The president fails to understand that “scientific integrity” does not exist in a vacuum; it must always answer to the demands of ethics. Science is not free to pursue what it is able to do; it must be limited by what it should do in an ethical world that seeks to protect every individual as well as benefit the whole of humanity. .
The cold calculus behind embryonic stem-cell research frankly frightens us. If it is OK to “derive” stem cells from the living bodies of human embryos, causing the destruction of those innocent human lives, what does that say but that some lives have more value than others? That we may sacrifice some human lives for the benefit of others?
Don’t fool yourself. Someday you’ll be sick and weak, aged and infirm. A society that places no value on intrinsic human value is no place you’ll want to live — or eventually be allowed to.
The president does clearly fail to understand, and we knew that already because he told us while he was still just a candidate that discerning when life begins is above his pay grade. This needs to be said along with everything else in this and other articles, again and again and again, by those who do understand and are faithful to Christ’s Gospel, so that the burning lamp never goes out.
[url=http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2009/03/12/cnns-gupta-fails-correct-bill-clinton-s-multiple-fertilized-gaffe]True scientific integrity[/url], not.
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031202764.html]Charles Krauthammer’s[/url] take on this is worth reading in full. Krauthammer, who is not religious, disagreed with Bush’s decision on limiting research funding to existing stem cell lines, but finds that Obama has opened the door to cloning for research:[blockquote]President Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, President Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned — and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived — human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts. [/blockquote]Krauthammer calls Obama’s speech “morally unserious in the extreme.” The column is well worth reading, for all sides of this argument.
TACit, Obama did indeed say that discerning when life begins is above his pay grade. However, clearly he has decided he knows when life does not begin… or that it really doesn’t matter in his eyes.
T
The root of the problem is the the creation of these embryos in the first place and next to it is keeping them. I question the morality of this sort of fertility reatment in the first place and if they are not implanted then they should be disposed of in order to prevent just what is going on.
What we see in operation is a utilitarian pragmatic ethic in operation.
Brother Michael said
“What we see in operation is a utilitarian pragmatic ethic in operation.”
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And that is the great danger.
Ideology consists merely of thoughts created within the limited perceptions and reasoning abilities of the human mind.
Ideologists promote ideal visions of ‘how things should be done’ that are intended to result in an “ideal” outcome for all humans, and today, with the “green” movement, even for the planet we live on.
The ideologists pursue their ideal outcomes by prescribing some sort of human behavior and organization that will produce an ideal outcome on earth as a result of human actions and constraints on human actions.
During the last century, the earth has seen the death of well over 100,000,000 human beings as the result of the efforts of ‘ideologists’ to impose by force their ideas on the rest of mankind.
Ideology hasn’t worked and it will NEVER work. The only thing that ideology seems to do well is to empower a self-proclaimed messianic political minority that much more often than not tries to impose a narrow ideological view of ‘how things should be’ on the rest of mankind.
Ideology is now reaching deeply into the human mortal life-cycle. Pretty soon, the ideologists will be telling us when to abort fetuses and when to terminate the lives of disabled and elderly people.
Ideological logic, there’s an oxymoron for you, leads mankind to many ‘slippery slopes’ where we will risk losing our immortal souls.
It must always be remembered that Obama has given the [b]Federal[/b] go-ahead for [b]EMBRYONIC[/b] stem cell research. Private funding has been available for a long time. Moreover, non-embryonic stem cells are proving far more productive. Why does the President want to endorse something that is likely not going to work as well as something which already IS working well? Because embryos are far more intriguing than simple skin cells or even placental stem cells.
Jeff Jacoby of [i]the Boston Globe[/i], has recently written about this.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/4772/embryos-and-ethics
And one more:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/obamas_stemcell_decision.html
This is by Yuval Levin, ” a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2003 to 2005. He is the author of “Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy.”
The Oregonian had an endorsement of Obama’s stem cell decision last week. It generated some interesting letters, one of which was mine. The gist of all this is that while Obama claims to have made this decision based on pure scientific “integrity,” it was nothing more than politically correct for him to do so. Moreover, he did it by flying in the face of good and moral scientists who oppose the use of embryonic stem cells because THEY DON’T WORK!