Asymmetrical Information

Let me preface my comments by saying that I’m a non-scientist, Catholic, and anti-embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).

That said, I don’t know why we have to go through the political and ethical minefield that is ESCR when the use of adult stem cells are a completely ethical and, from what I’ve read, viable alternative.

When the coverage of this issue is made to imply that ESCR is the ONLY hope for people like Christopher Reeves to walk again or to cure Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s, it really ticks me off. Also the major media frames ESCR opponents as, by and large, reactionary right wing anti-abortion religious types in order to dismiss their objections out of hand pisses me off even more. I know that the "sophisticates" in the major media, part of the vanguard of the Culture of Death, thinks that people of faith can’t make philosophical arguments about the human person without relying on Divine Revelation but it just isn’t so.

Now this issue has snowballed into a debate on cloning due to Bush’s totally ineffective compromise on ESCR. With the distinction that is made between cloning-for-reproduction and cloning-for-research being, in my mind, largely a distinction without a difference, I’m afraid that we are cruising along that highway whose ultimate destination is the Brave New World. Thus endeth the rant.

While I didn't complete that program, my original college major was biochemistry. I say not to claim expertise but to simply point out that I don't get lost too much in the jargon and still have a strong interest in following the news in this area. While there is still enough hope to continue research in the field of "adult stem cells" there have also been two different studies that are extremely discouraging in this field, seeming to indicate that the cells found in adults just don't have the "robustness" and adaptability needed.

There are fertilized ovum sitting bathed in liquid nitrogen all over this nation that are never going to serve any purpose because the people they were going to be implanted in had their baby before they were needed. The only possible future they might have unless researchers are allowed to use them for stem cell research is to be disposed of or sit there in limbo because of doctor's fears of the wrath of "pro-life" fanatics. So research will be delayed and quite possibly given the absolute Republican control of our government, eliminated in the name of being "pro-life". Many people in this country call themselves conservative. They spout about how government should be small and non-intrusive. But somehow if it's a sin by the lights of "conservative Christians" it suddenly becomes something there ought to be a law about. Can we spell hypocrisy, boys and girls?

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