Posted on 12/18/2003 12:03:02 PM PST by MHGinTN
Free Resource Offer regarding stem cells and cloning:
Much has been made in the media and on the Congressional Record of the so-called ‘promise’ of embryonic stem cells and cloning for therapeutic applications. Major media have reported this field of stories with a clear bias that dehumanizes the individual human embryo as ‘not yet a human being’ or ‘not yet human enough, not individuated enough at embryo age’. Ironically, ALL the experts started their individual human life as a single totipotent cell, called a zygote. Eliminate the zygotic age of the individual human life and the lifetime that is already started will be no more because it is from that first totipotent age of the individual that all stem cell cascades derive!
It is unsettling to realize that events and discoveries at this time in our nation’s history tend to separate We The People from the decision making processes, mainly because the average citizen hasn’t a clue just what ESCR and therapeutic cloning seek to do and with what these technologies deal. There are two bills developing in the United States Senate that address human cloning; one bill would ban all human cloning, while the other bill would ban human reproductive cloning yet make it legal to do human cloning for research purposes. But all human cloning is reproductive, at the start.
To understand the differences in cloning bills requires some basic understanding of the biological processes. The information is not so abstract that the average citizen cannot grasp it, if it’s presented in clear terms and facts are not hidden via technical flourishes.
Ask yourself, ‘If our Senators were debating whether to knowingly fund research into a doomsday bomb that if ignited would deplete all the oxygen on the planet, would We The People approve of that?’ Doubtful.
Human cloning holds dangerous potential for the human species—over time—yet average voting citizens have little or no idea what are the details of cloning, details of the different bills, and details of future impact upon our civilization. Why? … Because the facts have been kept in the abstract by scientists wanting to do the research and elected representatives in agreement with those scientists.
There is vast wealth to be gained by those who learn to harness the science, as long as the people do not object to the methodologies. But how can the people object if they don’t understand what it is that the scientists want to do? This author believes there are alternate means to these miracles of cell technology, means that do not cannibalize individual humans at their embryo age.
Gradual application of technologies not well understood by the voting populace leads down slippery slopes that arrive at horrific ends We The People would likely avoid, if we but understood the real destiny of the slippery slopes.
This nation need not take a slide along a new slippery slope that includes in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell harvesting, and foretells human cloning for body parts. But to avoid the slide, We The People must have basic facts with which to discuss the honest perils and with which to discern the half-truths and outright lies already sullying the national discussion.
Linked to this posting is a manuscript written for the lay reader, designed to explain embryonic stem cells, and cloning. We have tried to keep the words and concepts intelligible, using asides from experts, using word pictures that help to visualize that which is usually seen only through a microscope, and using simple interactive sketching exercises (many of the net sources cited have excellent illustrations the reader may access, also, such as http://www.accessexcellence.org/AB/GG/structure.html and also illustrations found at the Human Genome Project website of NIH).
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