Taking the Next Bite of the Apple: New York Times Proves That Voracious Research Ambition Not Limited to "Leftover" Embryos
The New York Times' editorial extolling the lifting the Bush stem cell funding policy--as it ignores the purely gratuitous trashing of the Bush order requiring funding for "alternative sources"--is the usual mix of ignorance and ideology that typifies its side's method of arguing this issue. First, it accuses Bush of having appointed "scientific" advisers on the issue based on ideology rather than expertise. But this has always been an ethical debate, not a science debate. Besides, Leon Kass not an expert in both science and ethics? William Hurlbut not an expert? Please.
But here is the point of this post: Note that now it has obtained its way on ESCR funding, the NYT wants to take the next bite of the apple, calling for the rescission of the Dickey Amendment that prevents destruction of embryos with federal money. (The Obama directive allows all stem cell lines created to qualify for federal funding after their creation. He could do no more because the Dickey Amendment would be violated--and this is a law signed each year by Presidents Clinton and Bush since 1996. Obama has not publicly called for it to be rescinded.) From the editorial:
Other important embryonic research is still being hobbled by the so-called Dickey-Wicker amendment. The amendment, which is regularly attached to appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services, prohibits the use of federal funds to support scientific work that involves the destruction of human embryos (as happens when stem cells are extracted) or the creation of embryos for research purposes.Well, that is false. There is plenty of public support--as in my state California that borrows hundreds of millions each year for the research even though we are drowning in red ink.
Until that changes, scientists who want to create embryos--and extract stem cells--matched to patients with specific diseases will have to rely on private or state support. Such research is one promising way to learn how the diseases develop and devise the best treatments. Congress should follow Mr. Obama's lead and lift this prohibition so such important work can benefit from an infusion of federal dollars.
But let me translate the opaque NYT position: The Times wants scientists to go way beyond the so-called "leftover" embryos, which I have repeatedly written is only the launching pad of the voracious biotech agenda. Indeed, the editorial wants the Feds to fund scientists creating new embryos for use and destruction in research. This is a first in human history--creating human life for the sole purpose of using it as a natural resource and destroying it.
Beyond that, the comment about "specific diseases" is a typically veiled reference to human cloning research. Yet, the editorial doesn't mention that the IPSCs have already done that very thing and that the lines are now being used in drug testing, etc.
And please do not make the naive mistake that it would stop with embryonic stem cells taken from custom made embryos. There are many valuable embryonic and fetal tissues to be studied or used as potential treatment modalities. There is no way that a newspaper that represents--and drives--the views of the Liberal Intellectual Elite will draw any reasonable line over any research on such tissues. Once the artificial womb is perfected that would permit embryos to be implanted and gestated, it will be Katy bar the door!
And lest you think I exaggerate, remember New Jersey has already legalized cloned fetal farming. The Feds outlawed it, but that isn't remarkable since the only things that actually get outlawed are those areas of research that can't yet be done. Besides, the prohibition--always subject to rescission when "the scientists" are ready to enter the field--does not apply to embryos and fetuses gestated in artificial uteruses.
There are powerful forces among us who insist on no brakes in biotech. They want unborn life to be considered the equivalent of chopped liver. If their views prevail, human exceptionalism will be flushed down the toilet and we will cease to have the right to call ourselves a moral society.
Labels: Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Human Cloning. Dickey Amendment. New York Times.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:20 AM
26 Comments
26 Comments:
"The amendment... prohibits the use of federal funds to support scientific work that involves the destruction of human embryos (as happens when stem cells are extracted) or the creation of embryos for research purposes."
Let the phony clone-banning bills be introduced!
Thanks for all your posts regarding the lifting of the ESCR ban. It is refreshing to see this clarity of information in the midst of all the propaganda. Did you have a post sometime recently regarding the difficulty of obtaining embryos from fertility clinics for research? I would like to reread it.
Maybe I missed it, but I could not find a search feature for the blog posts.
I have heard (more than once--including a quote from my House Representative, Brian Bilbray, a Republican) people saying that if these embryos are to be destroyed anyway, then they should at least be put to good use. I think that way of thinking is sad and completely beside the point.
In the first place, we need to start questioning the methods that result in so many embryos left frozen in fertility clinics.
Secondly,just because the embryos are there doesn't mean that we should use them for research, even if there were no other adult stem cell alternatives. However, since there are adult stem cells that seem to be a perfectly good substitute for embryonic stem cells, the question should be moot. The reason it is not is purely political, not scientific, as you point out in your posts.
Hi Heather.
"...people saying that if these embryos are to be destroyed anyway, then they should at least be put to good use. I think that way of thinking is sad and completely beside the point."
I agree. One of the problems with this line of thinking is that it yields legitimacy to embryos existing outside of a mother's womb. The situation may be likened to experiments admitting data on live human subjects during the Nazi holocaust. The Nazi's conducted horrible experimentation on living humans that would be condemned by almost everyone today. However the experiments evidently yielded possibly very interesting data, the likes of which we may still not have ways of of obtaining using ethical experimentation. But we should not use this data or ever consider it because it was obtained in such an unethical way.
The same principle holds here I believe. While the embryos that have been created may "just go to waste" (like the data by the Nazis), that does not justify experimentation on them.
That line of thinking also assumes a utilitarian ethic. In other words, we are going to have a dead embryo in any case, so let's make the means of the death of the embryo to our advantage. Well, many people are not utilitarians and may object to the "they're going to die anyway" argument solely on the grounds that the means of an action contribute to determining its morality.
Well, this is what happens when, as in the Woody Allen line, "we want the eggs." This is wrong for the same reason i.v.f. is wrong, and that's why we must not do i.v.f. When we disrespect life, we disrespect life. It's not that the embryoes are persons; it's that life is not to be created this way that is the reason not to do i.v.f. Can't have ca, and eat it too. No matter which way we get to the conclusion it's the same, except that the sounder argument involves not allowing i.v.f. and not wanting its "benefits," period.
When it comes with a cost, it's NOT a benefit. Can't have it both ways. Look -- they're talking about artificial wombs. Well, what did anyone expect once there was the birth control pill. My father used to say to me, don't be a stupid American female. For example, he meant don't pay more for the economy size. He was referring to the habit of the American woman to buy bills of goods and to the habit of merchandizing in America of being aware of, nurturing, and exploiting that habit. It's not just what's on the supermarket shelf; it's what "science" sells as well. The birth control pill, the i.u.d., subcutaneous devices, the patch, etc., came out; despite the risks, women took and used them, just as they did psychotropic medications, etc. For the sake of convenience. Now there's stuff to mess with nature by "liberating" women from the inconvenience of monthly periods that their bodies need by design. Of course artificial wombs seem even more convenient. Convenience is what gets these things in the door which women are dumb enough to open, with men wanting them to as well, when it comes knocking.
They did this with animals first. Their lives were not valued. Of course they do it with us and don't value our lives now. That's the point human exceptionalism misses and that hobbles it.
Actually, the Nazis very much valued the lives of animals, much more than human beings. There is a great book I just read about Nazi experimentation on humans called "Doctors from Hell" by Vivien Spitz, one of the court reporters of the Nuremberg trials.
It turns out that much of the "scientific" experimentation done on humans by the Nazis was not very useful at all. I do not want to get into the comparison between the concentration camp prisoners and embryos, although all are human beings and therefore persons, but the point is that the information that embryonic stem cell research will give us is similar to the Nazi experimentation--it will not give us any useful information that could not be learned in a completely moral way, given the recent advances with the pluripotent cells.
I'm not talking about Nazis, I'm talking about scientific research, and post-Nuremberg scientific research. I don't see example here of how the Nazis very much valued the lives of non-human animals. My point, again, is: CAN'T HAVE CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. We lost the right to call ourselves a moral society when we started trying to do that. As for human exceptionalism if it wants to prevail it has to change its stance on animal experimentation and get away from the view of non-human animals that the Catholic Church has been brainwashing into people for centuries -- the same Catholic Church whose Vatican now endorses euthanasia and assisted suicide and murder.
lathe,
"the same Catholic Church whose Vatican now endorses euthanasia and assisted suicide and murder."
If you're talking about human assisted suicide and euthanasia and murder, then this is simply not at all true. Please show me where in the Catechism or in any binding document any such endorsement has been made.
"[T]the same Catholic Church whose Vatican now endorses euthanasia and assisted suicide and murder."
This statement is beyond perplexing and verging the preposterous.
Sorry, perhaps that is pushing the discussion to be religious, but I just do not see how such a claim can be made. If you mean that the Church endorses the murder etc. of animals, then I'll drop it.
Well you guys are wrong. The Vatican has said now that it's ok for someone to say they don't want life support any more, not just because no one should be made to suffer (as, the kindly-looking argument is, one might have to do if the church wouldn't let one ask to be disconnected without risking hell, or whatever the church has been holding over one's head and been terrorizing and brainwashing one with all one's life and one's parents' etc. lives before one) -- but "in order not to be a financial burden on one's family or the community." That's right, guys, it's in a pamphlet a Catholic diocese-run organization that pulls plugs on people as 'guardians' shows those who stand up for the person's right to live. In fact it does it claiming it's doing it because the victim is Catholic, even when the victim isn't Catholic. The Vatican sent a Cardinal over here to tour the Catholic dioceses months ago, and this organization is still operating as per usual. What I just described is euthanasia, assisted suicide (someone wants off life support and someone takes them off it, it's assisted suicide), and murder (they do it because the Church says it's ok and to do it, even when the person wants to continue to live -- and I've seen that happen with my own eyes, and know of it having happened in other instances, and that's what happens as the result of why the Church endorsed this stuff in the first place). That's the Catholic Church for you. In my own church, the Greek Orthodox, it's still what people THINK the Roman Catholic Church would consider it. A lot of devout Catholics find it shocking and are outraged by it, but that's how it is now. At least according to the diocese-run organization that I've personally seen murder someone at the behest of a hospital, in a situation in which people had appealed to the Church to intervene. The Church has been utilitarian in its attitude and supported the utilitarianism of science which has made science a danger to humanity from way back in the history of western science. I suppose if I'd been raised in it I wouldn't like hearing that, but it's true and that's why, despite the things I like about it, I'm glad I wasn't.
And the Catholic cemetery here won't let one put "murdered" on the headstone of such a victim, even though the person themself would want it and that is what Catholics in town consider what the Catholic organization that did it and the bishop who refused to intervene to have done. It wouldn't look nice, now, would it. Well when there's too much emphasis on "nice" what isn't nice somehow ends up happening a lot and everything possible is done to prevent people from seeing it. Which applies to animal research laboratories as well, of course, and we've got those because of the doctrine that non-human animals don't have souls. Also we've had priests molesting young boys. Well we've got what I just said, too, and the whole world has to suffer the consequences via the culture of death, which there are already enough idiots pushing who don't even come from religions that everybody thinks would never endorse such a thing.
(Had I gone to parochial school and had it been the old days the nuns would have broken forests of rulers on me and I'd have given them strokes or near-strokes, I'm sure. Unless one wants to say that I wouldn't think as I do if I had, but that's exactly part of my point. But I'm talking not theology, but history of science and phenomena contributing to societal attitudes here.)
Lanthe,
Show me a Vatican document.
Above where I said that the Church has supported the utitarianism of science, I should have said not only supported, but fomented. Well there's no way around it, SHS, the Church is a big player in the life/ethics issue and its own bifurcation is part of the whole problem and has in large part created it, and the issue can't be addressed without considering how it got to be what it is.
Bobby: It's Ianthe, not Lanthe. Looks like small "l" in print but it's an "I." I wouldn't touch the Vatican with a ten-foot pole, despite (well I'd make an exception re the library) its having the largest and best astrological library in the world, where the astrologer I apprenticed with, who was Catholic, studied, at the same time as the Church teaches against that science, or so I'm told by Catholics who have told me it's against their religion, while some astrologers I know are devout Catholics; the bifurcation and confusion are not limited to one issue. In any event I don't know how I could literally show it to you over the internet. I suggest you inquire as to the Vatican policy yourself, and you can be assured re the answer that way. My cousin, who is Catholic (his mother was Italian), and who taught in a Catholic school here for years (as I did myself for several years) and knows the bishop in question well, called to protest and was told that according to the Vatican's policy it was fine; he said it doesn't matter what the Vatican says, it's the doctrine of the Church that matters, but his words fell on deaf ears; he's absolutely furious. A lot of people are shocked and outraged over it, as I was myself, but this is what is going on. I think it may not have been exactly trumpeted for obvious reasons. If it's a surprise to anyone here who opposes the culture of death, I'm glad I mentioned it, because in order to defeat the culture of death we have to know exactly what we're up against.
And oh yes they showed a pamphlet and put an asterisk next to the clause in question and everything. I've never seen such lowlives but they were able to citee the current policy of the Vatican, which has allowed them to continue in operation after the whole thing having been brought markedly to its attention, and I've seen that same Vatican policy referred to elsewhere. You can probably find confirmation via the internet very quickly. If the Vatican policy reflected that of traditional Catholic doctrine as much of the world still believes it to be, do you think Terry Schiavo or Eluana would be dead now?
Inthe,
First of all sorry about the name. The reason I ask for a Vatican document is because I need to see exactly where these people are getting this information from so I can show you the ACTUAL text that the Vatican puts out so that you can see that this pamphlet is either completely misrepresenting the Vatican's position or it is leaving many important details out that make a difference. I know many places where I can find the Church's teachings on euthanasia (and I can show you them if you wish). But until you show me WHAT (capps for emphasis, not yelling) the Vatican put out that you think is wrong, I can not help you.
The real problem is that people don't check original Vatican sources or that "progressive" and "liberal" Catholic churches wrench something out of context or selectively quote Vatican documents to fit their own agenda. And when you read the actual; Vatican documents in their context, it becomes clear that it is not saying anything near what someone was making out to say (whether intentional or unintentional). I see this happen online ALL THE TIME. If you were to read anything by Catholics for a Free Choice, for example, you would think that the Church has NO PROBLEM with abortion. But show me what CFFC is quoting, I will show you the original documents and prove that the documents are not at all saying what CFFC is trying to make them say.
OK? Is this fair? You're making a claim that the Catholic Church teaches something. Fair enough. But you need to show me what document you have in mind. Here, let's look at the Catechsim paragraph 2276 and 2277 (http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/fifth.html )
2276 Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible.
"2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons.
It is morally unacceptable.
Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.
The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded."
Now, come to think of it, the next two paragraphs may be what this pamphlet has in mind:
"2278 Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of "over-zealous" treatment.
Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted.
The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.
2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted.
The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable
Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity.
As such it should be encouraged."
Here the Catechism makes a distinction between ordinary and extra-ordinary care. It also makes the moral distinction between willing death and the means by which the patient dies. So this may be part of what the pamphlet is referring to, I don't know, but I'd be glad to discuss the above paragraphs more if you find them troubling, or anything else the Vatican has put out. But let's look at what the Vatican actually teaches and not what people say it teaches. Take care.
I know, it shocked me too. But that's what we're dealing with now, and "giving permission" to "want to be removed from life support" "if one doesn't want to be a financial burden to one's family or the community" is utilitarianism, "duty to die," and, at bottom, as is often the case with assisted suicide, not just euthanasia, which is bad enough as it is, but just plain murder. Artfully, it cloaks it in "nice" terms and puts the onus (replete with guilt and social pressure) on the person him- or herself, who is already in the most vulnerable possible position. This is why there are "living wills," and I have a feeling that research into connections with Catholicism re "living wills" would be fruitful. The right to life person of the local diocese wasn't even returning my calls until I called the state council of bishops made her do it, and then she let me know when the plug was goig to be pulled which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't called the state council of bishops and said it would be unless I could do something legally to stop it, and told me that the reason for "living wills" is "to get rid of the elderly and the disabled to save costs," and then she tried to talk me into being angry at my mother(who'd been duped into signing one by the same attorney who brought the plug-pullers into her life) for having put me "in this position," among other things that her title would have suggested she should do otherwise, and tried to find out if I'd be around to protect the family property after the murder or would be leaving town, and then, after the murder, she was quoted extensively in the local Catholic newspaper going on and on about the legitimacy of "living wills." Our own priest, who had converted from Catholicism (I suspect because he wanted to marry; our church requires that priests marry before being ordained and given a church), was no help in the end and said "I'm not so sure it's the wrong thing." Because he's still really what he was, and had I known that he'd actually consulted in another case with a parishioner who'd pulled the plug on their own family member after having had the {"privilege" of following the hospital's agenda), I'd never have let him visit our home or at the hospital once, and I'm furious that the situation ever arose in which he came to town, wonderful though he had seemed to be. No, the doctrine of the Catholic Church isn't getting followed. But then they were supposed to keep their hands off the kids, too. Oh well, we're just mere mortals -- an attitude that explains why I consider Christianity antithetical to humanism.
Bobby: The Catholic Church is not my world. If you want to know what they were citing, you'd have to see the literature they used as justification for their position, and offered. SHS might be able to put you in touch with me via email address.
Ianthe,
Sure, that would be great. I have no problem giving out my email bobby_bambino@jillstanek.com Thanks.
And Bobby, I find the whole Catholic church troubling, despite its better manifestations and those things in its theology with which I agree, I think that it, like Christianity itself, and even moreso, is one of the worst things that ever happened, and that its stifling of the human spirit which had found much higher manifestation in the civilizations which Christianity helped to destroy is unforgiveable. I'm not interested in what its doctrine is or what distinctions it makes, and I'm glad I didn't grow up having to think anything it says matters. My mother wanted to live, and we are NOT Catholic. Who is anyone or anything Catholic to impose its doctrine on anyone, let alone someone who isn't even Catholic, and whose own priest (he caved at the end; he'd been raised Catholic and just couldn't stand up to authority oe go against "the Church" -- don't get me started) had told them it was not ok with her religion? Plus it was brought into the situation precisely so that people wouldn't suspect that it would pull a plug. Look how you're going on about doctrine and distinctions that are totally irrelevant to me or the situation I tried to savre a life from. No one cares about the damned Catholic church except those unfortunate enough to have been born into it and brainwashed into thinking it's important -- and the rest of the world on which it tries to impose its views. I happen not to be able to hear "Christ" without thinking "that SOB," and when I see a movie where Christians are being thrown to the lions I cheer the Romans (who were acting parly out of self-preservation and I only wish they'd prevailed in the end) and the lions, but I am pro-life in terms of the issues SHS addresses. It's largely the Catholic Church's way of being that has antagonized many AGAINST the pro-life position. You wouldn't want to hear me continue here and neither would SHS. I can direct you to where you can find what I'm citing off-site, but there's no point in telling me about Catholic doctrine. I'm not Catholic, I couldn't care less about the Catholic Church other than the damage I've seen it do, and those of us who aren't shouldn't have to be interested in it or affected by it.
We can already cease to call ourselves a moral society.
Our society disobeys Leviticus all the time, if that's what you mean by morality.
Michael Anissimov: Leviticus might be your obsession, it isn't mine.
And with that, and by the way my views on the Catholic Church go back to the 1970, I have to return to trying to straighten out the mess Catholic "guardians" caused in order to try to achieve their own ends and to frustrate my stopping them and my saving my mother's lives and those of others from them, to the extent it can be straightened out considering that they did succeed in killing someone who didn't want to die. It's not my job to straighten them out; it's the job of outraged Catholics to do that. Any institution that burned people at the stake on grounds of doctrine, scientific, religious, or otherwise, and that has affected science the way the Catholic Church has, and that by its very nature squelches the individual spirit and intellect and imposes authoritianism, isn't going to become enlightened, or non-utilitarian, or non-bifurcated, the pro-life theology is very nice but it also served other purposes in the past and is being countermanded by "cafeterial Catholicism" these days, and the "distinctions" and "guidelines" just mentioned are of no interest to non-Catholics and a symptom, viewed from the outside, of the enslavement the Church imposes, plus remind one of -- bioethics, ethics committees, ethical guidelines. Which in fact arose from the whole Church and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin thing.
I'm sure I've raised enough of a ruckus here. And I damned well know I'm right and that those it offends have been raised not to be able to see it, which is part of what I'm raising a ruckus about, because what I'm talking about is a very important component of the death culture, which the Church, for all its professed theological position, didn't stop from arising (because it helped bring it about by ts very nature) and hasn't managed to beat back, now, has it.
One last thing: People can go on all day about guidelines and regulations and specifics and quoting things from them, but it's overall and underlying attitude that determines everything; the rest is just trees that have been planted deliberately to obscure what forest one is in.
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