Stemming Evil. It is in the nature of all predator species to care only about themselves. It is also in the nature of EVERY species to try to carry on that species.
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Science has afforded choices we never would have had in Nature, such as transferring organs from one person to another, and has consequently produced for us moral difficulties that are not part of the natural order.
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Today we are presented with moral quandaries unique to our time, including my topic today, stem-cell research.
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Very early in the development of a human being, individual cells can become any kind of cell, producing any kind of organ. The period during which the cells of every human being can accommodate to any situation and become anything the body needs, is fleeting. If these cells are seized during that short period of their existence, they MIGHT be made to create tissues of our choice, no matter what nature intended them to do.
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So we have persuaded ourselves that we are ENTITLED to STEAL "stem cells", these special, all-adaptive cells, and redirect them to goals they never had in Nature, in order to fix some defect (tho we are never to utter the forbidden word "defect") in the person we move those cells into.
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But those cells don't belong to anyone but the person they are part of, the embryonic human being that is building itself with those cells. We have no right to "harvest" such cells at the cost of killing that baby.
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This is especially the case in that stem cells can be found in adult human beings: in fat, of which we as a Nation are exceeding rich!
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It is bizarre that Congress has banned human cloning out of fear that babies would be created just to satisfy the demand for "spare parts" of the person cloned, including parts that cannot be removed without killing the clone, such as the liver or heart. That fear underlies a refusal to permit any cloning, even when it has no such purpose but only to reproduce a particular person, for whatever innocent reason, even egotism.
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But at the same time as Congress bans even benign cloning, it is considering legalizing the creation of babies to be chopped up, in cell-size bites, to supply stem cells to create the very "spare parts" that Congress has banned cloning to prevent! Grotesque.
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Congress is thinking of permitting "surplus" embryos created in reproductive clinics that would otherwise be thrown out, to be chopped up for parts. That is inhuman, and must be banned.
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It doesn't take much imagination to visualize disreputable "scientists" deliberately creating far more embryos than would ever be needed to give an otherwise infertile couple a chance to have a baby. So in legalizing the use of embryos from reproductive clinics, Congress would be creating industrial manufacture of babies for spare parts. We must not permit that.
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Benign cloning should be permitted. The creation of embryos that will never be allowed to become children should be forbidden, absolutely, on pain of death to the "scientists" of reproductive clinics.
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Indeed, why on Earth are we permitting in vitro fertilization at all? The world is hugely overpopulated. Infertility is a blessing upon the planet, Nature's way of saying "Enuf is enuf."
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How can we justify in vitro fertilization on a planet where the population grows by over 70 million a year, mostly in the poverty-ravaged Third World; where over 14 million people, mostly children, starve to death each year; and where scores of millions of children need adoptive parents?
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In vitro reproduction is hugely expensive, so benefits only the well-to-do. It diverts science from the many to the few. When it also creates babies that will be killed because they aren't "needed" — as tho whether one is "needed" is the criterion for who is to live and who die — it becomes quintessentially evil and must be suppressed.
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Innocent human life is a sacred trust. Government has the obligation to forbid murder, in all its forms, and punish it with death. If we need spare parts, let's chop up murderers!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:03 PM