From Cardinal William H. Keeler.
A bill in Congress would offer federal grants to encourage researchers to destroy new human embryos from fertility clinics for their stem cells.
Such killing in the name of "prgress" crosses a fundamental moral line. Government has no business forcing taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of innocent human life. President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission conceded that human embryos "deserve respect as a form of human life." How does it show respect to treat human lives as mere crops for harvesting?
Those who say these embryos "would be discarded anyway" are wrong. Embryos that couples want discarded are barred from being used in research. In fact, many couples who initially chose to discard their "excess" embryos have later changed their minds and let them survive. But now, government-funded researchers would reach in and destroy these young lives before that can happen.
This bill would lead to much killing that would not otherwise happen. And since all the "spare" embryos available for research cannot provide enough stem cells to treat any major disease, the proposed law would inevitably lead to creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them.
That hope of treating disease is the driving force behind this bill. Yet the "promise" of embryonic stem cell research has been exaggerated. The journal Science last week published a warning by Stanford University experts that "it is nearly certain that the clinical benefits of the research are years or maybe decades away." They added: "This is a message that desperate families and patients will not want to hear." But they need to hear it. They were led to support this unethical research by hyped promises of miracle cures.
Stem cells from umbilical-cord blood and adult tissues, posing no moral problem, have advanced quickly toward treating juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, sickle-cell anemia, cardiac damage and other conditions. The fixation on destroying embryos has diverted resources away from more promising therapies, and therefore ill serves suffering patients as well as embryonic human beings. Congress should reject this bill and support promising medical research that all Americans can live with.
9 comments
The near silence from the media regarding the astounding medical advancements via ADULT stem cell research, combined with the high-pitched fervor championing embryonic stem cell research, whose results are problematic at best (not to mention evil!), leads me to believe this has everything to do with shoring up abortion “rights,” which is ultimately borne of the scientific community’s need to maintain as firm a grip as possible on governance.
I think our culture has an irrational fear of death. People die. You might as well start preparing for it spiritually right now.
An unfortunate reality is that a sizeable minority or a majority (dependent on what poll or story you read) of the people in America do not operate on the same premise that you and I do…that abortion or embryonic stem cell research are murder. Thus comments like, “Such killing in the name of “progress” crosses a fundamental moral line. Government has no business forcing taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of innocent human life.” really fall on deaf ears with many Americans; they simply don’t view it as crossing a moral line, rightly or wrongly.
As I have always maintained, abortion or embryonic stem cell research will never be made fully illegal until a sizeable number of Americans are persuaded that these issues are moral issues and that our present paths are immoral. If a sizeable number of Americans believed this issue to be an important moral issue, Roe would have been overturned and not remained on the books for the last 32 years, and embryonic stem cell research would not even be considered for legalization. This is a sad and awful reality, but it is what we are stuck with in America presently on this issue.
This is not a conspiracy on the part of the press, liberals or anyone else, it is simply and fundamentally viewed by many in this country as a woman’s rights/illness rights issue, not a moral or murderous issue.
Unitl persuasion comes to Americans as to the immorality of these issues, nothing will change. And unfortunately I don’t have an answer.
Teresa,
Very good point.
As far as I’m aware, they haven’t actually been able to do anything useful with embryonic stem cells, while it has been shown that adult cells can be just as good, if not better.
And I think I read somewhere that they could use umbelical cords for something.
I mean, that would be better than destroying human life in the hope that they’ll find a way, some day, to do something useful with it.
Even they should be able to see that.
This is not a conspiracy on the part of the press, liberals or anyone else
I don’t know, I was watching CNN today and am convinced there is a satanic conspiracy on the part of the press to twist and distort the truth of what’s going on here.
As long as embryos can’t stand up and shake their little fists at the news media and progressive scientists, we will continue to see this ugly use of the unborn in scientific studies. If you don’t have a voice you’re fair game. So for all those elderly out there with duct tape over your mouths, look out. I wish there was a way to make people see that experiments on embryos is beyond horrific, and a satanic butchering of the innocent.
It’s too bad that embryos aren’t toxic in every way until two day’s before they’re naturally born. And for those babies born caesarian or are emergancy deliveries, a simple cross drawn on the forehead with Holy Water does the job. ( And only for a living child.)…one can dream.
BillyHW:
As for ‘satanic conspiracies’…please provide a concrete example able to be proven with facts, not just suspicion or ‘it seems like’.
I have yet to see any instance of satanic conspiracy in any mainstream media. I will admit that I do not, however, watch mainstream media 24/7, so maybe I missed something…
It is easy when the media reports on something that a conservative or liberal doesn’t agree with to accuse the media of being one way or the other politically.
My older brother said something that reminds me of this whole “stem cells are the cure-all” mentality. He mentioned that in most R&D, there is a point at which “Can we do it?” is balanced by “Should we do it?” – including “What is the cost of doing this?”
It seems to me that one could get adults to donate stem cells rather like blood or bone marrow in a way that would be much more cost-effective than trying to get women to donate eggs for experiments in the lab, cloning or whatever else is supposed to increase supply. Even if a person with a demagnetized moral compass might see the dangers involved in funding research on a limited resource.
Not only that, but the medical reports I’ve read on stem cell research have noted that embryonic stem cells are more “volatile” (I think that is the word) because they’re ready to change into any type of cell. The adult stem cell conforms to its established pattern, which seems to have helped those trying to study specific cells affected by Parkinson’s disease, among other things.
Personally, I think the stem cell furor in the media is driven by the same faddish interest in “scientific breakthrough” that has more of fairy-tale than scientific qualities. To hear some talk, all the diseases of humanity would be cured if only embryonic stem cells were handed over.
Jean, I think you’re hitting it quite on the mark when you say “faddish” regarding the scientific community’s love affair with ESC research. I think it’s not dissimilar to the halabaloo over the new fangled discovery of electricity and the various devices invented as cures for everything from migrane headaches to impotence. Embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated cells (they don’t know what they are yet — think, blank cells) and so scientists get giddy pondering on the notion that if they tinker long enough, they can make those wiley cells behave the way they want. I may have said this elsewhere, but it’s like a gigantic game of pin-the-tail-on-the donkey.
Sure, there were plenty of folks would have nothing to do with that evil electricity, but there were others who actually used electricity experimentally on people who killed or maimed them in the name of science. Many of us think the stakes are higher here than say, the 1800’s electro cure alls.