UK Science Report Supports Research on Monkeys
This took courage: With rabid animal rights activists in the UK having gone so far as to threaten to assassinate animal researchers, this study issuing a clarion call to encourage proper, humane, and rigorously regulated scientific and medical research with primates is most welcome. Tremendous amounts of human suffering can be, and has been, eliminated due to animal research. To denigrate it as mere "vivisection" is a tremendous disservice to the researchers who are seeking to alleviate human suffering, and to science.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:25 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
I wish we could get the animal rights activists to oppose the research into samesex conception and genetic engineering. It took 450 tries to create the fatherless mouse Kaguya from genetically modified eggs, and that means not only close to 400 mice that died in the womb or in infancy, but 400 mice that were impregnated with these experimental embryos, and hundreds of mice that were surely killed to extract their eggs. These same researchers are working with pigs now. There is no disease or suffering that this research is intended to alleviate, it is entirely unnecessary. And yet I never hear any people object to this research.
Is there a way to get PETA on our side regarding unnecessary cruel research into genetic engineering and same-sex conception?
Ok, going to ignore the blatantly homophobic comment from the previous poster.
Thought you might like to know that I have a mouse in my apt, I will show no mercy and it will be exterminated!
Jen: That is morally eqivalent to the "supremicism" that led to the Holocaust. Just ask Ingrid Newkirk.
Jen, interesting comment. It makes understand why Peta doesn't oppose animal experiments intended to bring about genetic engineering in humans. They just might be afraid of being homophobic and forced into looking the other way at the animal experiments that are going on, supposedly on behalf of same-sex rights? It parallels the "GE in plants, bad, GE for two women to have a baby, good!" contradiction that must require lots of therapy and mood stabilizers to live with.
Homophobia is being used by the GE industry to get people to look aside while genetic engineering becomes a reality. I really honestly don't think that being against genetic engineering is homophobic, at least as far as I understand gay rights and respect for gay people. Being for natural egg and sperm conception and against animal experimentation does not conflict with supporting people's liberty to love and parent with people of any sex.
See, personally, I'm against any type of cloning or same-sex combining of eggs, anything like that, in any creature, animal or human. This has nothing to do with being homophobic - my brother is a homosexual and the Catholic church frowns upon people who are abusive to homosexuals (to put it nicely - don't ever say the three-letter "f" word around a nun with a ruler in her hand!).
I don't think that cloning of any stripe is safe at all, and I don't think that same-sex conception engineering is safe, not even among animals.
Sexual reproduction provides an X and a Y chromosome that ensure that any offspring have a chance of getting a good combination of genes, thus preventing doubling-up of bad genes that will cause genetic disease in the baby. There's nothing in any of the literature that I've read that promises that same-sex conception will hold the same possibilities. It's not safe. As for why I'm opposed to it in animals, that's pure theology: I don't think God wants us fooling around with His animals. He gave us permission to do so much and nothing more.
Jen, please consider the possible negative consequences before you condemn anyone who opposes same-sex conception. My brother is a high school teacher and there is no one I would trust more with a child than him. He will make a great father some day.
But the possibilities of havoc are too strong in same-sex conception. Just look at heterosexual conception! We don't have all the kinks worked out, yet - babies are born with cystic fibrosis and autoimmune diseases, etc. There's too much chance that we'll tinker with the wrong thing and make a mess out of some poor baby's life.
Right, TE. And there is more difference than just in the X and Y chromosomes. Genes all over the chromosomes are imprinted differently, turned on or off, early in embryo development, depending on whether the Y is present. It is these differences that make it difficult to join same-sex gametes, because we don't know where all these differences are and what they mean, and we'd have to figure out how to turn them on or off to get someone's genes to properly join with someone's of their same sex.
John Howard:
Exactly! One of the "positive" arguments I've heard is that it would be okay to produce a daughter in this fashion because any mistakes on one X chromosome will be covered up with the other X chromosome, but that's bunk.
Here's a blurb from an ALD fact website (http://rarediseases.about.com/cs/ald/a/041301.htm):
"ALD is an inherited genetic disorder linked to the X sex chromosome. Because of the way genetic inheritance works, only boys have the most severe form of ALD. The disorder leaves the body unable to break down big fat molecules, either ones the body makes itself or ones that enter the body through food."
If a girl baby born through same-sex conception inherited the severe form of ALD found in boys from *both* donating mothers, what sort of monster will we have unleashed on her and her future generations? It's horrid that any form of this disease exists at all, and horrid that it affects little boys like this. Are we going to risk making it worse than it already is, instead of putting our resources to protecting the affected babies who suffer through this?
Same-sex conception poses too much danger for the baby being created. We can't allow it. The moment a baby is concieved, she's forced to live with whatever stupid decisions and mistakes we adults made. That's totally unfair to her.
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