Posted on 06/28/2004 5:16:15 PM PDT by truthandlife
Focus on the Family founder and chairman Dr. James C. Dobson has issued a bold challenge to the national news media, urging them to tell the American people the truth -- and not the politically correct party line -- when reporting on the growing controversy over embryonic stem-cell research.
In a Friday speech before scores of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Dobson called it a "scandal" that Americans are being allowed to believe that President Bush's policy restricting the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research is impeding progress on cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.
"Embryonic stem cells are not going to be the source of a cure for Alzheimer's," Dobson told the capacity crowd. "Are you aware that not one human being anywhere in the world is being treated with embryonic stem cells? There is not a single clinical trial going on anywhere in the world, because (embryonic) stem cells in laboratory animals ... create tumors. Nobody will use them."
By comparison, adult stem cells have shown great promise in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, Dobson explained.
And they do not require the destruction of embryonic human life, since they can be harvested from such sources as umbilical cord blood and bone marrow.
"This needs to be reported to the American people," Dobson said. "They don't know this -- especially when Ron Reagan is all over the place telling everybody that our government won't help fund a cure for Alzheimer's, which his wonderful father had."
Dobson amplified his call for accuracy and fairness today, challenging the media to live up to the principles it has long professed to be guided by.
"There's a plaque at the National Press Club building, just as you come off the elevators, that lays out the 'Journalist's Creed,' written about a hundred years ago by the founder of the University of Missouri's journalism school, " Dobson noted. "It says, in part, that 'the public journal is a public trust; that all connected to it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.'
Writing in the Weekly Standard, lawyer, ethicist and human life advocate Wesley J. Smith reported that "Researchers have apparently known for some time that embryonic stem cells will not be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's, because as two researchers told a Senate subcommittee in May, it is a ‘whole brain disease,’ rather than a cellular disorder (such as Parkinson's).
If you had read the threads between MGHinTn and me you would have noticed that we were discussing the ethics of stem cells not the science. Showing off your knowledge about stem cells is not pertinent to the discussion I was have with MG.
America doesn't seem to care that such exploitation is cannibalism, so perhaps they'll react to being lied to and disdained by not being given the facts on adult stem cells.
We were talking about the ethics of stem cell research not the science. Sometimes you have to read through the thread before you realize what bent the discussion is taking before you attack someone. I was being rhetorical when I asked him about Dobson's knowledge of the future. I am for stem cell research. I don't consider it cannibalism as he does.
see 23 and 24
What part of my argument is "no soup"? Or can't you be honest about the parallels vis-a-vis organ donation?
However, you may have used too many big words.
The short of it is that my BF challenged me on an assertion I made...that if Osama bin Ladan were hiding in a children's hospital, I could live with the collateral damage because it serves a 'greater good.' However, he asked me...if stem cell research holds the key to serving a 'greater good' of curing diseases, why am I against it?
I have not been able to come up with a good answer and it's killin' me. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Best Regards.
How do we condemn all research at such an early point? Isn't experimentation how you discover new applications?
The clinicians and scientists I know rightly call it political medicine.
So, you know the all doctors and scientists involved in the study of stem cell research?
You however are for a dangerous and ineffective treatment that the leaders in both Parkinsonian and Alzheimer treatment do not believe in.
I never said it was limited to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I am for research for any benefits. Why do you limit the discusion to those diseases?
Why would you embrace an immoral and dangerous treatment, taking resources away from promising cures in contradiction to the actual expert opinion? Is this your definition of ethics?
Limiting research and testing shows a selfishness of opinion. Is research funding so limited that you can't do both?
From MGHinTn: Perhaps James's approach is better ... I've been pounding on the Truth that the stem cells targeted (in ESC research) are the body parts of the fetus at his or her earliest age.
I don't see where he was restricting his condemnation of stem cell research to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. I sure sounds like he was condemning all stem cell research. Are you against all stem cell research? While it may not yet show results for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in advanced stages what about early treatment. If we followed your moral code we would have no stem cell research or experimentation. Why limit thinking on this issue?
It wasn't showing off knowledge, since all of the info was from a Google search at the time of posting - just the abundance of information available from a Google search.
The ethics are - or should be - inseparable from the science and should take precedence over any research and application. Do you want unethical scientists running around?
The fact of the necessity of destruction of one human's right not to be killed (or 400,000 humans' if all the frozen human embryos are used), for the hypothetical possibility of benefit to another person or persons is absolutely unethical. I don't know of any precedent for the approval of such research or application of research, do you?
It's okay. I have dictionary at hand.
There is a correlation between the use of blood products and donated organs from cadavers and the use of transplants from anencephalic living donors, embryos, fetuses and prisoners. In all cases, non-autologous tissue from one human is transfused or transplanted in another.
However, the difference is exactly one of *ethics.*
In the case of cadaver donors of organs, voluntary donation of paired organs, skin, bone marrow and blood products from living donors, the donation does not require discrimination between the inalienable human rights of life and liberty of one human being and another.
What is going to happen to the embryos? Will they stay frozen for eternity? I don't get it. What should happen to them?
I don't know of any precedent for the approval of such research or application of research, do you?
I think new precedents are set in medicine all the time. What about the first time an organ was used on someone else? What about the first time a vacine was used? Why can't todays doctors and scientists set precedent?
First of all, embryonic stem cell research shows no promise. So he is asking you to place a higher value on a mythical benefit than human life.
Secondly, what does he think would happen if fetal stem cells were found to be a cure for something? Whole factories would be set up to "manufacture" human embryos for harvesting stem cells. If abortion is wrong, it is wrong, and I would not be in favor of it even if it could stop aging.
I say this in all seriousness: I would willingly die before I would take an innocent life to save my own. I would never willingly accept any treatment that requires killing embryos.
Michael Kinsley and Christopher Reeve are ghouls who have publicly stated they are willing for any number of embryos to die if it will help them.
If you don't mind my jumping in:
The difference is in the intent as well as the action. It is only ethically permissable to kill humans when the ones to be killed are a direct threat - and an immediate threat - to the life of other human beings. Even then, we shouldn't use more force than necessary and we should make every effort to restrict our violence to the one who is a threat.
In the case of Osama, I'm not sure it would be ethical to blow up a building that is known to be a full, occupied children's hospital to kill him. The action of knowingly killing all those children in order to get one man who is technically no threat at that moment and who might be caught by other means and with less danger to others is not something we ever want to condone. Similarly, it is wrong to kill embryos who are no danger to anyone else because someone else might benefit from the products of their deaths.
On the other hand, if the building is believed to be empty except for Bin Ladin, it might be permissable to blow him up, and the building with it, as long as best efforts to protect others were taken. If he were holding the button for a nuclear launch that couldn't be stopped any other way, it would also be permissable to urgently act to blow him up along with the building and its other occupants, in order to save many lives.
I imagine that you believe that Bin Ladin is always an immediate and real threat to many lives as long as he is alive.
Dr Dobson reported favorably on stem cell research that did not require the deliberate destruction of human life.
"By comparison, adult stem cells have shown great promise in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, Dobson explained."
The precedent is the deliberate action to kill (the scientific literature uses the term "destroy") the embryonic human for the purpose of research and possible benefit of others. There is no approved precedent for these sorts of actions. The medical and scientific community for the most part, has rejected the findings and use of the results of Mengele's experiments and the Tuskegee experiments. It is currently illegal to use US Federal funds to act to destroy human embryos and the European Union and the Nuremberg Code have uniformly condemned any use of non-competent humans in experiments that have no hope of benefit for the research subjects. Parents may not ethically consent for their living children to be used in even harmless experiments if there is no hope for the individual child's health to be improved. None of these ethical codes and none of the laws of Western nations will allow for one human to be killed for the benefit of another.
If this line is crossed, there is no reason to condemn China for picking certain prisoners for use as organ donores or for picking specific people to become prisoners for the purpose of using them for organ donors.
It does not matter that the embryos are frozen, the fact that they are humans, and that they will not benefit - even without the inevitable, intentional loss of their lives.
The ones who caused them to be and then who caused them to be frozen should be held to the same standard as any other parent or guardian. At the very least, "First, do no harm." If nothing else, they should be maintained in the freezer until natural death.
My hypothetical condoning of the targeting of a children's hospital did include a terrorist figure who posed an immediate and grave threat...that the killing of innocents as an unintended consequence would be justifiable for serving the 'greater good.'
But my BF spun this around (devil that he is) to question me on how I could be against stem cell research if I could condone the sacrifice of innocents for the 'greater good' in matters of warfare.
When you say that the 'difference is in the intent'...isn't the intent of stem cell research, to the proponents, a noble cause?
No, his definition includes KILLING one human to use his or her body parts on another.
We have no idea what they could be used for until we try.
But scientists are learning what they CAN'T be used for and that, my friend, is the point.
An unborn fetus, whether through abortion or miscarriage provides those cells and I think we should use them.
First of all, there have been no restrictions on private funding of embryonic stem cell research, only federal funding. Yet private donors don't seem to be rushing to give their money away - why do you think that is? Hint - see above statement about what scientists are learning.
Secondly, think about this - how will we ever reduce the number of abortions in this country if the organizations providing them have the carrot of additional federal funding for collecting tissue in the name of scientific research?
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