“There are virtually no legal prohibitions on many radical areas of biotechnology. There are no limits on human cloning, no limits on fetal farming, no limits on the creation of man-animal hybrids, and no limits on the creation of human embryos solely for research and destruction. It is in this rather permissive moral and legal climate that Frist seeks to remove one of the few public boundaries that still exist.”
There you have it.
What did Senator Frist think this human embryo controversy was: the equivalent of a Highway Appropriation Bill, where he could work the ol' compromise magic and have it all come out quite satisfactory in the end?
Here's the issue: is it OK to do life-destroying procedures on non-consenting human experimental subjects? Yes or no?
This sort of question does not accommodate compromise. You might as well be choosing between Josef Mengele and Mother Teresa.
We’re not talking here about goods and services, commodities, “things.” We’re talking about the value of human life. The difference between one option and the other is not like $24.5 million vs. $66.2 million. It’s the difference between zero and infinity.
It seems to me that this is getting worse, not better. Now they have found out that embryonic stem cells do not keep reproducing indefinately but degrade in five generations. They say, therefore, that they need more. Well, they are going to need millions to treat all those diseased people they keep promising. Where are they going to get those millions of blastocysts; from whose eggs?
An outstanding and supremely eloquent post. Nice work.