Posted on 04/24/2003 3:40:42 PM PDT by MHGinTN
Viewing the piece, if one had little or no abckground information to call upon as filter for the assertions made, one would be convinced that embryos are nothing more than potential human beings, to be exploited for miraculous cures of diseases and injuries. The researcher, Dr. Kessler, presented in the segment is doing the science of Embryology. He has chosen to abandon the truth of the founding axiom in Embryology, in favor of continuing his research and to now address his daughter's tragic physical condition due to a skiing accident. Though I have deep sympathy for Dr. Kessler and his daughter, I also must oppose his mischaracterizations and dissembling regarding embryonic individual life.
What Dr. Kessler is doing and advocates that our society should wholeheartedly embrace is, in reality, cannibalism. Why?... Because the very science he calls upon to underhird his methodology holds axiomatic that individual life begins at conception, that, in effect, every lifetime begins at conception and continues along an unbroken path (if that individual life remains alive) known as the continuum of that individual's life. Is Dr. Kessler evil, does he have evil intentions with his dissembling? I don't think so, and I certainly wouldn't characterize his deep love for his daughter as anything evil. But he is purposely ignoring the basic truths of his own chosen science in order to give his work greater utility, and that utility is very dehumanizing because it strips individual embryonic individuals of their right to life already begun, in order to cannibalize those embryos for older-than-embryonic individuals.
RJ, I know you're right, these techniques will be done on humans somewhere in the world. I just don't want my nation embracing cannibalism simply because someone like the French will gladly resort to cannibalism.
No, I'm trying to establish what the difference is. Suppose we can take a cell from XBob and grow a whole new XBob - don't XBob's cells then have exactly the same embryonic potential as parthenotes or fertilized eggs or whatever?
Oh, well, you ought to be okay with parthenogenesis then - no conception required.
Yes, I know - that's not quite what you had in mind ;)
For me, for the moment, I would put something like parthenogenesis on approximately the same level as culturing any other cell in the laboratory. Is it immoral to take a sample of my tissue and promote its replication in the lab? Surely not - there's no long-term viability for those cells, no way for them to do anything on their own once we stop artificially keeping them alive, not even potentially.
I don't see anything so far to cause me to think that promoting replication in an unfertilized egg - or sperm, since you can do it that way, too - is of some other moral plane than causing any other cell to replicate. Things change when the egg is fertilized - conception. I just don't see what pushing the definition of life beyond that point gets us, other than drawing an artificial line simply because we can - we've gone from life beginning at quickening, to life beginning at implantation, to life beginning at conception, and now we're going to push the start of life back so far that essentially we're saying that life is created the minute an unfertilized egg comes into existence, but I don't for the life of me see any moral or rational justification for such a definition. Call that what you will, but I'll require a bit more persuading on that point - and I hardly think I'm alone on this.
Yes, but....people have an amazing ability to spin some bad act into being done for some greater good. "It's wrong of me to destroy this report that Bob's been working on, but I really need that promotion, and Bob doesn't - I've got three kids to feed, and Bob's not even married" and so forth and so on. Never underestimate the ability of people to rationalize getting the things they want by any means necessary ;)
Some people have an ability to delude themselves into thinking that the wrong they are doing is not wrong.
Very true, but that only reinforces my original point, that people do bad things because they think some good is served thereby. Setting aside the truly mentally ill and deranged for a moment, ordinary average people are wonderfully adept at finding good reasons to do bad things. Doctor Mengele surely thought to himself that what he was doing was for the greater good of the German people. It's all a part of the human condition, I suspect - the seeds of evil lie buried within us all...
The seeds of evil may be in us, but, if there is such a thing as free will, we needn't choose to act out every immoral idea that crosses our minds. And the bigger immoral patterns of behavior usually take time to develop, like any habits take time to develop.
Mankind can opt out of doing evil, and I think proof of that can be seen in the biographies of those who have reformed their lives. The former abortion providers, who now realize abortion is wrong, are a good example of that. They had thought some "good" came out of abortions, but then they began to understand that the "good" consequences of abortion were not "good" enough to outweigh the bad consequences.
Unless we deliberately close our eyes and ears, the everyday world around us presents us with countless examples of human behaviors and their consequences. The lessons about behavior may take some time to sink in, but they are harder to avoid than any lessons learned in school.
Let me reiterate, to be perfectly clear. The sex cells are most unusual in the human body because they are potentially capable of mitosis, differentiating toward tissues and organs that are much more than their appearance as a sperm or ovum. To purposely assert that a typical somatic cell from an organ is 'just the same as' a reproductive cell is dissembling (at least), especially if the poster knows enough to discuss parthenogenesis. To purposely mislead readers into believing a cell from a kidney or liver (other than a stem cell) could be stimulated into repoducing a replication of the whole organism rather than 'perhaps' a whole organ, is dishonest as well. Cloning extracts the DNA from a somatic cell, then inserts that nuclear material into an enucleated ovum, to achieve conception. The reason for that enucleation is directly related to the sex cell being vastly more capable of supporting and directing differentiation, as opposed to the cell of any other organ in the body which is already differentiated way down the line from organism, to specialized organ.
The following is purposeful dissembling of the truth, twisting the truth to support an agenda designed to persuade us to embrace cannibalism:
For me, for the moment, I would put something like parthenogenesis on approximately the same level as culturing any other cell in the laboratory. Is it immoral to take a sample of my tissue and promote its replication in the lab? This poster knows full well that the somatic cell, when stimulated to divide or replicate, can only replicate itself, not an entire organism, simply because the coding for an entire organism has been lost as the organism differentiated its very specialized organs and tissues. I think this poster doesn't deserve further courtesy since the agenda of the poster includes purposeful dishonesty. Surely not - there's no long-term viability for those cells, no way for them to do anything on their own once we stop artificially keeping them alive, not even potentially. That comment is correct, mainly because the typical somatic cell has no ability to differentiate anything but the self or the organ tissue where it arises. But you have tried to obfuscate that truth from the readers.
I don't see anything so far to cause me to think that promoting replication in an unfertilized egg - or sperm, since you can do it that way, too - is of some other moral plane than causing any other cell to replicate. You know the difference in the two classes of cells, based on their differentiation ability, yet you choose to characterize them as the same. That's too dishonest for my taste. I shall not entertain your dissembling further.
Doctor Mengele surely thought to himself that what he was doing was for the greater good of the German people.
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
Historian Robert Proctor has argued persuasively that the Nazi experiment was rooted in pre-1933 thinking about the essence of personhood, racial hygienics and survival economics and that physicians were instrumental both in pioneering research and in carrying out this program. In fact, Proctor is adamant that scientists and physicians were pioneers and not pawns in this process. By 1933, however, when political power was consolidated by National Socialists, resistance within the medical community was too late. Proctor notes, for example, that most of the fifteen-odd journals devoted to racial hygienics were established long before the rise of National Socialism.
Abiding Truth Ministries - Helping families protect themselves ... …While the neo-pagans were busy attacking from without, liberal theologians undermined Biblical authority from within the Christian church. The school of so-called "higher criticism," which began in Germany in the late 1800s, portrayed the miracles of God as myths; by implication making true believers (Jew and Christian alike) into fools. And since the Bible was no longer accepted as God's divine and inerrant guide, it could be ignored or reinterpreted. By the time the Nazis came to power, "Bible-believing" Christians, (the Confessing Church) were a small minority. As Grunberger asserts, Nazism itself was a "pseudo-religion" (ibid.:79) that competed, in a sense, with Christianity and Judaism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.