A Good Juxtaposition of Columns
I have a column in today's Seattle Times against assisted suicide that urges readers to consider the context in which assisted suicide would be carried out. (It is a rewritten version of a piece that first appeared a few months ago in the Orange County Register.)
I bring this up because the Times, perhaps inadvertently, juxtaposed my piece with another column about the collapse of primary care in medicine. The author, a medical professor, worries that "our health care system is unraveling," that it is "like a house riddled with termites." This is a good one, two punch. So often, euthanasia and assisted suicide are discussed in a vacuum, in which every patient receives optimal care, every doctor is Marcus Welby, and there is no such thing as family dysfunction, life insurance, inheritance, or other issues. Even in an ideal system, assisted suicide would be wrong. But the way things are in our country right now, it would be catastrophic for the most weak and vulnerable among us.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:19 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
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Hi I'm Marlon
The Son-inlaw of your Neighbor Marvin. He just visited. I was surprised to hear about you from him. I thought I was keeping up with what was out there. Your blog sounds like you lean towards the way I think about the way Some people would like a person to just die because they are a little old or sick. I wonder if thats the way the Mayans were thinking when they sacrificed people. My self I like the uncertainty we live.
Hi, I caught a bit of your lecture at William and Mary tonight as I was leaving the WCWM radio station. One of the things I heard was that "some scientists prefer germ stem cells to embryonic stems cells because when they put embryonic stem cells in a human it can cause tumors."
There are a lot of things I'm unsure about concerning tumors caused by embryonic stem cells and scientist putting stem cells into people, but more importantly, I have a question concerning the germ stem cells:
My understanding of germ stems cells is that they are only designated as "stem" cells because they are undifferentiated, but only in that they can either become a cell that creates more germ stem cells or become a sperm-producing cell. I don't think anyone understands how the cell "decides" but really the research done on these cells is limitted in that its only relevance is to contraception and fertility.
SO, the only scientists who could prefer germ stem cells to embryonic stem cells would be ones who study fertility or contraceptive issues, and of course they would prefer germ stems cells, in the same way an auto mechanic would prefer a wrench to a butcher knife.
Do you see where I'm going here? You seem to suggest that the existence and medical relevance of germ stem cells really make embryonic stem cells irrelevant. I don't see how that is true. Could you clear this up for me?
I don't want to take up too much space here to comment on something that nobody else was privy to.
But let me state this: embryonic germ cells develop at about 6 weeks gestation. Some (certainly not all) scientists have suggested that they might be superior to embryonic stem cells because they don't appear to cause teratomas as ES cells often do. My point was that if true, it might justify in the minds of some the idea that it would be acceptable to gestate cloned embryos to 6 or 8 weeks, which would require implantation, probably in an artificial womb. And that the same arguments heard today for ES cells, could be made for permitting the gestation of embronic and fetal life for use as commodities. And the question thus becomes whether we want to start down that road using earlier cloned or natural embryos as commodities or natural resources.
Thanks for coming to the talk. I really enjoyed Williamsburg and William and Mary College. If you want a little more comment, e-mail me directly. Thanks.
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