Should I Have Mentioned That Bush Dared to Call Human Embryos "Human Life?"
I am applauded and criticized for my comments about President Obama's rescission of the Bush "alternative method" executive order over at Belief Net--from the version of the criticism I posted on the First Things blog, which contained slightly different language than I put here on the same topic. Thus, David Gibson wrote:
Why didn't Obama say more about the promise of adult stem cells--and do something to promote that promise? He said that the administration will support "promising research of all kinds, including groundbreaking work to convert ordinary human cells into ones that resemble embryonic stem cells." And yet his executive order yesterday also revoked Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which provided federal backing for promising adult stem cell research. At First Things, Wesley J. Smith slams this dumb rejection of easily occupied common ground.I beg your pardon? Human embryos are human life! That's basic biology. And the post is about alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells, not adult stem cells. (I know this gets confusing.)
ADDENDUM: As a commenter rightly noted in the combox, Obama had to reverse Bush's EO 13435 because of language tacked on to it about embryos as human life etc. (A nice little time bomb left behind.) And Wesley Smith could have and should have noted that. But Obama could easily have included Bush's language, or his own, regarding funding and support for adult stem cell research promotion. Easy, and would have been important in concrete and symbolic terms.
Here's the offending clause from the Bush EO:
(d) human embryos and fetuses, as living members of the human species, are not raw materials to be exploited or commodities to be bought and sold.So, Obama "had" to rescind the order because the foregoing clause was factually correct? And, to add a point, is also wholly consistent with current federal statutory law? Gee, I'm really sorry I didn't mention that.
But Gibson is also correct: If telling the biological truth in an EO so seared the delicate Obama sensibility, he could have immediately reissued the EO without the offending facts, and publicized it as proof he is trying to cross the cultural divides that rend this country. But, of course, he didn't do that because he's not.
Labels: Barack Obama Stem Cell Order. Criticism of Wesley J. Smith Criticism. Belief Net. David Gibson.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:45 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
I do not think that an embryo created in any but the time-honored way is life in the same way that a normal embryo is. But this guy has GOT to be impeached! Look at him -- watch him -- watch how he moves, physically -- watch his bearing, his face -- look at those he chooses to have closest to him -- he is WITHOUT sensibility. As are those who support him, supported him, voted for him, etc. As long as we've got adults like that walking around with permission, of course embryoes, and every other form of life, including other adult humans, are in danger. I don't understand why there hasn't been the kind of uprising there would be over this kind of travesty in another country yet. Oh wait, yes I do -- the country already had gone idiotic enough so that he could be elected.
Look at those numbers by the flags jumping, too. It looks like a huge increase in Canada since yesterday. Here we were with some saying we should have a system like theirs, and now they may be worried that what's going on here may get over the border to them -- unless they think this latest development here is a good thing.
When I said "this kind of travesty" above, I meant HIM; this stem cell thing is only one symptom of what he is. I STILL don't understand why people wanted "change." Yes Bush was wrong on tort reform and mispronounced "nuclear" and was too slow re Katrina and pre-9/11, but the economic mess we got into (which I still think is a shell game and an illusion in which people are being made to suffer in order to give evidence of what really isn't even going on -- money and wealth are constants in quantity, fundamentally) is a result of the same kind of greed that typifies the way Democrats and liberals think. The needed change was IN THEM, because they are negative, destructive, not-bright people -- and that's not going to happen. I refuse admittance to my home to anyone who voted for him and I may even put a little sign by the doorbell to that effect. Well, someone has to start doing something, and I doubt I'm the only one who's thought of that.
I agree with you, Wesley. Regardless of whether one views embryoes as people, they are human life. They aren't flora or marine life-they're human life.
Ianthe says: "I do not think that an embryo created in any but the time-honored way is life in the same way that a normal embryo is."
That seems more like an emotional sense of things, rather than an insistence on strict definitions. If any embryo is a life, it's a life regardless of how it came to be. (It's not dead, is it, if it's made in a petri dish.)
Gregory: I think what I said is very simple: It did not come into life in the same way, and it falls into a different category of life. I didn't say it's not life. Nor am I talking about strict definitions. We can't strictly categorize something whose end result we haven't even had time to see. I don't think that i.v.f. is a good idea or that we should mess with things the way we are doing; I don't think it's wise or productive, and I say that not for emotional or religious reasons, but because it isn't necessary and it doesn't make sense. Look at the result: i.v.f. children with weaker immune systems (and we haven't even seen s full generation or more of how they fare yet), an even more narcissistic culture, and embryo research has proven less productive than that done with adult stem cells. There is a difference between anything man-made and naturally made, and that's part of the difference between i.v.f. and regularly conceived embryoes, and it's common sense to note that nature always is going to do it better; it made us; we didn't make it. I find it interesting that anyone would call what's common sense emotional. Emotion and true logic both end up at the same place any event.
NUMBERS: Well it looks like a hundred an hour now, which would mean that roughly on average, someone new visits SHS at least every minute.
do not think that an embryo created in any but the time-honored way is life in the same way that a normal embryo is.
We've got IVF adults walking around today-- are they not human in the normal sense?
and we haven't even seen s full generation or more of how they fare yet
First known IVF kid, Louise Brown, was born in '78.
She has a son named Cameron, born in 2006; she's been married since 2004. The child was born the normal way.
Her sister, Natalie Brown, was the first IVF kid to give birth in 1999; also naturally.
It's a bad idea to argue morality on the basis of lack of information-- someone will get the information, and that weakens your argument.
IVF is bad because it risks the kid for the desire of the parents to have a child that is X.
Lanthe wrote:
"But this guy has GOT to be impeached! Look at him -- watch him -- watch how he moves, physically -- watch his bearing, his face -- look at those he chooses to have closest to him -- he is WITHOUT sensibility."
I am NO Obama defender, but... WHAT?
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