Wednesday, July 19, 2006
If You Believe Bush Cares About Zygotes I've Got Some Cold Fusion To Sell You
Please stick with me. Though stem cell talk gets absurd fast you might catch glimpses of light. Of a sort.
If a fertilized ovum is "human life" then a cell derived from it can also be "human life". At least if the cell line could produce a viable embryo. That's the argument of the Bush regime and the dopes they're roping in with their stem cell snake oil. This, however, gets them into some knotty questions that have yet to be answered. If they were sincere, which they aren't, then they would have no choice but to answer them and act accordingly. It would be morally depraved to sweep the issues and so the embryos into the dust heap of political expediency.
To start with, we all know that most of these embryos will be discarded. They are being discarded just about every day now. Yet George Bush and the Republicans in congress aren't proposing a ban on in vitro fertilization which routinely creates these extra embryos. Why not? By allowing this failure ridden procedure to go on is to create many thousands of "human lives" destined to die in the procedure or when they are flushed away unwanted after frozen storage. How can these actual embryos be less important to them than theoretical "embryos" yet to be created by as yet undiscovered techniques? They're already in a swivet over those theoretical "embryos" now. And remember, those "embryos" "are only a theory" today.
But that's only the beginning of the moral dilemmas.
If a fertilized ovum is "life" and the first division splits, identical twins of triplets may result. In that case each cell derived from the original cell is potentially an individual life. I won't mention the implications of how many souls were present in the original cell only because it would distract from my purpose here.
If it was possible, Aldous Huxley like, to divide an embryo many times over each division must be individual "life". You begin to see the problem this creates for them. What will happen in the future if cloning of individual cells into full term infants becomes possible. At what point does a cell lose its "personhood"? Did those cells which had the potential to be fully cloned always have "personhood"? Does their "personhood" come about only when science makes it a real possibility? Do they really feel comfortable with giving those kinds of power to scientists? Will there have to be ethics panels for all elective operations that result in the destruction of cells that could possibly become "life"?
As said they are prepared to ban the creation of embryos derived from these cell lines. They hold that all cells that could potentially produce an embryo are "human life". If that is true then the only way to preserve the "life" of these frozen embryos is for a cell line derived from it to be maintained and cells derived from it to be used. If that was done then the "life" would continue as long as cells from the line are alive in or outside of another person's body. The only "hope" for the vast majority of these "human lives" is to be continued as cell lines to be implanted for therapeutic purposes.
Who knows? Some of these "human lives" could outlive all of us when kept alive this way. Who is George Bush to cut their potential lives short with his ban on stem cell research? We know that they'll be flushed down the drain otherwise. Maybe it is the duty of all faith-based-life-begins-at-fertilization types to volunteer to host cells from these lines in order that these lives be saved. And so we come full spiral. Downward.
It's all poppycock. We are talking about people who have given Israel a week to bomb the hell out of Lebanon leading to the killing scores of real, viable, entirely innocent people on both sides. Condi won't even interrupt her social life to go over early and try for a breakthrough. And while they diddle and delay they debate the morality of stem cell research. It's all grandstanding, a political commercial for the logic deficient. They don't believe it. These "snowflakes" are just political tools and if they win the election this fall the issue will melt away faster than Orrin Hatch can say, "Let's make a deal,".
Please stick with me. Though stem cell talk gets absurd fast you might catch glimpses of light. Of a sort.
If a fertilized ovum is "human life" then a cell derived from it can also be "human life". At least if the cell line could produce a viable embryo. That's the argument of the Bush regime and the dopes they're roping in with their stem cell snake oil. This, however, gets them into some knotty questions that have yet to be answered. If they were sincere, which they aren't, then they would have no choice but to answer them and act accordingly. It would be morally depraved to sweep the issues and so the embryos into the dust heap of political expediency.
To start with, we all know that most of these embryos will be discarded. They are being discarded just about every day now. Yet George Bush and the Republicans in congress aren't proposing a ban on in vitro fertilization which routinely creates these extra embryos. Why not? By allowing this failure ridden procedure to go on is to create many thousands of "human lives" destined to die in the procedure or when they are flushed away unwanted after frozen storage. How can these actual embryos be less important to them than theoretical "embryos" yet to be created by as yet undiscovered techniques? They're already in a swivet over those theoretical "embryos" now. And remember, those "embryos" "are only a theory" today.
But that's only the beginning of the moral dilemmas.
If a fertilized ovum is "life" and the first division splits, identical twins of triplets may result. In that case each cell derived from the original cell is potentially an individual life. I won't mention the implications of how many souls were present in the original cell only because it would distract from my purpose here.
If it was possible, Aldous Huxley like, to divide an embryo many times over each division must be individual "life". You begin to see the problem this creates for them. What will happen in the future if cloning of individual cells into full term infants becomes possible. At what point does a cell lose its "personhood"? Did those cells which had the potential to be fully cloned always have "personhood"? Does their "personhood" come about only when science makes it a real possibility? Do they really feel comfortable with giving those kinds of power to scientists? Will there have to be ethics panels for all elective operations that result in the destruction of cells that could possibly become "life"?
As said they are prepared to ban the creation of embryos derived from these cell lines. They hold that all cells that could potentially produce an embryo are "human life". If that is true then the only way to preserve the "life" of these frozen embryos is for a cell line derived from it to be maintained and cells derived from it to be used. If that was done then the "life" would continue as long as cells from the line are alive in or outside of another person's body. The only "hope" for the vast majority of these "human lives" is to be continued as cell lines to be implanted for therapeutic purposes.
Who knows? Some of these "human lives" could outlive all of us when kept alive this way. Who is George Bush to cut their potential lives short with his ban on stem cell research? We know that they'll be flushed down the drain otherwise. Maybe it is the duty of all faith-based-life-begins-at-fertilization types to volunteer to host cells from these lines in order that these lives be saved. And so we come full spiral. Downward.
It's all poppycock. We are talking about people who have given Israel a week to bomb the hell out of Lebanon leading to the killing scores of real, viable, entirely innocent people on both sides. Condi won't even interrupt her social life to go over early and try for a breakthrough. And while they diddle and delay they debate the morality of stem cell research. It's all grandstanding, a political commercial for the logic deficient. They don't believe it. These "snowflakes" are just political tools and if they win the election this fall the issue will melt away faster than Orrin Hatch can say, "Let's make a deal,".
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I just don't get why it is that unborn babies are so much more valuable and precious than born ones...
Isn't that an interesting question, Eli. Considering what the Republicans have done for the WIC program they're not especially interested in implanted embryos that a woman wants to carry to term either.
Their position on enviornmental polloution is another interesting light on the snowflakes. There are probably more pregnancies terminated by polloution and malnutrition than all elected abortions. So it must be the matter of choice that makes the difference to them. Any time a woman has a say in the matter, they support whatever she doesn't want.
Their position on enviornmental polloution is another interesting light on the snowflakes. There are probably more pregnancies terminated by polloution and malnutrition than all elected abortions. So it must be the matter of choice that makes the difference to them. Any time a woman has a say in the matter, they support whatever she doesn't want.
I've had this up on my door at work so long it's getting yellow.
From a Bill Moyers NOW segment with a Catholic nun (Chittister).
CHITTISTER: ...
I'm opposed to abortion.
But I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
http://www.pbs.org/now/
transcript/transcript346_full.html
BirdGrrrlll
From a Bill Moyers NOW segment with a Catholic nun (Chittister).
CHITTISTER: ...
I'm opposed to abortion.
But I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
http://www.pbs.org/now/
transcript/transcript346_full.html
BirdGrrrlll
# posted by 
: 1:06 AM
: 1:06 AM
and on a serious note, when can I take a collection of blastocysts as dependants???
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# posted by : 3:12 PM
: 3:12 PM << Home
