DUELING STEM CELLS (Excellent!)

Yahoo! ^ | Thu Jun 30, 5:41 PM ET | Maggie Gallagher

[InShanghai]

DUELING STEM CELLS

By Maggie Gallagher
Thu Jun 30, 5:41 PM ET

Gov. Mario Cuomo has just announced the solution to the vexing moral questions raised by the stem cell debate about when human life begins: Convene an expert panel.

"If indeed such a panel confirms that ... science cannot supply the proof that human life starts at conception, then ... the president would be wrong to deny the rest of America that does not share his faith the vast potential benefits of embryonic stem cells," wrote Cuomo in a New York Times op-ed.

Sigh

There's something dismayingly Catholic, in a decadent way, and political, in an obvious way, about Cuomo's suggestion. Replace the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church with the infallible magisterium of a group of people with Ph.D.s? Mario, Mario, a panel of scientists couldn't prove that you have a right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness either. The question of why human rights exist, and who therefore has them, is not a scientific question. Fobbing off core questions like this onto a panel of scientists is merely an attempt to evade moral and intellectual responsibility for one of life's most basic questions: Where does our shared American belief in equality and human rights come from?

With all due respect, Gov. Cuomo, I believe scientists are human beings, not gods. They cannot be exempted from questions of right and wrong, and should not be placed in the unscientific position of corporately issuing dicta, dogma or fatwa about right and wrong that the rest of us are somehow obliged to accept as gospel.

When scientists are placed above the moral law by society, then like other human beings, they sometimes do amazingly evil things. Scientists who believed scientific knowledge was above morality reduced black men to guinea pigs in Tuskegee. Scientists in Nazi Germany committed unspeakable atrocities in the name of scientific progress.

Let's get this straight: I'm in favor of stem cell research. What I'm against is turning human beings into research objects that are "harvested" without their consent in the name of scientific progress. I'm greatly in favor of stem cells. I'm against cloning and killing in order to get them. I'm pro-scientific progress. I'm against creating an industry based on the destruction of human life. I don't want to eat my own offspring to find the fountain of youth -- or anyone else's children either.

Nor do I believe it is necessary. I believe that if you cut off immoral and destructive paths, new scientific vistas will open up, and more quickly than skeptics can imagine.

Indeed, it's already here. Professor Markus Grompe, a geneticist, and Professor Robert George, a Princeton political scientist who is on President Bush's council on bioethics, announced in this week's Wall Street Journal that scientists have discovered several new ways to get embryonic stem cells that do not require the creation or destruction of human life. For example, Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (OAR) can take the nucleus from your skin cell, insert it into an egg cell, and with a flick of a genetic switch, make a factory for producing embryonic stem cells. Not only would this protect us from becoming consumers of unborn children, but "their genetic constitution would be virtually identical to that of the donor, thus helping to overcome the problem of immune rejection."

Scientists didn't stumble upon this method by accident, but by conscientiously seeking a method of obtaining needed stem cells that would not require the killing of any human life.

Some people want a new political wedge issue. They want to convince you that endorsing cloning and killing of innocent human life is the gateway to paradise, to most likely a cure for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and a host of other cruel diseases.

Ah, but the devil is a liar and the father of all lies. I believe that truth, goodness and scientific progress all lie in the same direction. I believe that human beings, made in the image of God, have the creativity to find better solutions to human problems than those that require killing human life. I believe that, if we seek it, science can unlock human wonders that draw us together rather than divide and conquer our humanity.

What a miracle to find its already happening.

(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at MaggieBox2004@yahoo.com.)

[InShanghai]

I wish the MSM would take this stance towards Stem Cell Research...

[Wonder Warthog]

""If indeed such a panel confirms that ... science cannot supply the proof that human life starts at conception, then ... the president would be wrong to deny the rest of America that does not share his faith the vast potential benefits of embryonic stem cells," wrote Cuomo in a New York Times op-ed."

Cuomo is an idiot (no surprise, eh! he "is" a liberal Democrat, after all). Science definitively and conclusively proves that human life starts nowhere OTHER than conception. The union of egg and sperm is the unique trigger that begins the complex dance of biochemistry that ends twenty-five years later in a physically unique human being (unless, of course, there are identical siblings involved).

[neverdem]

bump & some pings

[Lord Basil]

"If indeed such a panel confirms that ... science cannot supply the proof that human life starts at conception, then ... the president would be wrong to deny the rest of America that does not share his faith the vast potential benefits of embryonic stem cells," wrote Cuomo in a New York Times op-ed.

Uh, Mr. Cuomo, the panel should seek to prove that human life does NOT start at conception. Why? Those who seek the destruction of the embryos have the burden of proving no harm.

[Carry_Okie]

Beautifully written, thank you.

[hocndoc]

This is a very good response to Cuomo.

I had not read about Professor George's advocacy for OAR. And I had forgotten the distinction between the different types of non-embryonic, but sorta-embryonic, stem cells such as this one and those advocated by Dr. Hurlbut.

Like Dr. Hurlbut's proposed, genetically altered artifacts, OAR appears to be the production of stem cells that skips the totipotent embryonic stage - they never are a complete entity, organized and with the nature that can develop into an independent organism. Neither would ever make a placenta, for example. Hurlbut's would be similar to a teratoma, OAR would be similar to a less-organized cancerous tumor. Both need to be tried in animal models before human donors are used.

[SuziQ]

"If indeed such a panel confirms that ... science cannot supply the proof that human life starts at conception, then ... the president would be wrong to deny the rest of America that does not share his faith the vast potential benefits of embryonic stem cells," wrote Cuomo in a New York Times op-ed.

Mario is such a maroon!

[Tax-chick]

bttt

[Mr. Silverback]

ProLife Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[Question_Assumptions]

Asking when human life begins is a trick question, at best, and, at worst, simply depends on what you mean by "human life". There is no point in the lifecycle of a human being, from the original gametes of each parent through dying of old age, where they are not distinctly human and alive in the scientific sense of "human" and "life". There is no point at which life spings from lifeless matter.

[NYer]

Another excellent Maggie Gallagher column. Thanks for posting it!

(former) Governor Mario Cuomo is another CINO who does not want to inflict his religion on the political process. Like John Kerry and all the other political CINOs, he doesn't recognize that his power came from God. In rejecting that understanding, he has entered the moral wasteland.

Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[visualops]

I fail to see the purpose of the continued emphasis on embryonic stem cell research since adult and umbilical stem cell work has been shown to be far more productive. I can only conclude it is a continued effort to insert "good" into the death of babies and to promote the notion that the end justifies the means, no matter how barbaric and evil the means.

[lainde]

bttt