Posted on 12/23/2002 1:21:54 PM PST by Incorrigible
Stem cells: Give us the cures, spare us the sermon
Sunday, December 22, 2002
[Newark, NJ] -- Paul Byrne has been a political operative in Jersey City for 25 years. He is one of those guys for whom politics is both vocation and avocation. He knows everybody in Democratic politics, and everybody knows him.
Nine years ago, Byrne was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which has led to a retina condition called macular degeneration. At 57, and despite two operations on both eyes, he has lost 98 percent of his sight. But he keeps up with the news because four or five friends call and read him the newspapers.
Among the stories that came to him this way was a piece about a breakthrough in stem cell research in India that has led to the successful restoration of damaged retinas.
It left him furious. It is a fury directed at President George W. Bush, who is an opponent of embryonic stem cell research because the technique results in the destruction of embryos. Accordingly, Bush has ordered that federal funding be denied for this kind of research. And never mind that the embryos at issue are those left over from in-vitro procedures at pregnancy clinics and would be destroyed in any event.
So, freeze in perpetuity superfluous embryos created in a lab to induce birth, and you are doing the Lord's work. Destroy embryos after their stem cells are extracted in an attempt to cure people suffering from a dozen different diseases, and you are in league with Satan. Insert a recipient's DNA into a stem cell to reduce chances the body will reject it and you are paving the way for human cloning.
Last week the state Senate passed a bill that would make New Jersey the second state in the nation to legalize embryonic stem cell research. (NJ Senate Votes to Harvest Babies for body parts (My Title)) The bill is sponsored by Richard Codey, the Democratic leader in the Senate. It passed in a party-line vote with most Republicans abstaining. It passed over the objections of the Roman Catholic Church and various anti-abortion allies. The Codey legislation may be altered a tad but Gov. James E. McGreevey is a supporter and it is going to become law.
Not surprisingly, Paul Byrne is an enthusiastic supporter of the Codey bill. It may help him see again. He believes it's good science and good politics in a state chockablock in pharmaceutical research firms.
Of the opponents, he says, "They are the very people who believed in miracles, yet they would deny me my miracle." And they are hard at work.
Joan Quigley is a Democratic assemblywoman from Hudson County. She is being flooded with form letters informing her that the Codey bill "is not part of God's plan."
"I tell them that it's more important that God help those to whom he's already given life," Quigley says.
For years now, I've been reading about the promise of stem cells as a cure for a bunch of diseases. Parkinson's disease as often as not heads up the list. This interests me because I've had Parkinson's disease for about six years now. I'm not complaining. If you have to get a heretofore incurable, degenerative disease, this one is not the worst. Still, it hasn't been much fun and it's nice to know there's a potential cure out there.
So I could do without President Bush playing politics with my future by buying into the religious right's contention that it knows what God is thinking and God believes the destruction of embryos in course of research isn't much different than killing babies.
As for the Catholic Church, if the bishops want to take the position they know the mind of God on the question of embryonic research, so be it. But they might want to think about confining their efforts to people who still put stock in what they have to say. Their moralizing rings a little hollow these days.
Let God and me handle this. If the bishops don't mind, I'd like the opportunity to be treated if and when the researchers come up with the right technique.
And I'm willing to take my chances that God won't make me out to be a mass murderer.
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
"... well, guys like you, who have no basis for anything other than utilitarian morality"
What kind of guy AM I, that you know me so well?
"And, of course, Biblical laws do carry force in a somewhat larger Jursdiction"
Perhaps. But we're dealing with THIS one. And not everyone agrees with your interpretation. What of them? Do they have no rights?
Science and religion agree that unborn life is alive. Only feminazis disagree.
Even the Constitution attests that our rights are God-given and inalienable. You don't have to believe that, but you still have no right to take life regardless of what you believe.
The day will come when the unjust ruling allowing the murder of the innocent is regarded as just as barbarous and indefensible as the Dred Scot decision. Until then, those of us who refuse to relinquish our morality will continue to condemn the murder of the unborn and to fight against the baby-murder and body-parts industry.
Nope, just STATING it. It hasn't been repealed. Like I said, we don't HAVE to like it.
"Can I kill your two year old kid? He can't keep himself alive."
No, but I and Mr. Springfield can. And many OTHER humans and creatures ALSO defend their young, and many do not. That comes down to what species we're discussing.
I find those who abuse and kill children to be among humanity's lowest wastes of air. However, no matter how many we send, properly, to gallows or needle, they exist the world over.
Our only disagreement, it would seem, is exactly WHAT constitutes a life. If you would rely on religion (or feeling if you prefer), you have to allow that others may disagree, at least in a free society.
But don't you know? They speak for God.
That's hyperbole, too. As well as a strawman argument. Nowhere did I call for the extermination of the elderly OR children. I merely pointed out that it occurs with great regularity regardless of what anyone believes.
I did NOT say it was "right", but that doesn't matter. It IS.
Can you clarify? What's right, the law of the jungle?
Wow, heavy.
Our laws PLACED that descision in the hands of those Judges.
"Science and religion agree that unborn life is alive. Only feminazis disagree." What "science"? Is any of it NOT funded by religious groups? Scientists agree on very little that I've seen, when it comes to philosophical or religious questions. Oh, and it's a LOT more than the feminazis. The dykolas alone couldn't keep these things legal this long. Sorry to tell you, but you ARE in the minority on this. Feminazis only number in the hundreds of thousands, if that.
Sounds allot like a democracy..
You know, where 2 wolves and a sheep vote on what's for supper.
It is not a question of RIGHT or WRONG...it just IS. As far as WE go, we make our laws and standards as to what we LIKE or DON'T like about it. However, we cannot change it.
Those who claim that unborn life is not really alive are simply claiming a falsehood which allows them to feel justified in committing their crime.
From reading your post, I gather you believe life begins at the entrance of the sperm into the egg. Why, then, did the law handed down in the Old Testament punish someone differently for causing a woman to miscarry (lesser punishment) than for murdering the woman? If all "life" is the same, why the lesser punishment?
Life doesn't come from non-life and in order to use the stem cell we all know that they destroy the zygote (maybe blastocyst... not quite sure).
Bottom line is that folks are willing to throw others from the train of life as long as they can hang on for just a bit longer.
I (like anyone) wish we had a cure for every illness and don't want anyone to suffer.
But until we can eliminate death... well, let's face it...
I for one accept my humanity and I gotta admit, if I didn't know that I was forgiven of all my sins and believe with my heart that he will take me to heaven (because of Jesus' death which atoned for me)... then I'd be clinging to the bar just as hard and probably would be willing to throw others from the train too (just like the guy with macular degeneration).
If I didn't believe in Jesus and experience the peace that He provides daily (yes, He is real), then I too would be wrapped up in knots thinking about how short this life is. And how meaningless it all is.
Folks... ya think the one with the most toys wins? I gotta tell you otherwise. God sent his own son to this world to reveal himself to mankind and also to enable everyone to have a relationship with him. He solved our sin problem.
He paid a debt he did not owe, because I owed a debt I could not pay. Merry Christmas!
What if it is my daughters "eggs" that are someday deemed worthy of harvest?
What if it is yours? Will they have the right to decide whethor or not they wish to "donate"?
Organs are currently being purchased from desparate poverty stricken people in South America by wealthy people in need of a kidney transplant.In China, they are just taken.
Adult stem cells and discarded placenta provide all the tools for research needed at this point.We do not yet even have a morally or medically ethical distribution system for available donor organ transplants.
Ethics need not be tied to religion to be morally vallid.It is not required that ethics entirely ignore religion, or spirituality, to be vallid.
That some of the finest minds in the world struggle over the ethics of stem cell research, should send a few flags up to the general public, that ethics relating to potential and existing human life, the science of medicine, and what is actually possible and ethical, as opposed to what is theoretical and unexplored ethically,is not a yes/no vote, at this point.
It is not as if the "cure" is currently available,but denied the public by power or wealth seeking individuals or groups.Ethical research alternatives exist today, and there is no need to ignore those resources at this point in the research phase.
If this was true, why the debate? Are the people who want to proceed with the studies into embroyonic stem cells simply evil? Just mad scientists who revel in the destruction of embroyos for pure pleasure? Or, are they stupid?
I've got to believe the answer is no...
So then why the debate? Obviously there are things only the embroyonic stem cells offer...Or at least potentially offer.
I see people make this claim about plecenta stem cells all the time, but it seems obvious that it is nothing but an unproven "Fact"...At best.
They sure can. Why aren't they using them? No money in it?
So it is being done in the name of some kind of for-profit conspiracy?
Please...
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