Posted on 12/23/2002 1:21:54 PM PST by Incorrigible
The irony of that last line got me too. Ha!
I would have no problem leaving a hater like this to run blind through the streets.
Slippery sloap arguements are usually lame.
Using remains in medical procedures is a settled issue in my book. The only thing else to do with them is dispose of them.
Adults who donate organs generally don't die in the process. If the donor is an accident victim or victim of a brutal murder as suggested above, then yes, organs like hearts and livers can be taken for the good of those that need them.
The problem is that these embryos, ex-utero, exist in an unnatural state as it is. Again, it boils down to when life starts, conception or at birth. As an engineer married to a chemist, I have arrived at the conclusion that life starts at conception through scientific deduction, not because the Pope or a 2 thousand year old story book told me so. In fact, Nat Hentoff, noted atheist and principled lefty, came to the same conclusion.
Stem cells can be gathered from placentas, a process I find much more palatable since it's like giving life with a multiple applied.
Dan
They already are humans.
They sure can. Why aren't they using them? No money in it?
Soon, scientist will seek embryos with specific DNA characteristics. People who meet those characteristics will be recruited to go through the in-vitro process not because they seek a child themselves (though there's lots of room to explore this aspect especially among childless women in their 40's) but because there is a scientific need. This is not really far down the slope at all and yet, already smacks of eugenics.
Most people had no problem with eugenics before WWII. I have a feeling we're starting to forget...
They are never going to be born. Period. Thus, there is no claim to humanity, not even a tenuous one.
To not use the remains is also immoral (IMHO).
BTW as it would take extrodinary means to implant an in-vitro embryo, it is generally regarded as ethical to withhold the care (e.g. you can't withhold food or water but you can turn off ventilators). Creating embryos is another question. I think if the intent is to have a child it is ethical. Leftover embryos are a thorny issue. Stem cell lines are not even a question (they are working the problem but they generally grow in vitro).
Laws are made by men, and say anything they want to say. They can say that humans whose skins are black are subhuman, and fit only for slavery ... and have. They can say that humans of Jewish extraction are subhuman, and fit only for slave labor, followed by gassing ... and have.
And they can say that it's peachy to conceive a human embryo and kill it for spare parts.
All the laws in the world can't make something that is wrong into something that is right. Until we recognize that, we are only going to find ourselves in more and more serious trouble, as a nation, and as a culture.
". They can say that humans whose skins are black are subhuman, and fit only for slavery ."
We'll leave aside the obvious straw man here, and just say that those laws WERE changed; as their injustice was obvious to all, save a few. No such injustice exists here, in the minds of a vast majority.
"They can say that humans of Jewish extraction are subhuman, and fit only for slave labor, followed by gassing ... and have."
Ahh, the tired-but-expected "Nazi" reference, without which NO thread, on ANY topic, would be complete. It is so worn now as to be useless, but in any case, that was Germany, not the U.S., and to compare the Holocaust to a search for remedies to disease, using embryonic cells (as opposed to humans) is worlds apart.
"And they can say that it's peachy to conceive a human embryo and kill it for spare parts."
Nice hyperbole, but the issue is quite a bit more complex than this slogan. It is less emotional, too. First, there is no chance of the embryo being born, or becoming human. None. Thus, it is not being "killed", "murdered", or any OTHER loaded word. Second, the concept is quite "peachy" to those whose lives would be lengthened or improved by the knowledge gained. Just who decides the priority here?
"All the laws in the world can't make something that is wrong into something that is right. Until we recognize that, we are only going to find ourselves in more and more serious trouble, as a nation, and as a culture"
As the title says, spare me the sermon. I do not and will not believe this is the threat you paint it as.
You don't, so you'll not be convinced. Some of us who do, see a grave danger of the harvesting of embryos (read: human beings) for experimentation.
You either believe it, or you don't.
If you don't, there's a gap we'll never be able to bridge.
Proven? I don't think so, but that is why reserach, on adult and embryo, should go forward...to find out.
They are already human or did that uncomfortable thought slip your mind!
Wishful thinking on your part. Makes for guiltless reasoning doesn't it?
What magical crystal ball has given you insight into the future? And what is exactly a complete set of DNA to be defined as? The "preborn" human parts? The homo sapiens widgets to be harvested for parts? Well, I guess America ingenuity came up with the assembly line - why is anyone surprised that there are those who find this human parts harvesting so "normal".
Cogburn, has it occurred to you yet that the usual higher mammalian studies to test these theories regarding embryonic stem cells has not been done? Has it yet occurred to you to ask why? Why would these research funds seeking scientist by-pass established procedures to leap directly onto human embryonic stem cells? Some, like long cut would argue that it's to bring the fastest cures to the populace, but that would be wrong, as the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory procedures in that healthcare industry prove so readily. It occurs to me that the sensationalism of the experimentation lends itself well to demands from the populace for procedures not yet establish, not proven to work, and speciously presented as miracle cures just over the horizon. When scientists want to experiement on human life, individual human life, they have to find some way to circumvent the taboos of the society. As long cut so clearly shows, the general populace will gladly ignore societal taboos if it has a personal gain to be made.
Human embryos are individual human lives, and merely one of the stages in a lifetime already begun that would run for decades barring unnatural interruption or unnatural manipulation. Embryonic stem cells are the body parts of an individual human life at the embryonic stage. exploiting for health and profit the body parts of individual humans is wrong on the face of it ... and long cut's defense of embryonic stem cell harvesting (by killing the individual life wherever it is found to be alive) by appealing to specious arguments regarding fetuses (as if fetuses have some ambiguity because they are not yet born and thus not constitutionally protected), citing vague 'need outweighs the individual right to life' only shows how well this heinous lie regarding these individual human embryonic lives has resonated.
To conceive many embryos and then use what one needs to get a woman pregnant, but store the rest as useless excess that is now suddenly found to be of research value hides the wrongness of experiementation on/with individual human life. Sadly, the arbitrariness of this exploitation of individual human life for the good of the many appears to escape too many and thus lends false 'rightness' to the exercise. Every individual human alive today had as one stage in their lifetime begun at conception the embryonic stage that these 'sientists' now clamor to exploit.
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