Johnah Goldberg at NRO has been receiving pretty much the identical e-mails saying the following.
Jonah, I wonder if all these religious, moral, sanctimonious people will stick to their guns if embryonic stem cell research does bear fruit. Can you imagine: Doctor: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we are able to give your child a new liver, but it would involve using embryonic stem cells to grow a healthy one or we could simply use research procured from embryonic stem cell research to repair his diseased liver. Mr. Smith: Sorry Doc. We are morally against embryonic stem cell use so we must wait and put our child’s fate in God’s hands. Yeah right. I suspect they’ll take the new liver and pray for forgiveness later. Sort of like all these anti-gun whackos who are against firearms until a nice big 9MM fired by a police officer saves their life or until their precious loved ones (ahem, Rosie O’Donnell) need protection. Honestly, who knows if embryonic stem cells will ever produce anything meaningful. If the people "protesting" this research now pledge to never use any technologies derived from it for themselves or their children, I say keep on marching. But if new treatments are developed all of these hypocrites will be among the first in line for treatments (even if they successfully keep their tax dollars from supporting this research). And they know it. For that reason alone they ought to shut up.
Talk about a silly argument. I guess if they really started to harvest poor people for organs and selling them on the black market these people would make the same argument. If your child needs a new liver and there is one available on the black market wouldn’t you take it even though you think that killing people for their organs is wrong? So everybody should just shut up about harvesting people for organs while they are still alive. What amazes me is that such a specious argument is even advanced and that they are thinking it is a gotcha and intellectually persuasive.
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What’s even scarier is if the use of embryonic stem cells could save my child’s liver and I was prosecuted for NOT doing the procedure (for neglect, or child endangerment, etc.)
The other ‘inconvenient little’ fact that these spammers are ignoring is that embryonic stem cells aren’t the only game in town; and at this point, aren’t even in the game:
Current treatments from adult stem cells: 56
Current treatments from embryonic stem cells: 0
(FYI: ‘adult’ stem cells are collected from adults [of course] or from [otherwise discarded] umbilical cord blood collected during childbirth)
Source:
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/treatments.htm
So, the real question is, do I want to kill (poor/defenseless/developing) human beings now in order to _possibly, at some point in the future_ benefit from harvesting their organs, or do I want to support currently successful forms of treatment that do not kill any people.
There are persons who decline certain medical treatments based on ethical and moral qualms. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses decline blood transfusions or the use of any blood products. Many evangelical Christians and a few Catholics who have researched the topic decline vaccines grown on cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. See Children of GOd for Life for details.
If embryonic stem cell do turn out to have the snake oil type potential that is being sold, I would make it clear to all my family that I would rather die or be crippled than to have a treatment derived from such horrendous cannibalism.
Jeff – I think I know who might be sending these. Is it a blogger? If I’m right, it’s someone I know from an organization we both belong to. I don’t remember the name of his blog but I might recognize it if I saw it again.