Stem Cells and Fertility Clinics: More Dubyan Duplicity
Michael Kinsley cuts to the chase in this essay on the "False Dilemma on Stem Cells".
Since there isn't any new ground to be covered in this controversy, I find myself, once again, being drawn to the pre-eminent point of GW Bush's outright dishonesty in pushing his authoritarian version of christianity upon a populace who doesn't want to take any time thinking through the reasons for why reality, regardless of how we perceive it, is the way that it is.
Now, there are really only two ways to interpret Dubya's stance here.
Either he is really so unintelligent and ignorant that he can't comprehend how research to enable people with fertility problems to get pregnant, has benefits for far fewer already born individuals than can the results of its derivative stemcell research, or he is as smart as his Daddy-helped-him-get-it Yale degree implies, and is knowingly using this more complicated reality to obfuscate the fact that the benefits of stemcell research are conceived and made possible by those of Fertility research.
Embryonic stemcell research is derived from work done in the cause of resolving peoples' fertility problems. Cutting back on the fomer will not reduce the number of embryos destroyed in the cause of the latter. It will only reduce the number which are actually put to use helping us understand how to heal and save the lives of people, regardless of their ability to procreate.
Embryos simply are not babies. They have more chance of perishing than of growing to viability, but regardless of how one feels about what they are, George Bush has praised their destruction every bit as much as he has decried their use in research which isn't implicity designed for making more babies. This means he is either unable or unwilling to comprehend the lack of difference in his own stands taken on these intertwined activities.
Ignorance may be bliss temporarily. Ultimately though, it is the most painful, wasteful and destructive of all humanity's states of being. This Admin's stance on Embryonic Stemcells plays on people's ignorance and is one more reason I've come to abhor and utterly distrust it's reign of power.
Since there isn't any new ground to be covered in this controversy, I find myself, once again, being drawn to the pre-eminent point of GW Bush's outright dishonesty in pushing his authoritarian version of christianity upon a populace who doesn't want to take any time thinking through the reasons for why reality, regardless of how we perceive it, is the way that it is.
Proponents of stem cell research like to emphasize that it doesn't cost the life of a single embryo. The embryos killed to extract their stem cells were doomed already. But this argument gives too much ground, and misses the point. If embryos are human beings, it's not okay to kill them for their stem cells just because you were going to kill them, or knowingly let them die, anyway. The better point -- the killer point, if you'll pardon the expression -- is that if embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are far worse -- both in numbers and in criminal intent -- than stem cell research. And yet, no one objects, or objects very loudly. President Bush actually praised the work of fertility clinics in his first speech announcing restrictions on stem cells.(emphasis is mine)
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Now, there are really only two ways to interpret Dubya's stance here.
Either he is really so unintelligent and ignorant that he can't comprehend how research to enable people with fertility problems to get pregnant, has benefits for far fewer already born individuals than can the results of its derivative stemcell research, or he is as smart as his Daddy-helped-him-get-it Yale degree implies, and is knowingly using this more complicated reality to obfuscate the fact that the benefits of stemcell research are conceived and made possible by those of Fertility research.
Embryonic stemcell research is derived from work done in the cause of resolving peoples' fertility problems. Cutting back on the fomer will not reduce the number of embryos destroyed in the cause of the latter. It will only reduce the number which are actually put to use helping us understand how to heal and save the lives of people, regardless of their ability to procreate.
Embryos simply are not babies. They have more chance of perishing than of growing to viability, but regardless of how one feels about what they are, George Bush has praised their destruction every bit as much as he has decried their use in research which isn't implicity designed for making more babies. This means he is either unable or unwilling to comprehend the lack of difference in his own stands taken on these intertwined activities.
Ignorance may be bliss temporarily. Ultimately though, it is the most painful, wasteful and destructive of all humanity's states of being. This Admin's stance on Embryonic Stemcells plays on people's ignorance and is one more reason I've come to abhor and utterly distrust it's reign of power.
UC wrote some great this topic from a personal perspective on stem cell research back on blog.3bulls.net awhile ago. (Use the search function there, if interested).
ReplyDeleteI recently attended some lectures and posters at a Harvard Stem Cell Institute function. I can tell you it is so much more cost effective to carryout research this way and it helps move ideas into the clinic for my patients. Anyone who is against it, is nothing more than a misogynistic bastard with little to no education.
Or addicted to a "Faith" which tells them that what they know to be observable fact is wrong. Those are the most impossible kind of folk with whom to try and peacefully coexist. Nutterdumb extraordinaire!
ReplyDeleteI just read UC's piece on Jimmy Sherley... what a 'NAD! LOL!
Sherley: "If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do."
UC takes the silliness down smooth and quick.
It took me awhile to become a 3 Bulls fan. I think because I wasn't catching a lot of references. Now I try and read 'em every day, even though it's mostly just Pinko Punko posting lately. {-;
Still gnarly well worth the read, eh.
Thanks AG!
I think he'll say anything to hang on to his mouth-breathing base. I would love to hear him try to explain stem cells without help from anyone. You know he couldn't do it.
ReplyDeleteNo way, eh.
ReplyDeleteDude probably wouldn't even be able to explain the difference 'tween meiosis and mitosis if he'd just finished reading the Wiki (like I had just to do!) {-;
I'd love to hear try and say phraryngula though!