Posted on 10/20/2004 10:42:20 AM PDT by MisterRepublican
Michael J. Fox is a famous TV and movie star. He is witty. He is charming. A few years ago, we learned he has Parkinson's disease.
PD is a slowly progressive neurological disorder, characterized by tremors, shuffling gait, a masklike facial expression, "pill rolling" of the fingers, drooling, intolerance to heat, oily skin, emotional instability and defective judgment (although intelligence is rarely impaired).
PD is currently incurable, although there are several methods to slow its advancement, including drug therapy and surgery.
PD is tragic, particularly in Fox's case, because it rarely afflicts persons under 60 years old.
Yet everyone faces tragedy at one time or another, in one form or another. A person's moral fiber is revealed in tragedy.
So we learned through Fox's affliction that he has either extremely poor judgment or a diabolical character flaw. He supports human embryonic stem-cell experimentation, thus contending that some humans are subhuman and expendable for others' personal gain.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
There will always be gray area. Deal with it.
Children get diseases and need treatment. Until a treatment or medication has been tried on some of them, we'll never know if it works. Some conditions only exist in childhood (or even only in utero), since the conditions kill their victims at an early age, so the only opportunity to experiment with treatments is on children. Should we never try an experimental treatment on a child with a deadly condition, because the child is incapable of consent? Should good faith efforts to try to find a cure or improvement for a condition leave doctors and researchers subject to prison time and/or multi-million dollar liability judgements?
"Desire", in the common usage, is something that requires an ability to think. Now we can stretch the term, and say that when a plant grows in the direction of more sunlight, it is expressing a "desire" to live. And when bacteria convert available fuel into growing and dividing, they are expressing a "desire" to live and multiply. But when we start stretching the definition of desire beyond conscious thinking, my response is going to be "who cares what it desires?". The plant may desire to live and grow, but I desire to eat it, so I'm going to. There is an extreme form of vegetarianism which doesn't share my views on this -- the "fruitarians" will only eat plant parts such as fruit, which the plants dump and do not need to keep in order to stay alive. They believe it's unethical to ignore the plants' "desire" to live.
SD
I agree.
Some of these tests will be difficult and fraught with emotion.
This is one of those tests: Will we consent to destroying others, even small, unseen others, for what appears to be a very important reason, a potential chance to cure our illnesses?
What do you think the correct answer is?
Gee, the last time I heard a response like that, Clinton was in the White House, and I was conversing with one of his minions.
"Should we never try an experimental treatment on a child with a deadly condition, because the child is incapable of consent?"
It depends.
It depends on what the "experimental treatment" is.
This thread is a thread about the use of embryonioc stem cells as a means of conducting research into possible new cures for diseases such as Parkinsons.
In order to harvest embryonic stem cells, human embryos must be killed.
I would never support research that involved the intentional destruction of human life in order for it to be conducted.
You, on the other hand, seem to support exactly that.
You have said, for instance, that parents of born human children who are "profoundly retarded" should have the legal right to allow those children to be killed in the name of medical research.
I find that barbaric.
I note that your screenname has to do with shrinking Government. I am all in favor of shrinking Government, too.
However, along with the signers of the Declaration of Independence, I believe that all humans are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, among them Life. And that Governments are institutted among men to secure those rights.
I would hate to see the day when Government failed to protect Life -- mine, yours, or even the profoundly retarded.
Please let me know if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
BTW Freeper MHGinTN has been using the term cannibal in this context for well over a year--and rightly so.
Oh stop it. Cannibalism. You're an idiot.
What a change. In Family Ties he played a right-winger!!
You said:
Just because the Commies go overboard with something doesn't mean we will. Harvesting medically useful bits and pieces - be they cells or organs - from the dead, be they embryos or adults, is not inheirently bad, nor is there necessarily a "slippery slope."
It's how the "got dead" that counts. If they got dead by nature's arrangement, that's one thing; but if they got dead because they were killed for the purpose, that is murder. People want to think that an embryo isn't a baby, but what the hell else is it? An eggplant? A pebble? A dog's nose?
You said:
The question is not whether the fertilized egg is "alive," but whether it is legally and ethically "human."
That question is only difficult if someone doesn't think logically. If a fertilized egg is where nature wants it to be, there's only a matter of time before it is inarguably a human. It will never become an eggplant, a pebble, or a dog's nose. Or a nothing. Your body was once a fertilized egg, as were the bodies of everyone reading this thread.
It's just sophistry to say that a fertilized egg is anything but a tiny human being.
"So, it would seem there aren't any moral impediments for anyone who's pro life for IVF."
FALSE.
The Catholic Church condemns IVF absolutely.
http://priestsforlife.org/magisterium/donumvitae.htm
http://www.geocities.com/seapadre_1999/reproductive-technologies.html
> It's how the "got dead" that counts.
Indeed so. And none of these, so far as I know, got dead for the purposes of being harvested for stem cells. They were "got dead" through means that would exist whether the stem cell thing was around or not.
> If a fertilized egg is where nature wants it to be, there's only a matter of time before it is inarguably a human.
Nonsense. A great many fertilized eggs get just naturally flushed down the tubes, as it were. Just because an egg gets fertilized doesn't mean it's gonna take.
> It will never become an eggplant, a pebble, or a dog's nose.
Ah, but here's the thing: it just might become someone else's new neurological system or some such.
> Your body was once a fertilized egg, as were the bodies of everyone reading this thread.
My body was once an *unfertilized* egg, too.
Back To The Future is one of my favorite movies. I have the trilogy on DVD, and hope he doesn't say or do anything that ruins BTTF for me.
However, to be fair, I don't think that Fox is a ghoul all of a sudden because he supports embryonic stem cell research. He probably was always pro-choice (he is in showbiz, after all, and is Canadian to boot) and this is a natural extension of his long-time stances, although he had no opportunity or reason to express them.
I was never a big Christopher Reeve fan even before his tragic accident. I thought he was OK as Superman, and that while the first Superman was as lame as almost all comic-book movies are, the sequel -- Superman II -- was outstanding. Then, of course, the series "jumped the shark." Superman III -- with Richard Pryor doing his best Stepin Fetchit -- is one of the worst movies I have ever tried to watch. I didn't even bother with Superman IV once I knew it was about "Peace on Earth" complete with Superman flying off with a missile for purposes of destruction. So much for "The American Way." (It was involvement in the Yankee-Russkie business that ruined the Rocky series too.)
What annoyed me about Reeve was the way that he gleefully discussed his relationships with hot female celebs whenever he would go on a talk show. It was like he was daring someone to ask if he was ever serious about the women, and that he was mentioning them all the time to let people know he wasn't gay.
I would have more respect for Fox and would have had more for Reeve if they had admitted that they didn't really think that much about the problems of people such debilitating illnesses until they contracted them. IMHO, that certainly is true of famous former NFL player Nick Buonoconti, the father of Mark Buonoconti, who was America's most famous spinal-cord freak accident victim before Reeve fell off his horse. Before the college football-field injury that left his son paralyzed, Nick was a spokesman for a tobacco company that produced "smokeless tobacco." He was one of those guys who dissembled unconvincingly that there is no link between tobacco use and cancer. Then, when HIS flesh and blood was affected, he became a medical crusader.
Well, your body was once an unfertilized egg, but that's before it was alive. It got alive when the sperm kicked in. So in that sense, your body was once all the food you ate, too.
Here's another angle: Is the body so important to keep alive at all costs that we can cannibalize other bodies to keep it going?
There are other things more important that clinging to the body when the whole thing is falling apart. I accept, believe and am 100% convinced (and I'll add, have also experienced) that the real self is the soul, or atma, which is separately existing from the body. The body is essentially a vehicle, which the soul is currently using. When the body is no longer viable - through accident, old age or disease, the soul goes somewhere else. Where it goes is a whole 'nother topic.
But it is commonly accepted by those who agree on the existence of the soul, that what we do in this life affects or determines where the soul goes after he leaves the body. So to cling on to the body as though nothing were more important than that often leads to wrong decisions, and misuse of the body's purpose.
> Well, your body was once an unfertilized egg, but that's before it was alive. It got alive when the sperm kicked in.
ERRRR. Wrong. Both the egg and the sperm are quite alive. If the egg is dead when the sperm shows up... nothing happens. Maybe you're born undead, fangs and all....
> Is the body so important to keep alive at all costs that we can cannibalize other bodies to keep it going?
Situationally dependant. Some 23 year old decent person who needs kidneys... why not? Some 85 year old scumbag who needs a new heart? Ummm...
> The body is essentially a vehicle, which the soul is currently using.
Ah. This is, essentially, the hear of the matter. At what point does the "soul" enter the person? If it is at conception... what does that imply for identical twins? Because they start as a single fertilized egg, which happily divides normally for a while, till something happens and the gamete splits. Does the soul split in two? Or does a second soul show up? And if that's the case, how about those cases where the two separate embryos merge back together? Does one soul go away? Do the two souls merge into one?
Now, if'n you're planning on legislation based on this... it's up to you to *prove* when the soul entered.
For one --- don't fall for the embryonic stem-cells are the cure-all for every affliction known to man kind --- there is no reason to believe they can cure all neurological disease, all cancer, every other kind of disease ---- that's the big liberal lie. The question I have for you --- would it then be right to abort preborn babies or euthanise infants or young children to harvest their organs because others need replacements?
Dna probes or HLA typing would prove that it is.
That sure looks like the case --- all we need to do is classify human lives according to what we think their worthiness is --- a rich celebrity should be able to confiscate the beating heart of a lesser human. In many cases stem cell transplants wouldn't be sufficient --- we would need to let that human develop further so that an entire organ could be taken.
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