President Obama purports to separate Politics from Science. Is that what the reinstatement of using embryonic stem cells does? Despite the objection of many, which objection is based on moral values rather than politics, Mr. Obama has overturned the ban of the previous administration. Others object to the ban as they believe it’s based on Roman Catholic teachings and state that Catholics want to have babies implanted but not have the leftover embryos thrown away.
Not so fast. Catholic teaching promotes abstinence outside of marriage, prohibits artificial birth control and abortion, including chemically-induced abortions stemming from the so-called “morning after” pill, and also prohibits pregnancy from artificial means. That’s right. Catholics should not be using lab-created embryos as science is involved at that point, not God. Catholics are to “be open” to pregnancy, not to achieve it at all costs.
Embryonic stem cells are from embryos. Contrary to the belief of Mr. Bill Clinton, embryos have been fertilised and are future babies. Creating embryos for scientific use, or shifting embryos created in order to have babies, to experimental use, puts us squarely in the evil territory of Dr. Mengele. Incidentally, why should the government fund this sort of research? If it was viable wouldn’t others be putting up their money?
While the current objective is perceived as benign, we don’t know to what lengths people will go to get the stem cells they need; in many cases, in order to cure an existing child, couples have conceived a second child for use of its umbilical cord. Imagine for a moment that you’re the second child. How would you feel, knowing that you weren’t conceived because your parents wanted another child, but rather that they wanted a cure for your sibling? Would you truly feel loved?
These days, clinics are advertising designer babies, where you get to choose the attributes of your future child (though thankfully stopped offering this due to outrage), which, while not using stem cells, seems a bit creepy. It leads us down the slippery slope of playing God. Some countries outlaw use of abortion for the purpose of choosing a babies gender; this is popular in India, though illegal.
These sorts of choices, lead us down the road to having a skewed population; take a look at any country that values a boy child over a girl child, to the extent that in population-controlled China, girls are regularly neglected, given up for adoption to other countries or outright killed. They lack the value of a boy. While you might not believe it could be possible in the US, even here, girls are aborted because parents prefer to have a boy.
Mr. Obama has put no constraints on the use of embryonic stem cells. That’s frightening and some states are introducing legislation to limit stem cell research because of it.
October 16, 2009 at 12:25 am |
Destruction of embryos for stem cells is no longer a problem:
Because of the discovery of yamanaka factors we can now take a patch of skin a millimeter thin and turn those skin cells into stem cells for that particular person
October 21, 2009 at 3:14 pm |
Really, how?
Such a statement requires proof, or an explanation?
October 21, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
Really, how?
Such a statement usually requires proof, or an explanation? Please, explain.
October 22, 2009 at 12:35 am |
i went to a genetic update conference and above is pretty much what was said
try searching “yamanaka factors” along with stem cells and you’ll probably find a few things like articles from Nature magazine or at least some mention on wikipedia
stem cells become other types of cells when different “factors” are introduced
Shinya Yamanaka discovered 4 factors(called yamanaka factors) that reprogrammed somatic cells into an embryonic stem cell state
this was discovered around nov-dec 2008 i believe