Posted on 02/07/2003 8:06:11 AM PST by unspun
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
First of all, none of these Representatives or Senators knows the first thing about the issue, except that it is a political issue.
Second, they are using the issue as an opportunity for face time with the press.
Third, each politico is seeking higher office; they are all running for President or auditioning for a high-paying job in industry if they should get the boot from their current position.
Think about it, what is the difference in 'reproductive cloning' and therapeutic cloning?... About six more months of life support for an individual human life created through nuclear transfer. What does that mean?... Orrin Hatchling and his feinswein supporters have taken the godlike power to determine which cloned individual will be granted the right to continued life, not based on some difference in the clones (there is none), just based on the different applied value granted to the goals of the cloning. Hatch either doesn't understand the truth regarding cloning, or he's in favor of cannibalism as long as it benefits him and someone else ...
This is not possible to accomplish. They can ban technology, I suppose, within the U.S.--in which case cloning will be performed offshore or in foreign countries.
It amazes me to think that (a) the politicians are so stupid as to think they can enforce U.S. law in foreign nations or (b) we are a world government already, so that their decrees must be obeyed everywhere.
What, precisely, will they do if somebody sets up a 'body shop' in Madagascar?
--Boris
Are most Americans moderate in their views, falling somewhere in the middle on the issue of abortion, embryonic stem cell harvesting and cloning?
Yes, the acceptance quotient for the vast majority of Americans falls somewhere between the notions of ‘legal protection for all conceived individual human life’ and ‘legal protection for partial birth abortion’. With tacit acceptance of in vitro fertilization and then the apparent necessity for some abortion, our society too quickly arrived at acceptance of, no, DEFENSE OF, infanticide.’
After thirty years of 'somewhere in the middle', legalized abortion has lead directly to the maximum cheapening of individual human life. We have Americans defending infanticide for convenience and profit. But is that really the maximum corruption of our founding principles regarding the unalienable right to life? Perhaps we can and will degenerate further. Let’s explore such a probability.
A straight-line course from our current inhumane reality will have us embracing ‘exploitation of embryonic life is needed to bolster unencumbered lives of worthy pursuit'. Because of our tacit acceptance for the extreme treatment of individual prenatal life--forceful withdrawal of life support, abortion--it is assumed by the societal engineers that we will accept conception of individual human lives and then killing those individuals for their body parts. That’s cannibalism.
In order to convince you that exploitation of individual embryonic life is right, someone must arrange your tacit agreement that killing and harvesting embryos is not the same as killing an individual; such an assertion has been repeated by Orrin Hatch, a Mormon, a man supposedly a defender of human life. But the scientists who carry out these medical marvel, already know the truth regarding embryonic life. Here's the key to their reasoning: those seeking your acceptance of embryonic exploitation must have you first agree to a blatant lie, that an embryo is not one of the typical ages along the continuum of an individual human life begun at conception ... or worse, have you agree that these are individual human lives being exploited in earliest stage of their less worthy life, defining a higher purpose for these embryonic individuals, to sustain others who were not stripped of life support to harvest their body parts. The first level of your agreement--that embryos are not individual humans--is a calculated lie; the second descending level of agreement is acceptance of cannibalism based on that same specious axiom that embryos are not human individuals existing in the normal stage of a human lifetime.
Permit me to elucidate the destination we’ve achieved along the slippery slope many faithful people warned of way back when the outrage over in vitro fertilization was squelched ... a downward slope upon which we are now accelerating.
We’ve lost our hold on the goodness of supporting life (the humane necessity of life support). Now, exploitation of nascent life is a reality: the fetal tissue harvesting industry, with more than a billion dollars in business receipts, already influences when a woman ought to have the abortion she seeks because fetal tissue differentiation makes later rather than earlier killing and harvesting of the fetus more desirable to those who will profit from the killing. That's just the beginning: 1) embryonic stem cell exploitation now demands the conception and killing of untold numbers of embryos; 2) therapeutic cloning is based on the in vitro fertilization / conception of human life, with killing and harvesting as the goal when the embryo has differentiated sufficiently to make specific target-cell identification reliable. Both of these 'scientific advances' require our nation to accept the specious notion that an individual human life doesn't begin with at least first cell division (onset of mitosis).
Some, like Orrin Hatch, who have read this far will assert, "But an embryo in a petri dish is not the same as an implanted embryo, not the same as a fetus, not the same as a born child, not the same as a toddler, not the same as …" Using a continuum argument to eliminate one stage in the continuum glares paradoxically, for the very science now hurrying to exploit embryonic life is convinced an embryo IS an individual human lifetime begun. "Outrageous assertion,” some will say. Okay, let the goals of their scientific pursuits speak for the scientists.
First, let’s examine the goal of in vitro fertilization. In this procedure, a female gamete is fertilized by a male gamete (gametes are the ‘sex cells’ of the adult male or female). Once cell division is evidenced and the embryo reaches a desired number of body parts (the embryo’s stem cells), the individual embryo is placed into the uterus of the target woman. [In most cases, several individual embryos are implanted at the same time, ‘running the odds’ so to speak; if too many achieve life support, the attending medical personnel will advise on aborting one or more, to improve the odds for the escaping survivor].
The technician watching the product of fertilization (the conceptus) in the ‘petri dish’ is looking for cell division, to assure that an individual life has begun to express itself, to grow. The technician implants only the embryo proven to be building her or his individual body, and the building and rebuilding continues throughout lifetime.
Additionally, the technicians must achieve this transfer from petri dish to human uterus at a specific stage in cell division, a specific stage in the lifetime already begun in a dish; if they try implanting too early, the embryo will not have the sticky coating it creates which allows for attachment to the uterine wall. Timing is crucial, timing that is based on proven growth processes of an individual human being's continuum of life. [If you’re still wondering, this continuum concept of individual human existence is the exact same reasoning regarding the onset of puberty, for example, as a normal stage in a human lifetime. The scientist views individual human life as a continuum, having a beginning at conception and first cell division, and continuing through a myriad of differentiations and organ expressions that could last for decades.]
Let’s turn now to cloning, for the methodology of technicians seeking embryonic stem cells or technicians seeking to clone life have much in common with the in vitro fertilization process.
The clone is a close genetic duplicate of a parent DNA donor. The in vitro fertilization technician conceives by bringing male and female gametes together, thus achieving the contribution of 23 chromosomes from female and 23 chromosomes from male, resulting in a conceptus having the normal 46 chromosomes. With similar goal of a conceptus in mind, the clone technician seeks to use a mature female gamete from which the chromosomal nuclear ball has been removed and the 46 chromosome nuclear material of the ‘adult donor’ is inserted. [‘Adult donor’ refers to an organism with a normal compliment of 46 chromosomes, not to the age of the donor.] In some cloning procedures, the product of male/female conception is stripped of the 46 resulting chromosomes prior to first cell division, and the 46 chromosomes of the donor are inserted.
If the cloning technician seeks to fully reproduce the genetic donor, the conceptus is observed for evidence of cell division, then, just as with typical in vitro reproduction, the embryo is inserted into a woman’s uterus for continued life support … life support for a proven individual human being that is a close genetic duplicate of the DNA donor.
If, instead of reproduction for a fully expressed parent donor, the technician desires ‘therapeutic cloning’, the embryo is not always implanted in a woman’s body--but in some procedures, it is--and then this individual is ‘harvested’ before too many months, killing a being conceived for a ‘tissue specific’ cloning purpose.
With first cell division, the newly conceived human life is constructing its own space capsule (the placental bubble and the fluid that inflates it) and its own individual body and blood. The woman in whom an embryo resides does not construct the placenta or the body of the newly conceived individual human life. In fact, it is the newly conceived individual who commandeers life support from the woman’s body; it is the embryonic individual who initiates its own growth and development AND its life support by the woman’s body.
Cell division proves to the scientist that an individual human being is present. But there are many other telling phenomena, which prove the case of an individual human being present as an embryo. Following are but two.
The production of a sticky coating by the embryonic individual proves the desire to survive. Is that the same as the adult desire for shelter and sustenance? No, it is more akin to the hunger response, but it is unimpeachable evidence, to a scientist, that an individual being exists. Is that being, human? … If the parents are human, that’s always the case. Finally, if the embryonic individual did not construct the placental sac for its residence, the presence of a genetically foreign individual life in the woman’s body would cause her body to attack the ‘other’.
Why is it important to prove that an embryo is an individual human being? Because embryonic stem cell harvesting and therapeutic cloning are cannibalizing human life.
The ‘enlightened’ expect you to accept the notion that an embryo is not an individual human being. Yet the scientist seeks to conceive 'designer' individual human life --with therapeutic cloning-- and the goal of the scientist bears witness to the truth that they are conceiving then, for a time, supporting the life of a unique human being. Giving tacit acceptance to a proven lie is bad enough –we’ve done this for thirty years-- but to embrace cannibalism founded on such a lie is far more degenerate than breaching moral or ethical dilemmas.
Moderate acceptance leading from in vitro fertilization to partial birth infanticide proves the bankruptcy of continuing such a 'live and let live' attitude. We are now staring at cannibalism in the name of whatever you care to call it. Even an embryo no bigger than a grain of sugar is an individual human life. Is it acceptable to kill that individual for their body parts? If it is, at least know that's cannibalism. Therapeutic cloning is cannibalism.
If we do not accomplish a paradigm shift in the nation's perception regarding individual human life, two very menacing leviathans, embryonic stem cell exploitation and therapeutic cloning, will devour what remains of our national goodness.
And shall we do the same if such a thing were to occur legally in, say, Britain?
Why not ask if I have stopped beating my wife?
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.
