Redstate

Refreshing contaminated lines already used by researchers ( with federal funding ) with new lines that have already been created in a lab to human experimentation by the governemnt seem like streching the truth some?

Especially when a majority 57% of republicans support ESC research.  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=24197

Is almost as delightful as your inability to catch a point.

Do you have an argument, or did you read someone else's writing and decide to comment here?

Read this and then decide for yourself whether this conversation is worth pursuing.

bug your congresscritters into designing and supporting a bill that would require that feterlized embryo's be put up for adoption rather than destroyed or given to science.  Legally it's fully compatible with Doe since there is no health or welfare issues with the mother.  This turns moralaly questionable IVF into a morally exciting new begining for hundreds of thousands of new children every year.

Of course, you're 100 per cent right in the substance of this post, but I do have a question for you - why is it, do you think, that we are able to talk about the end of Roe as being something within our grasp? Have we ever before as a society plunged into such self-gratifying madness, and then returned from it to sanity? I can't recall it happening, although hope springs eternal.

I wonder if it's too much to hope for that we'd see it occur twice in our lifetimes.

no one here has an open mind to alternal views?

Does the stem-cell research involve using cloned embryos or is it just embryos that are the byproduct of in-vitro?

If we're talking about the latter case, then is in-vitro fertilization itself a process that should be reformed?

Should we be fertilizing more eggs than are necessary to create a child?

Should we be injecting women with 3-9 zygotes in the hopes that only one or two will develop into a fetus?

Should there be a law that no more than 2 can be injected at a time?

Or should the law allow fertilization clinics unlimited discretion when it comes to deciding how many zygotes to inject into a woman, thus giving clinics the legal power to coerce women into signing a consent form that allows a doctor to inject her with "as many zygotes as are necessary" (even 20-30) with the express pre-authorization given by the woman to the doctor to "remove" (abort) all remaining zygotes after one begins to develop past a certain threshold?

This is an area of law where the lines become blurry to me.  I can understand Frist's hedging on this issue (as Orrin Hatch did back in 1999).  

I don't know where I stand on the issue yet.  I don't like abortion, but I believe that there are cases where the woman's right to control her own body trumps other concerns (such as when a doctor believes that continuing the pregnancy will kill her, or when she became pregnant after being raped).

But if we're going to take the position that every fertilized egg is a full human being with the same rights that I have, then we have to eventually call for a reform of in-vitro practices.

I'm going to monitor this thread to see where everyone else stands on this issue.  I'm very interested in knowing where our members stand on this.

That question, which we have seen asked here literally hundreds of times, is so utterly devoid of any worth or relevance to the discussion at hand that it tends to make us skeptical towards the reasoning powers of those who ask it.

You may as well ask me, if my wife and four children were in a burning building in different rooms, and I could save either my wife or my four children, but not both, what would I do?

I would hope that even a simpleton would understand that whichever choice I made had nothing to do with either my wife being more human than my children or vice versa.

And besides which, decisions of that nature aren't made aforehand while we're all comfortably chatting via RedState in our PeeJays. There's not one of us who knows what they'd do in any given situation like that until they are there, and anyone who tells you different is lying. But that's not the point.

The point is that dragging out that senseless question establishes nothing one way or the other about the essential humanity of embryos, and is besides a useless and emotionally laden hypothetical, which makes it a great "argument" for liberals. But not conservatives.

Thomas, I recognize honest passion when I see it, filtered as it is through the dehumanizing lens of the cold internet and my LCD screen. You're a credit to your countrymen. Regardless of where the stem cell debate, or any other, goes - the debate will have been enriched for your partcipation.

where am I on stem cells? Utterly clueless, since I got the wrong PhD. If the claims are true, then I am for it. If the claims are false, I am against. I am just clever enough to know that assessment of those claiims is beyond my expertise; with respect to personal conviction, suffice to say, were anyone to ever come knocking on my door for my family's embryos, I'd escort them off the property with my Louisville slugger. Nor do I have any desire to live longer than is my allotted time; my theological perspective makes such a desire genuinely absurd.

whither society goes at large however is simply not within the realm of my desire to try and account for in my political deccisions. Ultimately its a sience and medical issue, not a political one, and so I retreat to the easier safety of ambivalence.  

But man, I admire your passion and your conviction. I can muster similar conviction on other issues, but I admire you for yours on this one.

political advice? how about breaking free of the political system entirely? this is a matter of hearts and minds, and as long as you slave yourself to the political system you're lost.

I really hate it when people switch their position on something for personal gain. Nancy Reagan was an ardent pro-lifer until her husband got sick. Now she wants to end life on the mistaken belief it might have saved her husband. I hate that. These people are WORSE than Liberals. At least Liberals maintain their convictions no matter how wrong it is. You don't see Liberals caving in on their Issues.

We must convince Republicans to stop supporting Stem Cells just because they have friends or Family who are sick. Some things are more important!!!

. . .I am not a believer in the position that any use of embryonic stem cells should be verboten, I am inclined to be concerned about any tendency among my countrymen to be overly obsessed with their mortality.  Larry Niven is probably my favorite hard SF writer, and he--better than probably anyone else--has spun a tale that vividly describes the dystopia that a world that is willing to extend lifespan at all costs is likely to face.  For that reason, I implore you to continue your cause--if nothing else, you will do more to keep the rest of us honest than anything I can conceive of at the moment.

not so much a strech when what was the percent, 66%, of Americans don't consider unborn children human enough to live outside of their mother's womb. So is it really that hard to contemplate a situation where the fertilized eggs are slowly matured to fetuses, but are no longer used to collect stem cells, but the side effects of harsh medications, the significance of increased levels of certain chemicals to the body...ect.

americans have lost their sense of morality, and i absolutly love how those screaming liberals who claim the "nazi soldiers" are torturing those poor "insurgents" (aka terrorists) use the exact same arguement they have been fighting against to rationalize stem cell research

lunacy

for some of my really bad grammer...i was in the moment =D

americans have lost their sense of morality, and i absolutly love how those screaming liberals who claim the "nazi soldiers" are torturing those poor "insurgents" (aka terrorists) ARE using that exact same arguement they have been fighting against to rationalize stem cell research [sic]

The fight in Washington isn't about doing research with stem cells.  It's about federal funding for research with embryonic stem cells.  Other stem cell research is already allowed federal funding, and privately funded research with embryonic stem cell is allowed.

As long as this is a fight about research with stem cells, we'll lose.  If this can be restored to a fight about federal funding for one particular kind of that research, we can win.  But we can't do that if our side even gets sloppy.

Otherwise, you're right, I think.

it will be for a much simpler reason: most people in America today simply do not believe that when a sperm meets an egg, God flicks an on-off switch that marks the beginning of a human life. They don't believe it. I don't believe it.

Appeals to Catholic Church authority won't convince us of it, and science, despite your claims to the contrary, strongly suggests that it is not true. Tell yourself that people are scum all you like, but that's the source of the dispute, and if you want to win this debate you'd be better off trying to convince people--which isn't the same thing as shouting at them, nor playing word games, nor making appeals to religious authorities they do not recognize them--that embryos are children, instead of taking it as given that we realize embryos are children and we will happily kill them to prolong our lives because we are scum.

1. I don't there's a single moment. It takes nine months. A sunrise, not a light switch. If creation of the world can take billions of years instead of a week, I don't see why it can't take nine months for the creation of a human being.
   
2. Just because you can't specify the exact moment a fundamental change occurs, does not mean you can't say that certain moments are before it and certain moments are after it.

Lots of us had our math teachers try to totally blow our minds with something similar once: is one a large number? is two? is three? is four? But there is no number so large you can't get to by adding one to it, so where is the line?

There are any number of other examples I could give.

with modern American thinking.  We gladly catch ourselves up in debate about ridiculous and unknowable details such as when God sends down a soul to a fetus, or which magical brain function constitutes human life.  I offer this up as 100%, undisputable fact: a fetus, no matter at what stage of development, is human.  Even by the most reductionist biological standard, that of DNA analysis, it is human, 23 chromosomes and all.

So the question is not when a fetus get its soul or some such nonsense, but what Thomas so clearly articulates in his story: just what are we willing to do a human to benefit ourselves?  Are we willing to create a human to harvest his or her cells and then destroy them?  If you support stem cell research, then your answer is yes.  It is a criticism of our utilitarian thinking; no appeal to the Catholic Church is necessary to make the case against stem cell research on the basis of the violation of simple human dignity.

But supporters will retort that allowing people to suffer with diseases like Alzheimer's is also a violation of human dignity.  Hogwash.  We have put our heads so far up the rear ends of secularism we can't see the light of day.  Disease is natural, as is death, and no human can ultimately escape suffering.  A person with a more...spiritual outlook on life comes to understand this.  Our modern drive to escape every form of suffering that might possibly afflict us is driving the worst moral atrocities of our day, atrocities like abortion, "mercy killing," and now stem cell research.  Bravo to Thomas for putting it more articulately than I ever could have.

I wouldn't give up hope based on the actions of Bill Frist. This move is that special combination of transparently politically calculated and politically disastrous that Democrats know all too well from their leaders. This move is NOT going to make people like me forget the appalling lack of sense and ethics he showed in the Terri Schiavo case and the little "is AIDS spread through sweat and tears?" episode; it will alienate everyone who was not appalled by his behavior in the Schiavo case. I'll still think of him as Dr. Nick Riviera, and the most dedicated anti-abortion activists will think of him as Dr. Mengele.

This makes John Kerry's positioning on the Iraq war look skillful and courageous. Frist is never going to be President. Brownback has a better shot.

"When we seriously contemplate making people to use them as experimental tissue"

That's not what the House Bill is about, as you can see for yourself:

`(1) The stem cells were derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment.

http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2005/05/stem-cell-research-bill.html

is that he hasn't flipped, and he believes his father wouldn't have flipped either on this.

Weird thing is when the issue comes up everyone runs to get Nancy or Ronald, but nobody asks Michael his opinion.

So we know this:

The House passed its bill 238-194 on 5/24/05

The Senate bill will pass in September.

Presuming that Senator Brownback is not capable of amending the legislation (and he probably won't be, unfortunately) the bill will go to the President for his expected veto.  (And we've got a whole host of new issues if he doesn't veto it, but I'm pretty sure he'll relish using his first veto opportunity for this legislation.)

While we can expect the senate to probably gin up enough votes to override a veto, the House is in quite a bit better shape.  It takes 2/3 of the House (whether it's the full 435 or less depends on whether anyone dies or resigns between now and then) so that is 290 votes to override the veto.

I find it very hard to believe that they'll be able to get 52 Members to switch their votes.  Maybe a dozen or two, but not the whole 52.

So a good idea is to look at the 180 Republicans and 14 Democrats who voted against the House bill and encourage them to stand firm and vote to sustain the veto.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll204.xml

much what Thomas wrote.  We have convinced ourself it isn't true, so we can justify experiments and abortions, and before long we will have theraputic cloning, and the slipper slope will be more than engaged, and as long as you can justify expirements with "it will save lives" there is going to be somebody sitting their nodding their heads saying "yes."

You mean the media would stoop to such a dastardly scheme as to only quote or interview people that are friendly to their agenda?

As immortalized in the great movie: "I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling in Casablanca."

there is already a push for theraputic cloning in the works, it isn't going to be long before that one wins as well, and we are going to be well on our way to scientific depravity, where the god's of science get to decide what is or isn't a worthy life.

Just part for the course when it comes to the MSM.

The point of this piece isn't about the specific bill, but about the general trend and the outcomes. "Therapeutic" cloning, and the resulting slicing and dicing, are next.

But briefly:

(1) Does it matter?

(1a) Potentially both.

(2) Yes.

(3) No.

(4) No.

(5) Yes.

(6) Absolutely not.

I have no intention of editorializing here.  I just thought the RedState folks, especially Augustine, Thomas, Krempasky, and Trevino would be interested to read the response from Bill Ardolino at INDCJournal (first item):

http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/001948.php

Of course, if you have already seen it, I apologize for underestimating your blogosphere-roving (hee hee, I said "rove") prowess.  Obviously, we are far from a Republican consensus on the issue of ESC research.

For the record, I'd say my position lies somewhere between the RedState position and the INDCJournal position--not absolutist "pro-life" (though yes, life does begin at conception) but not persuaded by the specious "falling behind the rest of the world" argument either.  I stand with President Bush's restraint against throwing federal dollars at an ethically questionable and scientifically unproven practice.  I'm not prepared to relegate Sen. Frist to damnation for "selling out," but I'm also not prepared to grant him that his change of heart was entirely for noble reasons, either.

As far as I'm concerned, RedState should stand strong, recognizing that this debate is far from over.  (Hmm, I guess I did editorialize a little).

If I ever need another kidney, I hope that they will be able to clone the one I have left.

Is if they learned how to clone nerve cells. You clearly need some new tissue.

As you clearly have read someone else's story then attributed it to me, but having read your follow-up comment, I'm convinced you're just that slow. So my question: Where do you get any idea that this topic is about the morality of the underlying act per se, instead of the proper response to the political changes that surround it? Where are my citations to Catholic teaching? (Incidentally, if you knew as much as you think you do, you'd know that the phrases "people are scum" and "humans are depraved" are actually contrary to Catholic teaching. But thanks for playing.) Oh, and do tell me what science shows that the union of a human sperm and a human ovum is not, in fact, human.

We are probably going to take it on the chin for this one simply because it is going to be seen or at least played as a fringe position - allowing funding for research on already existing stem cell lines but not on those from embryos that are already going to be destroyed while people suffer from whatever debilitating disease we're supposed to believe this would cure regardless of whether that hopes is real or not) - particularly with so many Republicans voting for it.

If the President does veto this particular bill, then it makes his refusal to exercise any sort of fiscal discipline by threatening or using his veto authority even more inexcusable.  If the pork-ladened energy or transportation bills get signed into law while the President only exercises his veto for this, it could fracture the basis as those of us who held our noses over the $849 Billion Medicare Prescription drug benefit and $149 Farm Bill realize that there is nothing to be gained from supporting Republicans that dropped the ball on Social Security reform.  Moreover if the veto on the stem cell bill isn't overridden while the other two get signed into law, expect to be treated to a whisper campaign about "payoffs" to certain Republican Congressmen in the form of pork for their vote to sustain the veto.

Humans will always suffer from disease.  Sometimes it strikes in infancy, sometimes childhood, sometimes adulthood, and inevitably in old age.  Disease can result from genetics, from a lifetime of exposure, or simply the natural breakdown of metabolism and immunity over time.  The question for us as humans is how far are we willing to go to artificially alleviate all forms of human suffering?  And I would argue that, even if there are thousands of embryos out there with no hope of a future, there's no reason to exacerbate the problem (and waste money on it) when, as of yet, there is little proof those embryos will save other humans.  We can treat and even cure cancer without harming others, and I have faith we can do the same for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients if we put our collective scientific minds to it, rather than mindlessly swallow the agenda-driven fact lists our media and politicians feed us.

One could assume I'm a hopeless rube or a religious zealot, but you would be wrong on both accounts.

I'm clueless also on the stem cell debate.  But can you imagine what we would hear from a Democratic Majority Leader if Kerry had won?  Frist seems to be returning to his prefered position, after supporting Bush. Why isn't the Republican/conservative 'tent' big enough to allow this?  Why do we have to savage someone who disagrees with us in one or even many areas when politics is 'the art of the possible'?  Why do criticisms of Republicans always have to provide material for leftish 'talking points', resulting in us playing defense in front of the general public?

I'm not that irritated about non-vetos over the pork.  The line-item veto got tossed, and if we had that, it would be a nice way to handle pork.

And the presence or the absence of a President Kerry should have precisely no effect on this behavior.

We savage them to get them to do the right thing. If sending chocolates did the trick, I'd have an open account at Godiva right now.

although it isn't that I don't want him to veto the stem cell bill, but that I am frustrated with the fact that he seems reluctant to use it, when there is rediculous amounts of pork or other things in a bill that make it veto worthy.

I think Bush takes a hit on this, not sure about the party, but then Bush doesn't have to worry about reelection.

Where it may hit is the '06 midterms elections, but I suspect that the people this matters the most to as the main issue aren't in great enough numbers for it to make that big a difference.

but believe the SCOTUS has declared that one a no go.

I think they're right. I wish it were Constitutionally permissible, but I really don't think it is.

but in the end I don't think congress is willing to kill the method that makes bringing home the bacon a breeze.

I completely agree with you that Bush should have vetoed other bills.  The Farm bill is an abomination that should never have seen the light of day.  The Medicare boondoggle is just plain embarrassing.  Pretty much every appropriations bill should have been streamlined and cut by 5-10%.  And I could go on and on.

But, having said that, this bill is a good choice for his first veto.  He'll be derided in the MSM regardless (isn't that what they're their for?).  But vetoing this gives him another opportunity to explain what he's done.

Bush is the FIRST president to allow federal funds to be used on a limited, controlled set of pre-existing embryonic stem cells.  The Bush policy allows researchers to use those existing cells for basic research to see if, in fact, there really is the potential for practical applications of that research.

Bush's policy allows us to continue to have the very important ethical discussion about the costs of this research.

It is apparently all well and good for those who support unfettered embryonic stem cell research to dismiss the moral and ethical qualms that many others have about the implications of this research.   But for those of us that have legitimate qualms, worries, hesitations, or objections we get tarred as religious zealots out to smash science labs and revert to faith healing.

Scientific research in this area is morally complex.  And it seems, to me, that those that promote this type of research don't want to answer these moral questions and instead want to say "But we're gonna cure Grandma's alzheimer's and those troglodytes want to stop us."

If people won't even engage us to respond to those qualms, why should we trust them that they won't keep pushing the envelope and start cloning god knows what, mutating humans and animals, or creating other monstrosities in the sake of 'research'.  It doesn't take a science fiction author to come up with all sorts of nightmare scenarios.

But I might have digressed a bit.

the "people don't vote for my preferred position because they are scum" view sounds like an interesting variation on the lovely and always politically effective "people don't vote for my preferred positions because they are stupid" argument advanced countless times by Democrats.  It's emotionally if not rationally comforting, but it's just not very effective in winning people over.

And a Republican second. The fundamental belief that people are scum is not peculiar to this argument, but is a staple of conservative thought. It's why we trust selfish acts, like the market, and why the Constitution isn't set up to encourage so much kumbayaing, but rather to have mercilessly self-interested groups constantly at each others' throats.

When my mom was young, their house caught fire.  My grandma had just finished milking and was straining the milk.  All she could think to grab was the pail of milk, and that is all that they got out.  (All the people got out.)

No one remembers whether or not she threw the milk on the fire.  According to marchmoon, the milk was the only thing they owned of any value.  HEHE.

And I'm not sure that the genie can be put back into the bottle, but we can kill Roe and its progeny, and at least send this back to the States.

it's whether a fetus (embryo, actually, is the technical term at this stage) is a person, not whether it's alive and human, that is the question. Sperm and eggs are alive and human, as are skin cells, as are blood cells, etc. etc.

This is what I was criticizing. You guys will not win unless you engage this issue. (Frankly I don't think you'll win even if you do, because I simply don't think most people will find it convincing. But this lack of willingness to try is guaranteeing defeat.)

By those who believe that some humans aren't people. We've had a wonderful track record with that as a guiding principle.

Of course, suspected terrorists are demonstrably not people. That makes rendition a lot easier to stomach.

One problem I have with this article is the implication that there is something morally condemnable with the desire to heal sickness and relieve suffering. Sorry, but I have be blunt: that's just weird-- no: WEIRD. The desire to do these things is a very deep human instinct, part of our nature, perhaps even our biology. Can anyone imagine a world where we did not have such an urge? Would our species even be capable of existing? And even from a religious perspective, most of the miracles of Christ described in the New Testament were miracles of healing. To be sure, I can agree with Thomas that we ought not be using Frankensteinian means to achieve these goals, but the use of immoral means do not ever lead the conclusion that end itself is morally tainted.

Insofar as you took me to mean that the practice of medicine is bad, or that science for the sake of saving human lives and health is bad, you read more than was there.

My point, in that portion of the piece, was to say that we've developed a manifestly unhealthy approach to death and suffering, and that some of the actions we undertake to prevent those things are deranged and unbalanced.

but, here I go, repeating myself.

We have not changed, not in all of the thousands of years of recorded human history.  A common feature of the mythologies and social structures of many ancient societies was the belief that unless certain innocents were sacrificed to capricious deities or forces, crops would not grow, the sun would not rise, and death would overtake us all, or some other such obvious rot.  So some societies waged incessant warfare for the purpose of obtaining captives for the slaughter; others sacrificed their infants; still others their two-year-olds.  Whatever the identity of the victims, the logic, the principle was the same: for the sake of the preservation of of "civilization" and the "civilized order" and the lives it sustains, there must be death, sacrifice, slaughter; absent the slaughter of innocents as an originary element of social order, chaos and disorder would return society to the primal state of being - ontological violence.  Human sacrifice, in sum, was foundational to the metaphysics (it is still foundational to our own thought, if you read philosophy after Nietzsche closely enough; if chaos is the truth of being, then sacrifice is what you get on the concrete level of human social existence) and social systems of most ancient societies.

And we are no different.  Worse, probably, because we believe that our scientific knowledge, with its abstract, almost dematerialized understanding of the minutest particles of physical existence, and the occult power it bestows or promises, to create with them what we will, deceives us such that we believe, fools that we are, that what we are doing is essentially, ontologically different from what a Moloch worshipper was doing when he burned an infant alive in the brass arms of an idol.  We believe that a mode of knowledge itself changes the nature of an act; this is primitive thought in its essence; it is the fundamental notion of magic, alchemy, sorcery.  Indeed, we imagine that because we call what we do "science" that it ceases to be a regime of human sacrifice, that because we are not burning post-natal infants alive that were engaged in something essentially different.  Primitives!  In both systems, it is the sacrifice of innocent human beings that is said or thought to preserve the realm of the living, and that is all that matters.  

Anyone interested in a study of the epistemology of self-deception?

My skin cells are alive, and last time I checked they contained all 23 chromosomes, but when I scrape my knee I don't commit murder.  I don't think anyone would argue that ESC are living cells, and neither would people argue that they are not human cells.  I think the problem is that people just can not see a fertilized embryo as a person.  I have many examples, but won't post them here because I know it would just start a flame war.

While suffering, desease, and decay are part of the human condition there is no moral standing to extend or exacerbate those most human failings.  Science has advanced our human condition by leaps and bounds, children no longer die of simple illness and many times pain no longer holds back the elderly from a more active and full life.  

We should embrace these advances just as we embrace flight or nuclear energy.  Just because scientic exploration often leads to change does not mean we must fear it.

Skin cells unlike a fertilized embryo don't grow into a child.

if I would go so far as to say our attitude is "unhealthy". It's just the inevitable consequence of our success in this area. For the first time in history most people are well along in their lives before they encounter the dreath of someone to whom they are close. In the past that was something that altogether quite often hapeopned in childhood: a parent, a sibling or a friend died. Today children may lose at most a pet or some elderly relative they do not know very well. (I'm a bit of an anomly here as I lost both parents and a brother before I was 25). Although dealing with death in childhood is not pleasant or easy, when a person is 30 or 40 before they have to do so, it does seem to pack much more of an emotional wallop. For example, a friend of mine lost her father and mother-in law three years ago, the first such experience she had had, and it sent her life into a tail spin. She got divorced and is going through a rather classic "mid-life crisis" with a vengence.

On the other hand I do wonder if in the bad old days when people went through in this childhood it didn't make us more callous and perhaps even crueller. Maybe it's a trade off: neurotic behavior in adulthood vs. cold-heartedness earlier on.

that we are able to talk about the end of Roe as being something within our grasp?

The end of Roe is certainly a possibility.  But, in the end, it will likely wind up being a mostly empty victory because of RU-486.

The Battle over Abortion is one fought on moral and intellectual grounds, not legal grounds.  

when this first came out. Does anybody have a good explanation why Frist did this? It completely cuts him off from the religious right and the pro-life crowd, and I dare say the moderates/independents won't vote for him anyway...I guess it fits with his history of terrible politics.

Absolutely right.  The obfuscation and masquerade are working and will continue to work.  By appealing to the baser instincts, the experimenters will get their pork.

Am I really continuing the long tradition of animal sacrifices to the earth goddess, in order to get a bountiful harvest, when I apply a high nitrogen fertilizer to my lawn?

They can if manipulated sufficiently. You can extract the nucleus from a skin cell and implant it in a denucleated egg cell. If you then bathe it in some calcium, give it an electric shock to fuse the two together, and implant it in a womb, THEN the skin cell will grow into a human being mostly genetically identical to the person whose skin cell it was (although it would have mitochondrial DNA from the donor of the egg cell).

So, with sufficient manipulation, a skin cell can become a human being. The manipulation required to turn an IVF egg into a human being is a less, but not insubstantial. At the least, the frozen fertilized egg must be carefully thawed and then implanted with the use of specialized equipment.

I don't purport to know all the answers. But I will say that every time I hear the phrase "slice and dice human beings" used to describe the desires of the supporters of this research, I turn a little more against the ideologues and open my mind a littel more to the other side. When the question under debate is what constitutes a person, a human being, then assuming that opponents with differing views on that question are little better than Josef Mengele is not debating the issue; it assumes the conclusion under debate.

But tell me this: Assume that a large portion of the American public believes, in good faith, that non-whites, while human, are non-people. Do you treat their opinions respectfully?

Because, you see, the problem here is the elementary question of whether some humans are not people. Were my own views on this not already set, I'd still be leery of going there, for the possible consequences.

By the way: Note that the skin cells have to have something happen to them -- like, say, a series of operations and treatments -- to reach that point. Cruddy reasoning, bud.

I asked about animal sacrifices.

So I don't know why you guys are getting on Frist.  Can't you see he is just practicing his religious beliefs?

And Howard Dean said all Republicans were white Christians!  Clearly Bill Frist, like all heart surgeons, is a devotee of QUETZALCOATL.

I'm too inclined to make too many inappropriate jokes.

(with a more hopeful tone)

Oh please!

Why don't they do this to create the stem cell line?  Seems like that would bypass the issue since they are using discarded adult cells to create stem cells... unless once you put it into an egg it make it unethical again ( does it count as conception? ) even if it reduced the need to use IVF leftovers ( that would have been distroyed anyways ).

Regardless of the means of her formation.

But I'm not getting into again since this crowd seems completly unable to grasp the roots of the question.  The question was as much for my personal understanding of the other ( your ) side of the debate as it was to engage in a question of ethics and morality.  I might be able to convert if some of the naggin questions could be answered to my satifaction, but I guess that can't happen here.

After listening to Rush this morning, I can better understand your indignation regarding this startling new tactic by the left: creating a definition of "human" that excludes people that are too small to look like humans with 10 fingers and toes, etc.

It could be very effective if it entices people like Frist and Hatch.  I'm with Bush on this one: if scientists want to experiment then let them experiment.  But--do not ask me to pay for it.  I don't like it and if it were possible, I would ban the whole procedure.

Given your choice of threads in which to launch this voyage of discovery, many took you for bad faith. If you actually want to start this conversation in a related thread, write a diary. You'll get responses. Review the rules and guides, though.

We've had this debate before, and I didn't intend to reopen it, as we're obviously not going to see eye-to-eye. But I would point out that the IVF fertilized egg/blatoscyst/embryo must be thawed and implanted though medical technology before it can grow into a human being. Is the difference between the skin cell and the IVF collection of cells found in the level of manipulation required? In IVF, the egg could not have become fertilized to begin with without manipulation, because of the fertility problems of the parents.

You seem to keep thinking I am trying to score rhetorical points. I am not. These are real issues, and you are not going to convince any doubters (and there are many) with your extreme language (in my opinion).

of discussion between the two sides of the aisle, and I respect Thomas and the others here, and the fact that you apparently deleted your earlier diary at Kos..., let me request that you maintain a respectful tone with this one.

" My long-held suspicion that we would have government-sponsored involuntary human experimentation is about to become a certainty. "

I have a solution.  

Let's teach non-viable (as most of them are) blastocysts to sign consent forms.

Better yet, let's teach the cells I can scrape from the inside of my cheek to sign as well.  They're human, aren't they?

We can ask the one-year-olds, the same question. Heck, we can ask my four-year-old if he would sign a consent form, too.

Of course, the foolishness of your post is that if you don't have a consent form signed, you don't have consent. You don't have to sign a non-consent form to keep people from experimenting on you.

Unless, since I assume you don't have a non-consent form on file somewhere, I can cut off your arm to experiment with.

It seems you ENTIRELY missed the point. (And didn't even get the joke.)

The fundamental argument here is whether a blastocyst is equivalent to a "human life."  Y'all take that as a given, when most of us in biology and medicine see it as a religious point of view... no matter which side you come down on.

If it is, then your god must have a cruel sense of humor, since most blastocysts are naturally ejected from a woman's body and never become fetuses, let alone 1 year olds or adults.

God set up the process, don't blame me.

Chalk it up to being tired and cranky.  I realized it was a mistake and deleted it after it got craped on by a number of people.  We all have our moments.

If and adult gives permission to use their cells to grow more cells how is that an ethical violation.  The egg would die unless intervention was taken using complex and specilized equipment to attempt an implantation.  We harvest blood, marrow, kidneys, livers, and other items from live individuals to help others.  Why is thta idea any different?

with the idea of doing evil (sacrificing some lives) in order to achieve some good (preserving or extending, or merely making a little more pleasant certain other lives), then I see no reason to refrain from applying the label.  It follows that there is life unworthy, or less worthy, of life, and that certain aspects (contingent aspects, surely) of our presumed way of life require a little sacrifice.  It is no different, logically, from the sacrifices performed in the name of whatever devil-god certain meso-american tribes worshipped; the only real differences are the contingent one of time, place and method; and those, as any philosopher can tell you, are not the ones that really matter.

But hey, abuse your illusions, if it helps you get by.

that you are furthering the debate by accusing those who have different views on this matter of being evil?

There is MOST CERTAINLY IS life that is less worthy.  

I'd rather scientists decide, with their rational and systematic analysis of the facts, than religious people with their irrational and arbitrary mythologies.

that's just me, though.

is the truth that we have nothing to gain by pretending that we should even be entertaining this discussion in the first place; the notion that certain members of the human species are less worthy of life and should be exploited for the benefit of the worthier is repugnant, the sort of thing that, if I might borrow from an esteemed editor here, constitutes moral short bus stuff.

You are comparing using ESCs to sacrificing children to Moloch, etc.

I asked if using high nitrogen fertilizer (often produced from fish offal)is a continuation of the pagan traditions of sacrificing an animial to ensure good crops.  It is the nitrogen that makes the plants grow well not the sacrificing.  We understand that now, they didn't then.  There is a difference between using scientific knowledge because we know how something works and doing something because it is a religious rite.  They are in no way points along the same line of history or tradition.

Sorry to beat one, but you are making the assumption that a blastocyst is a fully "human life" worthy of all rights and privileges that you or I possess.

If you can prove that to me with arguments that are NOT based upon your particular religion, it would be a first and you'll probably be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

See my post below re: how your god treats the average blastocyst.  Not kindly.

But please explain how you are able to determine that these embryos are part of the human species in any way that any other human cell would be considered part of the human species.

You would certainly be correct if all people agreed that these embryos were indeed human life.  Not all people agree on this point.  And it is certainly possible that you are correct that they are indeed human life.  But by saying "You are evil and killing innocent humans" the only thing you achieve is widening the divide.  

I am not comfortable with sacrificing lives to save lives.  But I am comfortable that a blastocyst (with 100 cells) is not a human being entitled to the same respect and consideration that I would afford to you (with 70,000,000,000,000 cells).

There is a lot more to it (becoming a human being) than just getting bigger or a 70,000,000,000 fold increase in the number of cells.  Blastocysts have a long way to go before they are the moral equivalent of a person.  

inasmuch as they have a complete genetic code distinct from that of either parent, direct their own development, and clearly develop into that which we recognize as a "baby" given time and the proper conditions.  These three things cannot be predicated of skin cells, liver cells, or, for that matter, gametes.  

People may not agree that these embryos are human life; they are wrong; wrong on the science, moreover, which goes to the point.  As to the why of their being wrong, it is called passionate attachment - to some good which is magnified beyond a just measure and sought to the detriment of other goods.

trust me.  And I agree with you that you should be.

Here is a little to get you started.

If you poke around the NIH site a little you can find Congressional testimony from a number of ethichists from varying religious traditions discussing this issue.

seems to be the problem.  Those proper conditions require quite a bit of "science" to get involved.

To some people the point is that this "life" would never grow to a viable human being WITHOUT extensive medical assistance.  

Some people have difficulty believing that a crogenically frozen embryo is human life.  

for one thing the manipulation is more a replication of what happens naturally with some helping along, but the whole remove the nucleus, add the nucleaus, bath in calcium etc, etc, etc doesn't even attempt to replicate artificially something that happens naturally.

So I think the "everytime I scrape my knee I kill a human" meme is just a strawman, and one that just isn't going to fly.

the scientists to act ethically, and apparantly any request by the religious for such ethics is met with outrage that the dimwitted religious folks shouldn't be meddling in "science."

Well frankly should scientists be able to do whatever they want with whatever they want, because they can do it?  Why is it wrong to expect some ethical lines-especially when it comes to what we do with humans not be crossed?

It appears we have shed all morality to worship the gods of science who are expected to have no morals except those they self define (I am sure mengele thought he was acting morally and for the good of science as well).

what is the difference really between offering your infant up to the fire to preserve your civilization, and offering human embryos up to science to preserve/save others?

When you come up with that answer let me know.

what you get 9 months later?

Put a skin cell in the womb and what do you get 9 months later?

That is your answer, even if you are unwilling to see it.

cloning?

1. He did it as a political move to try to run away from the Terri Schiavo thing, and to look centrist (in the end I don't know that it helps him any-the pro life base isn't going to appreciate this move, and a good bit of the base isn't happy with his lack of leadership in the senate).
   
2.  He was never totally on board with the WH position on the issue, but followed along, and now has decided he can't do that anymore and is therefore moving towards where he feels more comfortable.

I think either is plausible, I actually think it is more #2 because I don't see how #1 gains him anything-he has to win the primary, and I think he long ago killed himself with the base, stem cell research aside.

Even assuming that this is true for most of these embryos this isn't going to happen.  So should they stay in a freezer for eternity?

I think it is the only way that stem cell based therapies will be truly effective for large numbers of people.

Using cells derived from donated IVF embryos is going to suffer from the same immune system rejection problems as a typical organ transplant does.

Ethically, I find it less troubling because you are using an unfertilized egg and a cell from your (the patient's) own body.

science experiment.

I would much rather see more ethics applied to the IVF proccess so we don't end up with so many embryos in freezers, but I don't think the solution is to turn them into science projects.  I just see a bright line there that shouldn't be crossed into the ethics no mans land.  Once we start to okay destruction of human life in these cases, then we may eventually decide other lives are worthy of destruction.

We are choosing based on our own selfish desires what lives are worthy of life and what lives aren't-frankly I don't think we need to get into that realm-makes me think entirely too much of eugenics, and frankly with eugenics you can eventually justify almost anything in the name of science and "helping others."

What about embryos that CANNOT be brought to viability?  What should be done with them?  

I don't like the eugenics reference because that is an entirely different issue.

That assumes politicians act on principle, and I only know one politician who ever did that.

there is an element of truth to it, that you don't want to admit is there.

Especially given the fact that so many people seem to argue for unconstrained science-and that scientists should be the definer of ethics not those who may have moral objections to the direction science takes (if you doubt, then read this or some of the other stem cell threads).

As for what to do with the embryos that aren't healthy enough to implant, I honestly would rather them be destroyed than turned into a science project.  There is just a bright line that I see here, and I draw the line when it comes to destroying humans for some desired good-I just don't think the ends justify the means here.

that you are angling for a one-way voyage out of here... along with "piratemonkey."