly objected to such high-flown hopes, which have helped fuel new sources of grant money like the $3 billion initiative in California for stem cell research.”“In private, however,” the article continued, “many researchers have projected much more modest goals for embryonic stem cells.”
Science, like fire, a knife or a piano, is morally neutral. It is a wonderful tool in mankind's hands. How we use it says much about us as a society.
Charles Krauthammer, doctor, lawyer, and a conservative agnostic paraplegic who supports embryonic stem cell research, has written a good criticism of this administration's approach.
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn.Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
President Obama has provided no moral, philosophical or logical framework for his decision other than the pharaohnic "So let it be written, so let it be done!" Compared to President Bush's detailed analysis and explanation of this issue, the Obama administration looks downright anti-intellectual. This is what Krauthammer critiques in his article. Please take a few moments to read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/us/14beliefs.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=all http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031303058.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/using_embryoswithout_limit.html
His handlers give him their ideas, to further their socialist goals.
He is merely a puppet, strings and teleprompters controlled by a cabal of rich, evil liberal, power hungry cretins.
I will only say this about 'embryonic' stem cell research: Proponents of it ascribe an almost mythical or supernatural ability of 'embryonic' stem cells having the POTENTIAL to cure all medical ills. It is ironic that their counter-argument about the morality of harvesting these cells (at the cost of a POTENTIAL life) is basically that these cells are nothing more than hang nails (using Krauthammer's words). It is a very curious juxtaposition of beliefs.
The results could be scary.
Obama, the baby killer.
Obama doesn’t like to think deeply.
Krauthammer said he doesn't believe a stem cell is like a hangnail. He doesn't defend Obama or stem cell research, he attacks Obama for apparently putting no thought into this decision.
I am adamantly opposed to Obama's decision on moral grounds, and I also mention the dubious claims of the embryonic stem cell crowd, but that is not the point of this article. It is to attack Obama's complete logical incoherence on the issue.
I hate the thought of embryonic stem cell research. The facts are that the most promising use of stem cells come from adult stem cells.
Obama made a huge showing of overturning GWB’s ban but folks either he is a total idiot or he is totally pulling the wool over the people’s eyes with the help of the media.
On Monday he publically reverses the ban and on Wed. sign’s a law banning it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2205575/posts
This goes against stereotype, so nobody left of Krauthammer will point this out
I thought we were on the verge of developing SYNTHETIC stem cells that could be used in research...
I thought we were on the verge of developing SYNTHETIC stem cells that could be used in research...
Embryonic stem cell research and global warming are two examples of junk science. If they are so worthwhile, why isn’t there more funding from the private sector?
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