Matthew Franck, Bench Memos:
It’s a trifecta in [Thursday’s] Washington Post by Ronald M. Green, who proposes a “Stem Cell Solution” for president-elect Obama. Green wants the incoming administration to change federal policy on funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR)â€â€but he’d like to cloak the first step of a radical change in moderate clothing. I know this isn’t ordinary Bench Memos fare, but bear with me. (And the connection to the abortion license created in Roe v. Wade should be apparent if you think about it.)
Maybe you thought the stem cell issue had largely subsided, thanks to the discovery of ways to “revert” cells in the human body into pluripotent ones with all the properties of embryonic stem cellsâ€â€thus providing the research materials many scientists desire without having to destroy any embryos, which are after all tiny human beings. (A great treatment of the issues appears in Joseph Bottum and Ryan Anderson’s “Stem Cells: A Political History,” in the November First Thingsâ€â€not, alas, online.) Well, Green would have us believe that the “gene insertion technology” used to bring about this cellular reversion results in cells “too dangerous for transplant purposes” because of a cancer risk. I have it on good authority, however, that the pioneering scientist Shinya Yamanaka has published findings that show the new technique produces cells no more dangerous than does ESCR. Or doesn’t Ronald Green keep up with the science?
The political deception Green recommends, as a kind of cautious step that will not “energize conservative opponents” of embryo-destructive research, is to pretend that embryo destruction is not really embryo destructionâ€â€or that we can paper over what we’re doing with a form of words. Here’s the rhetorical gambit, about as hamhanded as anything I’ve ever seen:
What should the new president do? Obama should minimize opposition by following the lead President Bush established in 2001. In justifying his policy of funding research on a limited number of human embryonic stem cell lines, Bush stated that "the life and death decision" had already been made on the embryos used to create those lines.
This is true of thousands of frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics around the country. More than 500,000 embryos created by in vitro fertilization to help couples have children are being stored. A large percentage of those embryos will never be used, because the couples have succeeded in having children, have given up or have grown too old to try. There is very little market for embryo adoption, so most of these embryos are destined to be destroyed. Circumstances have rendered the "life and death" decision on them almost as certain as it was on the embryos used before 2001 to make the stem cell lines that were approved to receive federal research funding.
Green does not want us to remember what President Bush really said and did in 2001. The embryos from which stem cell lines had been drawn, research on which Bush agreed to fund in 2001, were already destroyed. The “life and death decision” had indeed already been made. They were dead. People then and now disagreed about the ethics of using the stem cells in question. But no decision remained to be made about preserving or destroying life in the case of these embryos. That choice had been made.
By contrast, the many embryos Green now wants to exploit, with federal funding authorized by President Obama, are still alive. When he says that it “is true” of these embryos as well that “the life and death decision” has already been made in their cases, he is stating the exact opposite of the truth. A decision has not been made, but must be made, and Green knows how he wants it made. He wants them destroyed, if we can only talk people into the decision. They are only “destined to be destroyed” if people decide they will be. Green knows the difference between Bush’s policy and the one he proposes: he calls the decision on the destruction of these embryos “almost as certain” as the actually accomplished destruction of the embryos to which President Bush referred in 2001. There’s a yawning moral gulf in that “almost.”
And it’s clear that destruction is what Green wants. He goes on to write:
By executive order, Obama could authorize the NIH to invite couples who planned to discard their frozen embryos to donate them for research. The couples would have to affirm that they no longer intended to use the embryos and had already decided to destroy them.
The fate of “leftover” IVF embryos is an acute ethical dilemma, especially given their great numbers. In their book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen propose that steps be taken to have these tiny human beings adopted. President Bush has applauded such a practice. But Ronald Green blithely proposes that parents “donate” them for research. And he has the gall to claim that if Obama adopted it, “this policy [would represent] only an extension of the one established by his predecessor.” Watch carefully, ladies and gentlemen, while my magic wand converts a repudiation into an “extension”!
Green is bylined as the pro bono chair of the “Ethics Advisory Board of Advanced Cell Technology, a company involved in stem cell research.” Here’s a question for our ethics advisor: Can he name another moment in American history in which the government proposed that parents offer their children to be killed for the pursuit of federally funded scientific research?
Leave aside for the moment the question that Franck begs, in his conlusion, namely, whether or not these embryos are in fact “children” (a question that scientists still grapple with, though certainly everyone concedes the conditions for childrenhood, for lack of a better term, exist as a potentiality). What is telling here, it seems to me, is this ascendancy of a strategy for appealing to “moderates,” who Democratic progressives appear to view as those citizens who pay absolutely no attention to issues, and can be swayed rather easily using the tactics of Alinsky, Gramsci, et al, into supporting just about anything, provided it doesn’t “feel” radical to them (assuming they bother even to consider the issues).
Too, Obama has shown, in his attempts to manipulate the judiciary on the Second Amendment, a willingness to engage in ends-justify-the-means type gambits — meaning that, if his entire campaign is any indication, we can look forward to a lot of this kind of rhetorical gamesmanship.
If embryos are to be destroyed anyway, there is no reason I can see why they shouldn’t be used for scientific research if in fact science will benefit from their use. But again, since technology is available to revert cells to cells possessing the properties of embryonic cells, the question is, why engage in a battle that to the pro-life side is clearly a moral issue? And what benefit is there from using embryonic stem cells when a viable alternative exists?
If Obama were truly interested in “reaching across the aisle,” he might take Green’s idea and tweak it just a bit: ask parents not if they wish to donate the leftover embryos to science, but rather if they’d be willing to have those embryos offered for adoption. Or — even better — give them the choice to decide for themselves by presenting them with all options.
Unfortunately, progressives don’t tend to trust voters to make educated and informed choices; and so they often presume to frame issues in ways that heavily favor their own point of view — and failing success doing that, they turn to the courts, which they try to stack with those who see the role of justices as bringing about “social change” rather than interpreting and applying law.
Discuss.
nishidiot rant in 5, 4, 3…
There was a lot of data gathered by the Nazis using concentration camp subjects. Nobody uses it.
To some degree, doing this to embryos is not much different than allowing a dead child to be used as an organ donor.
Why so schemey? Just say the Chinese are studying them so we need to too. And it’s disingenuous to equivocate on whether embryos are kids or not. They’re tiny squishy embryos what you would wash your hands right away if you ever touched one. This is 99% just a progressive wedge issue anyway and taking the bait is boring and unclever I think. Pick your battles. Not your you I mean people you.
Ok who stole the html tag?
There’s nothing wrong with studying them now and regretting it later. We do stuff like that all the time.
“certainly everyone concedes the conditions for childrenhood, for like of a better term, exist”
I would not be among their number.
Embryos don’t hold the preconditions to be children, Sarah?
Wow. That’s fairly surprising, I think.
They’re like tadpoles. If they all made it we’d be knee-deep in froggies like what happened in Egypt.
Totipotency is all the allowance you’ll get from me. Many totipotent cells will not develop into living human beings even if given every chance and opportunity. They are not all viable, even when implanted. And the implantation will not always occur, or occur correctly, many times due to defect in the embryo.
The Enlightenment is getting very faded and threadbare I think when we have to have this discussion over and over and over. I’d rather public policy affirm Enlightenment principles than religious ones. Ok this is me getting in trouble but there it is. Going to my quiet place now.
And you might consider, if a cell is reverse-engineered to a totipotent state, if it is converted to the use of another organism, its capacity to develop and an individual human being has been as equally removed as any frozen embryo.
Starting to sound like a necessary vs sufficient distinction, is it not Sarah?
Embryos don’t hold the preconditions to be children, Sarah?
I’ve got it! Let’s implant them and find out.
My personal test of individual humanity, vs. “of human” tissue depends upon other criteria than totipotency. I know mileage from that most cetainly does vary.
O! couldn’t possibly offer the adoption route under any circumstances; the nutroots would have a collective aneurysm…
Truthfully, this is reduced to a purely ethical and morality question/contest, since science has rendered it a truly moot question…
Still, it speaks volumes to the tactics of the left. They simply assume, a priori, that they can take advantage of the folks that pay little attention to issues and events, until just prior to the election, and effectively run a con-game on them…
They’ll try to paint any opposition as knucle-fragging, God-bothering, wing-nut, intransigent pro-lifers; one of the descriptors thay successfully painted Palin with during the election. I know of several folks, in my own family, who voted for O! simply because they bought into the meme that among McCain/Palin’s first actions would be to “outlaw” abortion. Regardless of the irrationality, both legislatively and bolitically, of this meme, I could never convince them otherwise. These same folks would buy this semantics game preferred by Green, hook, line, and sinker…
Let’s implant them and find out.
In you? Let’s give you a womb, and see how that works out.
The actual embryos are, in this case, beside the issue. The important point is that the folks who apparently have Obama’s over-sized ears are candid about being devotees of Newspeak.
Biologically speaking, once the fertilized egg becomes the zygote, the DNA is identically human…
While non-religious folks can debate when the fetus becomes sentient, it is unmistagenly human, from a chemical standpoint…
Personally, I’m in the life begins at conception camp…
Oh, and the last time any government proposed that parents offer their children to be killed for the pursuit of federally funded scientific research..?
I’m pretty sure it was the Nazi’s…
Best Wishes
Sarah —
If every embryo has the potential, then every embryo holds the conditions. You can’t predict which will or won’t. Can you? Therefore, all you’re doing is making statistical guesses.
Of course,this is not the discussion I wished we’d have, but I should have known better.
No, not every embryo does. Some do not.
It’s a statistical certainty that not all could become people, or would, given the requisite conditions. Also Bob Reeds contention that a zygote is a distinct individual – that’s not entirely correct either.
It may become two individuals, or three. It may be completely subsumed in combination with another zygote to form one individual human who is a genetic mosaic. Humanity is determined, by my measure ( and I am not so stuck up I expect anyone to agree) by HAVING developed a capacity for an individual consciousness.
Okay, here is a perfect illustration to secularists of the danger of legalizing abortion. Once society permits the lives of the unborn to be forfeited in the interests of offsetting an ‘inconvenience’ the value of all live have been forfeited: your own, those of your parents, those of your own children–everyone, not just that of the aborted child. If you think abortion is an idea that can be neatly separated from your own existence, you are wrong. Do you yet realize that all of our lives were de-sanctified about 30 years ago? Secularists haven’t understood this sad reality yet. Society can now do whatever it wishes with a de-sanctified life in the interests of the utilitarian, and it’s a question of time until you discover the circumstances under which your own life can–and will–be sacrificed. Will the state tell you to go hang yourself with your health problems because you are costing it too much money? Baroness Warnock did just that the other day to elderly Britons who have senile dementia. Also in the UK, they are considering farming ova from aborted girl babies for research. How does this differ in any way from creating a slaughterhouse, where workers with sharp knives and bloody hands farm the carcasses for the very last ounce of re-usable tissue?
Maybe we can boil the carcasses for glue.
That’s why we have to uphold the sanctity of life–for the sake of our selves and out families as well as for the sake of the unborn. it’s an issue that reaches well beyond the religious dimension.
Science is such a bitch.
In you? Let’s give you a womb, and see how that works out.
It’s not necessary to actually do it, was my point. The potential is there, and we already know it – that’s all.
If life can be said to begin someplace sometime, and often it can’t be said because it isn’t (life, that is) you likely will want to add all manner of probabalistic qualifiers, maybe-this-es and might-be-thats which will in the end make a nullity of the simplistic formula. Perhaps it’s better to shrug and say “we’ll see”? And then continue on with your research.
Ah. You were being glib, instead of presenting a zinger.
My mistake.
SarahW
Science can only explain what is. What science does not produce is ethics, science only operates within an ethical framework.
This isn’t really about embryos per se, but about the huge need of The One to game the dialogue in order to obfuscate the ethical debate. Even in the face of science, many find the ethics untenable; and advocates for government funding of ESCR want to avoid the debate and just get on with the pork.
Science isn’t a bitch, science is a method.
Excuses are the bitch.
Humanity is determined, by my measure ( and I am not so stuck up I expect anyone to agree) by HAVING developed a capacity for an individual consciousness.
SarahW
I’m saying this in good faith and just out of geniune curiousity … what happens to the humanity of an individual who loses their capacity for consciousness? Or loses their capacity for “full” consciousness?
From Green’s article, another sleight of hand:
The thing is, multiple pathways were open before Pres. Bush’s dicta came down, have been open and apparently, will remain open. There is no prohibition on embryonic stem cell research undertaken with private funds or state funds (Ca. put up billions), as opposed to federal funds.
So question. What drives this obsession with Federal funding?
and so they often presume to frame issues in ways that heavily favor their own point of view
“Death Tax” instead of Estate Tax?
That was one of the Democrat’s better framing, oh, wait a minute.
How about “Enhanced Interrogation Methods” instead of torture?
Oops.
I’ll think of a Democratic one, I promise.
and advocates for government funding of ESCR want to avoid the debate and just get on with the pork.
Others simply have to have gov’t funding of ESCR because it’s part of the delivered truth – given by their leaders or else repeated enough by members of their group/cult to in effect become moral imperatives – which must be accomplished in order for evil to be vanquished, and they to become “good” and “meaningful”. Plus, in my experience these kind are sometimes afflicted with OCD. One Progressive I know quite well was nearly beside himself with moral outrage when Bushitler refused to rain down gov’t condoms upon “Africa”. The next time he gets like this, I’m going to tell him to stop bothering everyone and just go wash his hands a hundred times or so.
“I’ll think of a Democratic one, I promise.”
Here’s some help
The Employee Free Choice Act, put forward by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.,
“Enhanced Interrogation Methods†instead of torture.
You mean Clinton’s “extraordinary renditions”, snuffy?
Statistics are wonderful for predicting how many of a given batch of individuals will do this or that. Thus it is possible to say that about 50% of coin flips should come up heads. In a large enough sample, they will, within the margin of error.
Nevertheless, each coin flip individually has only one outcome, which cannot be determined except by watching it happen, thus making any prediction moot. Statistics are useless on individuals.
Thus, when deciding what to do with any given embryo, statistical “certainties” are as relevant as a bicycle is to a fish.
Unless the fish gets thrown through the spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel, of course.
“Thou shalt always remain as far behind the curve as possible,” eh, snuffy?
“Democrat, good. Republican, bad.” Bejus, Frankenstein’s Monster had more sense, snuffy: “Fire, bad. Food, goood.”
I like Ronald Reagan, J. Peden.
And Bush’s poppa, too.
Here’s a repeat of my glibness: In support of Animal Rights, which is a prog issue, I will staff a booth at a fair of your choice selling wallets, purses, etc., made of human fetal tissue, because human fetii (fetuses?) are not worth anything. Except what we can make out of them!
Correct?
Slightly more seriously: I’ll entertain that a fetus at 8 or 12 weeks cannot sustain itself or be sustained out of the womb. I’ll grant you that it is not a separate living begin at that point, generously.
But it is surely a potential being, correct?
And yes, this is a subject fraught with fraughtitude.
Well if it’s so wrong to donate these leftover embryos, why does the law allow people the option to otherwise dispose of them? Why aren’t these “parents” thrown into prison for infanticide?
This is really about property rights; obviously at some point common law holds that we own our own reproductive tissues. And let’s face facts, even with “adoption,” 99.999 percent of these unwanted embryos are headed to the dumpster.
#39 Ushie
heh
Maybe it’s just something Obama’s doing to keep the right occupied while he implements his real policy goals.
Kinda like Bush’s war in Iraq.
SarahW,
You make some very good points and have pointed out a limitation to the articulation of my point of view…
Several humans indeed may come of one fertilized egg…
I don’t know if the changes the fact that at that point the/their DNA is identically human, though…
Thought provoking though, none the less…
And, it still remains that Mr. Green is suggesting that O! should engage in Clintonian games of subjectivism and semantics…You know, debating what the meaning of is is…
Have a lovely Sunday, All
Trashman has a good part of it. Having ceded decisions on moral issues to Government, on the ground that it’s just too hard so somebody else can do it, they then seek validation. That can only come with Government endorsement, which means funding.
But a good bit of it is desperation, too. Despite all the handwaving, this is not a decision on whether or not to destroy embryos to get embryonic stem cells; that was and remains legal. It is a question of whether Federal funds, your tax money and mine, will be used to pay for it. So far, every attempt to realize the theoretical potential of embryonic stem cells has failed miserably, whereas “reversion” — causing adult cells to revert to stem cell form — works, works well, and shows great promise. It therefore follows that no source of private funding is available for ESCR because it doesn’t work and you can’t make money off it. If anybody’s going to fund embryonic stem cell research it will have to be the Government, because only the Government will keep throwing money after utter failure.
Regards,
Ric
Sounds like a bummer of a freezer problem.
500,000 frozen fetuses.
Seems nobody really thought through the idea of what to do “if”…. we wind up with a freezer full of fetuses nobody wants anymore.
I’m not against using the tissue for research although I can accept arguments that they should be buried with respect too.
My basic issue is a distrust of some of the scientific left who see the fetus as a parasite anyway, so they’d have no problem stretching this moment into a monthly fetus harvest.
At that point maybe we should just build them a Mayan pyramid with taxpayer dollars and let them have science as their state subsidized religion
Obviously, if you do not believe human, individual, life begins at conception, then the entire embryonic stem cell research debate means little. If you do, however, believe human life begins at conception, then the article ought to cause concern. The fact that federal funding seems so important to the embryonic stem cell advocate is telling. There obviously is little to no private funding for this research and since free markets (so long as they are free) never lie, this indicates that few speculators see much profit there–at least for the time being. Hence, it seems to me, the need for fed dollars reveals that this argument is not about finding cures for diseases, per se, but redefining through policy what a human being is.
From an ethical standpoint, there is the matter of conducting scientific experimentation upon individuals without consent (and I distinguish here between mere experimentation and therapeutic procedures or interventions for the benefit of an individual unable to give consent). To be consistent: if an individual is an individual at conception, then he/she deserves full constitutional protections (4th amendment? + 9th and 10th). But again, we can only proceed to the constitutional question after we have settled upon what defines a person.
From a biological point of view, there can be no argument that an embryo is a human (genetically–it is not any other form of life). So, then the question becomes whether constitutional protections apply.
I think they do — qwfwq is correct. The entire argument is really about who is allowed to define what human being is and then who is allowed control how to use this newly defined raw material for scientific experimentation (whether it’s a days old embryo or an accident victim whose brain-function has apparently ceased).
Slippery-slope, folks.
only the Government will keep throwing money after utter failure
How did all those Republicans on Wall Street bankrupt their companies the, Steve?
Bad luck?
Sunday is a day when aluminum barrels should abort beer and foam. I’m celebrating Tony Romo’s resurrection on the particular Sunday. I ask those who hate Washington to join me.
Right enough for government work, to re-coin a phrase, Ric. My dismissive answer would have been “rent seeking”, but my guess was that there is more to it than I see, some “moral” component, something internal to the constitution of the backer’s self-image (see me waving my hands over here?) thingy.
#40
I skimmed through and if someone else said this and I missed it, sorry, but: Embryos can be donated. Now. Under the law now, parents can donate unused embryos for research. Of course they can.
As all other embryonic stem-cell issues there is no ban, no government jack-booted thug standing there to frog march off the person who dares use an embryo for stem cell research.
The issue is using government money. Your and my money, for research using embryos.
I wonder what Ben Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison, or John Adams would have thought about the whole abortion issue vis-a-vis public policy…
Granted, in the eyes of many here they would have decidedly been Godbotherers…
But would they have recognized the right of the existing individual, to the private property of their person, as superceding, in a very practical sense, the rights of the potential person..?
And even had they assented to that right of choice, would they have agreed that the tax dollars of all should have paid for it? Or that the Federal government could instruct the individual states as to what that policy should be locally?
Somehow, I think not…
The same impulse as is behind the push for gay marriage in California, when California had already established civil unions. It’s the desire to defeat an enemy on an issue they feel strongly about, so as to humiliate them.
And, eventually, Venturestein learned that, yes, “BROCK GOOD!”
“How did all those Republicans on Wall Street bankrupt their companies the, Steve?”
Doing business with a government back company.
Heh… should have refreshed before typing and then I’d have seen Ric’s comment.
More properly, it’s the issue of money forcibly confiscated from people who consider this particular use to be murder. The folks who want to fund ESCR are free to do so; they can set up a private foundation to collect donations and use that money to fund research. What they cannot do is take money from unwilling people and slip that money to researchers.
Fans of SF of a Certain Age may compete in finding the source of that quote. Quellcrist Falconer is a piker.
Regards,
Ric
They were caught in a bind: ACORN and other groups pushing from below, and the government pulling from above. The government forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create an artificial market for debt no one else would have wanted, while ACORN et. al. made it clear the banks would suffer politically if they didn’t get into this market.
The result is no surprise. Neither is it a surprise that a lot of politically connected people were made rich in the process.
Wait…you mean, you pay your taxes unwillingly? If given a choice, you’d not pay your taxes?
This sounds like a rhetorical question, but it’s not. While you’re thinking about it, what government-supplied services would you be willing to forego, in exchange for not paying your taxes?
Darleen, I can’t remember on which gossip site I saw it, but Pam Anderson, surely one of the biggest wastes of plastified skin ever, was caught wearing Ugg! boots. She said she had no idea they were made of leather…
The only 2 reasons I am a fan of MaryKate and Ashley are: they unapolegtically wear fur, and someone they managed to become very, very rich despite having no talent or appeal whatsover. Now that takes dedication.
SomeHOW, not “someone.” I must be a Rethuglidumblican’t because I can’t spell.
“Despite all the handwaving, this is not a decision on whether or not to destroy embryos to get embryonic stem cells; that was and remains legal. It is a question of whether Federal funds, your tax money and mine, will be used to pay for it.”
You hit the nail on the head Ric. This is all part of O!s vague platitude that we will invest in science again…
Best Wishes
“Hence, it seems to me, the need for fed dollars reveals that this argument is not about finding cures for diseases, per se, but redefining through policy what a human being is.”
Excellent observation gregorbo. Another nail on the head moment…
“While you’re thinking about it, what government-supplied services would you be willing to forego, in exchange for not paying your taxes?”
Dept.s Education, Energy, HUD, Agriculture, NASA, EPA.
The ones I don’t use. :-)
Less flippantly, the ones outside the actual responsibilities of government, particularly the ones that work at cross purposes. I have no problem funding education, but if we’re offering a free education we shouldn’t also be supporting people who refuse to take advantage of it AND refuse to work.
Even within education, we could stand to trim so much fat it would look like we’re flensing a whale.
Oh, though I’d prefer we fund education as close to the local level as possible. The Feds have no valid role in it, and as far as I can see the primary result of their involvement has been the multiplication of bureaucrats.
Oh. Well, sorry; trick question. The choice is really all or nothing.
Again: do you pay your taxes willingly, or does the government have to show up and take it from you at gunpoint? If it’s nothing so dramatic, then the “forcibly confiscated” kind of talk has no place in this discussion.
The gambit would appear to be; if you can’t win the argument, change it.
If anyone has read Abolition of Man, it will seem very close to the end where the humanity of man is lost.
BTW congratulations on correct use of ‘beg the question’.
thor,
You root for the Cowboys..?
All I can say is that I lived in DC for more than 35 years…
So just as I am an eeeeeevil RethugliKKKan, I am also a Redskins! fan…
Appropriate, no? That I would root for a team with such an, ahem, RAAAAACIST! handle..?
And, it threatens my domestic tranquility two times per year as my lovely wife, a life long New Yorker, is of course a Giants fan…
But as I am also, geneologically speaking, a signifigant fraction Cherokee, then I must suffer from one heck of a case of self-loathing…
Bon Chance, with Romo back it will be one heck of a game…
Best Wishes
Oh. Well, sorry; trick question. The choice is really all or nothing.
Again: do you pay your taxes willingly, or does the government have to show up and take it from you at gunpoint? If it’s nothing so dramatic, then the “forcibly confiscated†kind of talk has no place in this discussion.
Why is it all or nothing? Plus, the consequences of not paying are not exactly a cake walk, so I’d say taxes are forcibly confiscated.
Go LIONS!
I mean .. Go. Somewhere else.
Why is it all or nothing?
Can you have it be anything but that, at present? I had no suspicions at all that we had a Chinese-menu kind of government.
Darleen #29
“I’m saying this in good faith and just out of geniune curiousity … what happens to the humanity of an individual who loses their capacity for consciousness? Or loses their capacity for “full†consciousness?”
ACORN signs him up to vote.
If ONLY Slart ….
I can’t wait for the next parade of blind kids and state troopers who are going to be laid-off or left to fend for themselves when Michigan can’t meet its budget. Whenever stuff needs to go, it’s never useless stuff.
I lived in DC and its environs for 35 yrs Bob and remained a loyal Dallas fan the entire time. Of course, after 1965 the winning habit meant it wasn’t that much of a hardship being surrounded by Redskins, even with the fell George Allen on the scene. But GodAlmighty, could Sonny pass the rock.
#50
I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise, I was questioning why using discarded/donated embryos was morally objectionable in the first place. it seems to me that anyone who would object regardless of the source of funds would be logically driven to either not allow the reproductive therapies which produce these embryos in the first place or ban their disposal.
Bullshit, slart. If it’s paid willingly, it’s not a “tax”. It’s part of the definition of the word, and that’s not just blathering, it’s U.S. legal doctrine. Google “Learned Hand Rule”.
The fact that armed tax-gatherers don’t have to show up in person as in the Middle Ages makes it worse, not better. The IRS has convinced us that the consequences of not paying are so terrible as not to be risked, which is nice for them because they don’t have to actually expend the effort.
Regards,
Ric
There are a sizable number of people who are uncomfortable with the idea. So let’s rename it. Let’s reframe it so they are comfortable.
And those who aren’t can be suitably demonized and marginalized, to the point that even republicans won’t want them in their party.
And, more importantly, the whole debate will be about how foolish the people are who disagree with the ‘moderate’ viewpoint.
Another subject put outside of any possibility of debate or disagreement.
There should be a question with embryos. There should be discomfort with abortion. There should be questions whether the industry created around these things are doing evil. The answers to the questions will depend on what they are doing specifically, but the ability to ask and be taken seriously is essential.
Life is about tough questions and open debate. But if I have an opinion and questions, and stating these things becomes ‘hate speech’, which has happened in the progressive paradise to the north, what happens when there needs to be a limit put on the abuses of abortion for example? No one who asks the questions are ‘serious’, so there is no check against abuses.
So then there is no cogent argument in the public sphere against the ideas of Peter Singer. Or no argument possible.
Let’s all build ovens.
Derek (who doesn’t describe it as a slippery slope, but as the inevitable result of unbridled power)
The founders understood human nature, seeing that without opposition, without the need to prove your point, argue your point, without an opposition that could stop you unless you were successful, rulers would do evil things.
What a regressive idea.
Derek
And by doing so you are joining the crowd who are asking the wrong question, and using that question as handwave-with-silk-handkerchief to draw people away from the real one.
It is sufficient that there are people who have moral objections; the content of the moral objections is irrelevant to the question before the house: Shall the Government be the source of definitions of ethics and morality, overriding the choices of individuals who might decide differently? Answer the question without conflating “Government” and “society”, please.
Regards,
Ric
Sdferr,
Clearly you are a man of iron will and steadfast determination. As you of course know, other than politics, Redskin football is the greatest spectator sport in our nation’s capitol…
I can’t imagine how many increduluous expressions and the Mondays you had to listen to gruff excuses, rationalizations, and stony silence after the ‘Boys laid a whuppin on the ‘Skins…
On the other hand, there have been a few times when you had to take the gloating too…
As I said earlier, it will be a good game tonight-what with the return of Romo and all…
And, for all of my Redskin loyalties, I must admit that of years late I have hedged my bet like a broker sellin’ stocks short; I hold both Redskin and Ravens season tickets!
Although I sell many sets of tickets I sell, now that I live in NYC, many more I choose to retain especially the division opponents…
Alas, an important and unavoidable meeting tomorrow am meant I had to take a pass on attending tonights game; here’s hoping my younger brother and an old pal of ours enjoy it for all it’s worth…
I hope that you do the same…
Best Wishes
#77 I’m uncomfortable with using embryos at all but I can only explain my objections, no one else’s.
I suppose, to start, I object to creating embryos in order to destroy them. I understand that IVF requires making many embryos to get a single child, but if there are a whole lot left over then someone is going a bit overboard, I think. (My personal feeling is that ethical behavior only requires a normal, good faith, chance for an embryo to develop… no false demand that heroic efforts be made to avoid the high level of loss that occurs naturally or with IVF… just don’t kill them on purpose.)
I’m under the impression that many of those going through IVF agree and do what is necessary to ensure that they don’t have leftovers. Many of them end up with multiple births.
Creating a clone embryo or a viable embryo to take the nucleus out of and insert another into bothers me very much because life is being deliberately created in order to kill it.
I’m not against cloning either, or even human experimentation, *just so long* as human life is not created in order to be killed. My feeling is that a very straight forward and simple ethical test of giving all subjects of human research a good faith chance to live will answer nearly all the over-arching ethical questions related to human research that we face in this new century. And when it comes to what we *will* be able to do very soon, using viable embryos for spare parts is just the beginning.
Rather than being overly restrictive I think this standard would free us to pursue human research with a great deal of freedom.
The alternative requires defining some living human organisms as not-human. We already do that at the beginning of life and the end, sometimes in between. I don’t think we should ever be making those decisions of who counts as human and who doesn’t. When does a fetus count as a baby; when does an old person stop having a right to live; when is someone too damaged or retarded to be human any more.
And which of those non-human living organisms can we cut up in a laboratory?
I can imagine a great deal that isn’t even particularly unlikely, that we could do with very little more medical and scientific advancement than we’ve got now. There’s a whole lot we’re going to do that no one has thought of yet. I would like to see us do it.
Bob, Romo’s return, while a potential boost to the downfield passing game (as opposed to Johnson’s crossfield idea of “passing”, if we could call it that) won’t fix what’s ailing the ‘pokes (and got Romo on the DL to start with), namely the incredibly poor play of the O-line. My hopes, therefore, aren’t up. But then, somehow or other Cincinnati managed a tie with the Igles today, so I think, who knows?
I like Ronald Reagan, J. Peden.
And Bush’s poppa, too
That’s not inconsistent with your own inconsistenecy, snuffy, nor with your various tactics. All you are accomplishing is to give us the progressive mentality and tactics to see. That’s all, and, thanks.
Uh, no. You pay sales tax, no? I mean, you go buy stuff, and you pay tax. Did someone force you to buy it? No, they did not. Neither did anyone force you to work, or force you to live in this country.
You may pay your taxes with some dissatisfaction (lots, I’m guessing) regarding what it’s being spent on, but you pay it willingly.
Otherwise, you’re a victim.
Oh. Maybe there’s something to that.
You know, you could take all kinds of things to this extreme. You didn’t agree, after all, to the speed limit laws. Or the laws controlling interstate and international commerce. I could go on, but first I’d like to see how you respond.
Are you saying that the validity of the moral objections aren’t valid? It would seem this is dependent on the content. And you also seem to be suggesting that government action of this nature require unanimous moral consent. That’s obviously not one of our choices, so I’m having difficulty seeing your point.
Shall the Government be the source of definitions of ethics and morality, overriding the choices of individuals who might decide differently?
Yes. What’s important is that people are free to believe otherwise and advocate their positions. In this case they are free to advocate their positions at a very real risk of losing political influence I think. It’s very windmill tilty. Even were federal funds disallowed there would still be embryos what were squabbled and plinchered all over the place with state and private money. California is quite devoted to the squabbling and plinchering of the embryos. This is because the argument is essentially lost, and inasmuch as it is sufficient that there are people who have moral objections, there are people as well who have equally moral objections to not funding research and whichever policy prevails it is demonstrably true that there’s a group that is imposing a structure of morality which is offensive to another. That’s the way things go. There’s a graciousness in accepting that in a forgive them Lord for they know not what they do kind of way, and a quixotic recklessness in pursuing a lost cause knowing full well that there is a not-ineffective “conservatives are anti-science” meme afoot.
Also it’s sort of a do unto others sort of thing if you ask me, and I’m not the one that’s gonna tell people who look to this research with hopefulness that they’re just gonna have to deal. It’s of importance that we live in a society what looks to science with hopefulness. It matters quite a lot.
I think we should take the teenagers left at Nebraska hospitals and breed them. We can use the embryos produced for stem cell research.
Make those kids earn their living.
There’s a graciousness in accepting that in a forgive them Lord for they know not what they do kind of way, and a quixotic recklessness in pursuing a lost cause knowing full well that there is a not-ineffective “conservatives are anti-science†meme afoot.
I agree that “conservatives are anti-science” is effective. (As is the meme that liberals are effete snobs.)
I’m very pro-science. In fact, I support the notion of human cloning and genetic manipulation. What I’d *like* to see is us make the choices now that will make those things possible.
Making it necessary to define research subjects as non-human makes the really amazing human science impossible. It sets up a terrible foundation for the ethics involved. It gives us no *way* to actually work with *human* material as *human* material, and human organisms as human.
Because what do you do?
Obviously a human clone is a human being… but even the stem-cell true believers tend to say that human clones are evil and bad, or bad and evil… and that’s likely why. It’s because the way that’s being forged *requires* the definition of whatever human organism that is created for research to be defined as not-human.
This gives us NOTHING in the way of figuring out how to deal with human organisms that everyone agrees ARE human.
In other words… it’s short sighted and anti-science due to a profound lack of imagination concerning what might, some day soon, be possible.
@83
Well for the record, Synova, my personal ethical boundaries regarding the scientific use of embryos are pretty much identical to yours. I also believe that having an ethically sound way to provide stem cells to science is necessary to keep the incentive to produce embryonic stem cells unethically, via cloning or worse, as low as possible.
I admired the thoughtfulness of Bush’s policy and respected it and supported it by the way. Baracky’s policy I will be indifferent to. He’s dangerous and creepy in ways that are a lot more threatening to me and mine is all. At least there will be one less issue for him to demagogue and fuel the conservatives are anti-science nonsense while he’s busy scientifically shaking his marxist little fist at teh Sun God and scientifically nurturing teh Earth Mother.
Stealing the name of science from science in the name of politics is always gonna be pretty bad policeh in the long run, I think. I can’t recall seeing science done about politics. Pseudoscience, well ok, that. But not science.
but even the stem-cell true believers tend to say that human clones are evil and bad
Point of order, no says clones are evil, the act of cloning humans is deemed an “unnecessary evil”.
Obviously, identical twins/triplets/quads are natural human clones; however the objection of creating human clones as a means to other ends (stem cells, source of harvestable organs, etc).
Good Lord I wrote fetus when it should have been embryo…
Not my point. That being that you can’t know beforehand which won’t be viable. So they all hold the potential.
I’m done.
No. I pay all taxes under duress. Like I said, it’s part of the definition of “tax”. One of the reasons I object to “compassionate” Government is that it takes away my (and everyone’s) ability to be compassionate on my own nickel. If the Government takes the money, willy-nilly, it isn’t me being generous — which, for the Leftoids, is the point, or so I believe. They are jealous niggards, unwilling to part with the slightest bit of their own stuff, thus requiring it be taken at gunpoint. Note that Barack (His Name be Praised, Hallelujah, Hallelujah) Obama couldn’t find fifty bucks a month to send to his destitute half-brother in Africa, out of a quarter mill a year income; I know people who make a fifth of that or less who give $100 a month or more to African ministries.
Definitions, slart. As citizens we volunteer to be taxed because it’s a necessity if Government is to function at all, and we want Government to function (though we argue about what “function” means). But you cannot volunteer to pay taxes; otherwise it isn’t a “tax”, it’s a charitable contribution, a different animal altogether.
As for speed limits — properly formulated speed limits have a definite function in highway safety, but when I see a hundred miles of rural Interstate with sparse traffic, excellent pavement, and gentle curves posted at 50 MPH I conclude that the other speed limits posted by the same “authority” are just as inappropriate, deriving from something other than highways safety.
Regards,
Ric
a hundred miles of rural Interstate…
And designed to be driven in less than an hour.
I understand Jeff’s frustration. This shouldn’t be a conversation about teh Cowboys (or Redskins–neither of whose players, by the way, pass the Liberal test for who is a “person” by the way). But the point of Jeff’s rejoinder bears some examination: “It’s a statistical certainty that not all could become people, or would, given the requisite conditions” presupposes some standard beyond conception for the definition of “people” (in my vocab, “person”). The quoted statement seems to indicate that “person” is conditional. But, so far as I know, the constitutional standard is that “people” are allowed “equal treatment” under the law regardless of “condition.”
That said, it seems clear that even if the Founders did not contemplate specifically this argument about what is and what is not a human (deeming the discussion ridiculous, as I imagine they would have, in a Monty Python-esque way), they seem to have pre-supposed its ramifications in the Bill of Rights at the very least by positing that rights not positively articulated in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights automatically revert to the states and to the people. I.e. It’s not for the Feds to decide. It’s for us to decide–at the state level and through the vote.
Period.
This is why I’m ever alarmed by the Left’s constant recourse to the Courts to rectify perceived wrongs to specified groups while they deny the same protections to groups that they themselves do not define.
As a result of Roe v. Wade, a “human being” is currently defined, by (supremely ironic) fiat by the (M)other. If the biological “mother” says it’s a person, then it enjoys constitutional protection. If she’s murdered, while pregnant, and the baby dies as a result, the law presumes that she defined her offspring as a “child” for legal purposes, and charges the murderer with not one but two crimes. But, if she determines on her own that the “thing” within her is not a person, then it is not regarded so. So, if I murder my “girlfriend” on the way to the abortion clinic, well then, I’ve only murdered one person, not two . . .
This has created something of a “super” citizen in pregnant women who enjoy a kind of standing before the law impossible for males that flies in the face of the very idea of equality before the bench.
Far from furthering the cause of women, by the way, this is one of the surest ways to enslave as I’ve ever seen. So long as slaves were defined thus before the bar, they had no standing–but so, then, was anyone ever in danger of being “defined” thus.
But England, and then Vermont, seemed to understand that slavery itself might be a means to shut down any liberty at all–and so, rightly, slavery was legislatively, if belatedly, abolished.
Abortion ought to be looked at in the same way. Abortion itself threatens the liberty of all, not merely of some.
Distinction without a difference, Ric. If you volunteered to be taxed, you assented to pay tax, when due. This is complaining loudly just to hear your head roar, in the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn.
You could think of it as your patriotic duty, even. It’d save a lot of wear and tear on the fretter.
This shouldn’t be a conversation about…
Going 101 mph, either.
And by the way, the abortion question is the “linguistic turn” par excellance. Meaning inheres with the subject entirely. If I decide it is what it is, it is what it is. If I do not, it is not. Moses hears, in the desert, “I am Who ams.” But I say, “I think therefore I am.” Which means, of course, “I think, therefore YOU are.” quod erat dÄ“mÃ…Ânstrandum.
We can argue individual battles, but unless we destroy their means of production, we’re toast.
This is a stupid argument.
Do you guys unnerstand how the estrogen based pill works?
As of 2007 there are ~300,000,000 people in the USA. Half or so are XX. Let us say oh….1/4 of those are women in the fertile demographic….probably a conservative estimate.
In 1999 50% of women used the estrogen based pill.
That is approx 20,000,000 women.
Each of those women can commit up to one murder a month, since they can cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant by using the pill.
Get the picture, Jeff?
that is up to 240 million murders of the “concepted†per year.
Compare that to 400,000 unwanted fertilized eggs from couples in fertility therapy.
The snowflake “embryos.”
Those are not “embryos”. Those are fertilized eggs, undifferentiated diploid cell clumps…..blastula.
They aren’t tiny little homunculi with arms and legs.
If you are serious about protecting “the unborn” and “life begins at conception” you better outlaw the Pill.
Otherwise you are just a bunch of fakers.
I’m okay with outlawing the pill, just so long as we actually have a vote. How’s about yuz gayz?
Kate Mengele
shut you, you ignorant slut.
Yay Abortion! Now Obama-protected!
Eff you, Darleen, your old cunt ain’t fetched no dick since Shakespeare shagged you in the park.
lol.
Ever take the Pill, Darleen?
Murderer.
;)
She take pills for those unexpected imbalances in her intestinal flora.
I prefer a bullhorn.
#
Comment by Darleen on 11/16 @ 2:34 pm #
Humanity is determined, by my measure ( and I am not so stuck up I expect anyone to agree) by HAVING developed a capacity for an individual consciousness.
“SarahW
I’m saying this in good faith and just out of geniune curiousity … what happens to the humanity of an individual who loses their capacity for consciousness? Or loses their capacity for “full†consciousness?”
They become Obama-ites, and flush God and the Constitution down the toilet.
Late to the party, as usual. My computer is waiting for a wirelss connector.
but even the stem-cell true believers tend to say that human clones are evil and bad
Only rich people can afford clones, rich people are evil, therefore their clones are evil.
D’uh!
Shorter Nishfong:
“But mom, everybody else is doing it!”
Kate
You are still an ignorant slut. The vast majority of BCP’s are combo of estrogen/progestin which prevents OVULATION. The only BCP that interfers with implantation is the mini-pill, a progestin only pill, which also works by thickening cervical mucus preventing sperm from entering the uterus…thus making the incidence of prevented implantation unknowable.
When I was young, BCPs were combo and very very strong (think 35 years ago)… I found the side effects too much for me and didn’t take ’em. I also didn’t like screwing with hormones since I was healthy.
I had four very successful, healthy pregnancies.
Sorry, Kate, that reproduction scares the shit out of you … but it does explain your obsession with Sarah and your pro-infanticide stance.
Not in a freezer, they don’t. And even assuming implantation, under the various possible scenarios, the odds are about 50% at the very best. I’m late to the party on this one, so pardon me while I catch up.
poor thor
looks like Mommy discovered the latest inflatable doll, confiscated it and grounded him. Mommy is the only female that can stand getting with five feet of him. thor can’t reproduce
thus proving there IS a God.
That’s not quite true. Some fascinating things are being done, and there’s one Japanese project that comes awfully close to creating pluripotent cells from skin cells, IIRC, but not quite. It also has some significant hurdles to clear before it could be considered for human use.
Oh. Kate’s here? Damn. I was hoping for a robust, rational discussion. I thought you were leaving, Ms. Mengele.
just a heads up
like the shuttle launch last nite
c-span 2-book tv
tippie-canoe and tyler too
started at 10 pm eastern
i just think pw peeps would like
thanks
Pablo
embryos are nascent human life … statistics are irrelevant in this instance because it is unknowable whether or not any particular singular embryo will be successful or not.
Think of standing outside a hospital nursery filled with 30 newborns. Statistics could tell us that 5% will die of cancer before they are 40, 7% will be criminals, 1% will commit murder …. but you don’t in the room and randomly start snuffing out 13% of the infants.
I read an obvious contradiction in your blow-by-blow dictum.
For the life of unsoiled wombers, get your staory straight, did eat the ixnay the babushki pills or not?!!!
That’s not quite true either. What’s on the table, and by that I mean the bill Bush vetoed, doesn’t earmark any funds for ESCR. It only allows NIH to fund ESCR. Projects would still have to be subjected to the competitive granting process and would be funded, if successful, out of the existing pool of available NIH research funding.
I bet my mom could beat you up.
Every chick I’m with I make sure they’re on the pill. I like the predictability of the cycle.
Nothing sucks more than to have to explain “it’s not the flow that’s bad, matter of fact it’s natural, it’s wonderful, fuckin’ lovely red, but do you have to do it on my dick?”
Pablo
The government has no business funding ESCR. Period. It shouldn’t stop private research and doesn’t, but it has no business funding something that the market has shied away from.
It is knowable in this case. We’re talking about embryos that would otherwise be discarded. Those will not become children in the biohaz waste bag. The text of the bill is here. One of the conditions:
So, we know what the destiny of an included embryo will be.
thor: still the Glen Gould of retards.
Darleen, I could make the argument, very convincingly, that the government has no business funding any biomedical research at all. But it does, moreso than any other entity on the planet.
thor, do us all a favor and get a vasectomy. Or get neutered. We’ll thank you later.
Comment by Pablo Abu Jamal on 11/16 @ 9:29 pm #
Even better, shove a shotgun in your mouth and pull the trigger.
Just make sure it’s loaded.
N. P’Brain, still the redwood tree of pubes.
thog, go kill yourself, you pathetic cocksucker.
Pablo
Part of the problem of having the government fund something that is really not in the province of government is the door opens for mischief. Certainly shit like this would have a harder time becoming “accepted wisdom” if unaccountable government largess was taken away.
I want to restrict and reverse non-legitimate government funding and the best place to start is with ethically questionable research.
If ESCR is as promising as its advocates claim, then finding private funding should be little problem.
“If ESCR is as promising as its advocates claim, then finding private funding should be little problem.”
What’s interesting is that it doesn’t draw that private funding.
Hey, I’m sitting here enjoying the game, do you mind keeping your lips off Obama’s balls. That’s so distracting.
You know what’s great about Obama getting his kids a puppy? Watching Obama smile as that pit bull barks at white people.
They do for real just want to study them. It’s not like the goal is to antagonize people. Wanting to study things is human too I think. Preciouser than embryos even.
thor I’m trying to have a moment here
thog makes Corky the Retard look like a fucking genius.
It’s damned tough to patent is part of the problem. As a business model it sucks, and the government frown on it doesn’t help.
Ric, you’re better than that. First, the potential of ESC’s is not merely theoretical. Amazing things have been done in animal models. Second, the “reversion” you speak of has done nothing but approximate ESC’s. If it “works”, it does so by becoming something very close to that which you’re suggesting doesn’t work. That project hasn’t done anything but make people say “Wow!” Yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. It’s still very early in the game.
Isn’t it though? Interesting, that is. Considering that according to Kate it’s the key to curing cancer, immortality, and the coming of the Eschaton. And nobody but the Government will fund it — including the California Government, which did it to cock a snoot at George Bush, not for any sensible reason. It’s almost as if they know something Kate doesn’t, eh?
My own speculation: pluripotent, plenipotent, or whatever, embryonic stem cells still carry the genetic material and histocompatibility complexes of their donors, and are thus subject to the same ills as any other transplant. Ah, well, time will tell.
The thread has, as usual, degenerated into a discussion of the morality of ESCR, abortion, and birth control, with our resident eugenicist doing her best to keep it misdirected. Jeff has bowed out, since none of the posters seems willing to discuss what he finds interesting about the matter, and I’m gone as well for the same reason. G’night, all.
Kate, I’m feeling uncommonly generous tonight, so I’d like to offer you another login name to use in your quest to evade the banners: Kokkor Hekkus. You might get a little entertainment from looking it up, even.
Regards,
Ric
Would anyone like to offer a guess as to why the US taxpayer, and not the free market decoded the human genome? Would anyone like to suggest that the endeavor was an utter failure and a waste of time?
“Comment by gregorbo on 11/16 @ 7:08 pm #
I understand Jeff’s frustration. This shouldn’t be a conversation about teh Cowboys…”
I’ve read some fairly good and thought provoking commentary, regarding this topic, on this thread; I’ve even tipped my hat to points that you made earlier in the thread.
With all do respect, gregorbo, I don’t see how the exchange of a few pleasantries, interspersed throughout the thread, accomplishes any treadjacking or subject change…
I admire your serious wish to pursue the topic. And, I agree with your view on abortion, personally. But over many years of discussion with diverse ideological groups, I’ve often heard pro-choice women advance the argument that outlawing abortion not only forces a morality on them that they don’t agree with, but it also reduces them to de facto slaves of the state; because they forfeit control over their own bodies during the term of an enforced pregnancy…
I don’t agree with their morality, or lack of it. I also agree with you when you say; “Abortion itself threatens the liberty of all, not merely of some.” Furthermore, I also agree strongly with your tenth amendment outlook on the abortion question; although I believe that the aforementioned slavery argument would be used against that assertion as well as the fact that the question of black slavery was avoided by the constitution as originally ratified. Together, these two arguments would be demagogued in a way that those of us in the pro-life crowd would find astonishing…
So please, allow us a bit of light conversation along the thread. I assure you that the topic is being seriously considered, as are your thought provoking comments…
Best Wishes…
etch a sketch
hey / i just bought this cool game
i think it’s called a video game!
’tis called “pong”
it’s like tennis!
minus the sweat
or the joining of the country clubs…
midnight basketball!
fuck rehab
it’s 12 steps wasted
from the bong
to the couch
[…] Protein Wisdom: Understanding Embryonic Stem Cell Issues The new Administration’s unethical rhetoric and actions. […]
Why are people still engaging the nishbot and thor? Neither of them has anything resembling positive information to offer.
Cocking snoots at George Bush is as insulting as laughing at cripples on karaoke night. Might as well offer Laura Bush a diet Coke and a half a joint to lick your ass, same thing. Cock snooting! Don’t do it!
Thor makes me miss Actus.
Yeah, click on peter jackson’s blog – liberal capitalist weblog. Oh my, another redumblican who thinks Black Monday is the day his maid comes over.
Did you hear what that fuck’in thor said about you Mr. Jackson!!
It’s an OUTRAGE!!
He said you are…he said…you are a REPUBLICAN!!!!
That bastards gone to far NOW!
Wow!! I have an IVF baby,and are you folks ever missing the point here!
Ric Locke had it right-
Is gov’t supposed to be the arbitrator of morality? and is that why the socons are belittled? Because only gov’t should be able to determine what is right or wrong,and the socons Christian “free will” theology says that everyone is responsible for their own moral choices?And a prog gov’t does not want the competition of folks being able to decide what is moral?
Is gov’t supposed to be the arbitrator of morality?
According to the Obama zombies — yes.
You should feel good that I’m a liberal. Every time I rip you a new asshole I donate it to needy Guatemalan orphans.
Don’t look now , but your narcissism is showing.
This is the point I wish to address.
First as happyfeet said back in #3 it is a wedge issue that can be used to peel the soc-cons from the rest of the conservative side. The progressives may think that is useful but not as an election issue as an this election turned on keeping the soc-con base from coming out in mass. That was the main margin of victory over the 2004 results.
It could be show of arrogance like the middle finger Obama gave on camera and the “lipstick on a pig” “joke” he did. Just to stick the knife in a perceived helpless enemy. Bully/thug behavior to make sure they never even think of crossing you again. That would light up the prog base but it doesn’t work well on Christians to threaten them on matters of belief. You would think that the Left had learned that by now.
I think most likely it is simply the opening salvo of an attempt to open up all forms of “research” on human cells, tissue, embryos, and (the real end game) aborted babies.
Get the soc-cons sliced away from the rest then slide on down that slippery slope one gliding step at a time. The Federal money can come in buckets, it’s addictive as hell. All good dealers know the first step is the hardest but once taken it’s even harder turning back.
I can see the future campaign. Eternal life can be yours, here, now, all we need is your kids dead bodies. Cheap price right?
Thanks for reading Thor. I must admit for the first time since Reagan in ’84 I voted Republican. I couldn’t resist the temptation to cancel out an Obama voter. Yes, it was delicious.
In #57 and #141 Ric Locke pointed Kate/Nishi toward a new name.
I have a suggestion too, Jha’Dur.
The really convenient part of this debate is that the larger viability questionâ€â€the odds that a particular fertilized egg will actually be bornâ€â€has already been answered for us, and answered by those amongst us most capable of objectively answering the question in a way disinterested with the abortion debate.
Once a human egg is fertilized in utero, it has a one in three chance of never implanting on the uterine wall, and of ones that do manage to implant, one in three will spontaneously abort before the ninetieth day of pregnancy. The medical profession has essentially determined that a pregnancy isn’t viable until the ninety day mark is passed. Pregnant women who went to the Doctor within the first ninety days of pregnancy will remember being told to take it easy and down vitamin pills, but otherwise come back after the three month mark. Before then, they don’t want to see you again. They don’t want to expose themselves legally since the chance for spontaneous abortion is so high.
Uh, Pablo, what? You mean to say that you never heard the names Craig Ventor, Hamilton Smith, Greg Myers, Celera Corp? Which private enterprise, it so happens, beat the government project both in terms of time, theoretical accomplishment and output per dollar invested?
Bill Clinton put on a dog and pony show at the White House with Collins and Ventor in an attempt to grab headlines and credit, but I think the private venture was well ahead of the government venture at the time of the announcement of completion, which was itself, in any event premature. Clinton also did this (from the wiki):
Thanks there Bill, thanks a lot for that.
I don’t know much of anything about this field, but I think the real concerns are being danced around.
I doubt there is a problem with most social cons when it comes to this kind of thing, as long as there are safeguards against stuff like encouraging abortion to meet a demand. I don’t think a embryo that was created in a dish (never in a human womb) is a human, but I’m against the idea of trying to grow a human from a dish created embryo. We have enough trouble with identity groups as it is.
Now that I’ve displayed my colossal ignorance, and missed the topic Jeff was hoping for (a linguist I ain’t), I’ll shut up.
Oops, sorry, my bad, Gene Myers, not Greg.
*under my breath* this is where I get my street cred back…
I agree with what Ric said.
darleen, i said the estrogen based pill, not the combination pill.
the estogen based pill causes failure to implant.
So do IUDs.
RU-86, the morning after pill, causes an abortion.
If LIFE becins at concetion, all those forms of birth control are murder.
quit with word salad, you sound like Palin trying to explain the bailout bill.
lol, it doesn’t matter really.
Pretty soon all that will be left in the GOP is the diehard socons.
The Incredible Shrinking Republican Party.
32% of YOUNG evangelicals voted for Obama.
hahaha
I told you guys Palin would fracture the GOP along the IQ fault line, and she did.
I told you the youth vote mattered and Ruffini says youth gave Obama 73 electoral votes.
And now I predict the GOP will be out of power for 40 years.
Forty years spent wandering in the wilderness.
Sweet.
Look feets.
How the GOP Lost My Vote
You see happyfeets…..the GOP only embraced the socons to achieve power. Well, they got power, and they screwed the whole country over royally, and now those chickens are coming home to roost, lol. The GOP made anti-choice, anti-science, and anti-gay their core themes.
So in this election they had nothing but Ayers.
The socon issues are not wedge issues– they are core themes of the GOP anymore.
And that is all you got.
Better get your head down feets.
[The GOP] lost the vote of many former supporters (including myself) because they have chosen to embrace the Religious Right.
Your problem is that you won’t be able to save your cherished values unless you include the “Religious Right” in your coalition, as both a pragmatic and ideological matter. Nobody who’s understood PW thinks the “Religious Left” is grounded in respect for the value of the individual; on the other hand, that is a beginning point for the “Religious Right.”
So your theory is Palin cost the GOP the evangelical youth vote, nishfong?
I’ll bet you have to keep changing your name to keep political strategists from harassing you, huh?
Yup, more or less. The GOP is dead, nishi. But you’re wrong about what killed it.
If O! recieved 32% of the young evangelical vote you can probably pin that on the fact his church is such a beacon of light in this dark world. I mean what is not to love about someone that finds his spiritual mentor in such a place? I am sure his stances on abortion drew some of the evangelicals away from McCain too. It was a probably a combination of both of these that helped O! win so much of the evangelical vote.
I want to get into this but I am at work already cause I have deliverables what need delivering. But this is inapt…
The socon issues are not wedge issues – they are core themes of the GOP anymore.
McCain wouldn’t know a core theme if Lindsey Graham put on his bestest party dress and presented it to him on a platter. It wasn’t social conservatives that destroyed the Republican Party. The media aside, this battle was lost in the Senate. But what you won’t see is a Republican Party reconstitute itself along convenient social conservative/economic conservative lines. Freedom is a powerful core theme I think, and a lot unitey.
Well, since this discussion has already degenerated …
believe in limited government, individual rights, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms – positions that one normally associates with Republicans.
But I didn’t vote for a single Republican in 2008. I’ve become increasingly alienated by the Republicans†embrace of the religious “social conservative†agenda, including attempts to ban abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage.
So … you voted for Obama? As they say, heh.
McCain was soft on abortion and not even Obama is going to allow gay marriage?
Pro-choice people have lost their mind. You’ve become unhinged. In their paranoid state, they take any infringement on the sacred right as an outright ban. Honestly, I think I’d respect you more if you said you simply liked Obama’s Hope and Change.
There is no way that Nishi’s “vote” was “changed” by Repubs stances on abortion. No way I buy that she ever even contemplated it. I think her entire thought process on the political parties runs along characitures she picks up by reading the New Yorker.
#158: “You are not ready for immortality.” Although Kosh is probably the only person who could out-cryptic Nishi.
1. They didn’t beat the HGP. They announced simultaneously, in that “dog and pony show” you refer to with Collins and Bubba.
2. What Venter did at Celera was an outgrowth of what he worked on at…you guessed it…NIH. And it was done with NIH data. That was not a project created from whole cloth at Celara. It too was built upon your tax dollar by a guy who started with what he learned at NIH. And Celera was so happy with him that they promptly fired him.
3. As for theoretical accomplishment, the shotgun approach has it’s convincing detractors, and Venter himself now says that the earlier efforts were flawed. Again, new knowledge is coming out and related projects are becoming commercially viable because of the very expensive groundwork done by NIH, which was my point.
Yeah, you can tell by the way they nominated Mike Huckabee. Idiot.
It was enough to derail Romney though.
Wrong. Pretty soon all that will be left will be those who can do without. Those that don’t play Wii or Xbox all day. Those that can shoot. Those that can fend.
And that ain’t Obama’s base.
Last time I checked, you can’t text a sandwich.
Why are people still engaging the talking telephone poles? It’s not like they’re even entertaining, and they’re certainly not interested in communicating.
It’s in your head, in your heeeaaaad…
Fucking zombie. Feh.
Well, that’s the kind of compact we have. You get to live here and earn money, and the government gets a chunk of your paycheck.
“The Founding Fathers correctly recognized that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But freedom of religion also implies freedom *from* religion.”
Um, no, no it doesn’t.
“As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, there should be a “wall of separation†between church and state. Public policy should not be based on religious doctrines.”
Public policy is constantly being based on religious doctrine.
Should we repeal laws against murder because they are based on “religious doctrine”?
Good for him. You don’t invent it; you don’t get to patent it. You can sequence the genome yourself, and you can hold that information as proprietary, but you can’t prevent other people from figuring it out themselves, and using the result. It’s akin to telling people they can’t do spectral analysis on stars, or draw any conclusions from the data.
Or: copyrighting the genome information.
I didn’t agree with Clinton on much, but I agreed with him on this. If some biotech companies gambled and lost, well, that’s the nature of the business.
OT but Quantum of Solace sucked.
Yeah, that’s a hell of an assumption to build a business model around.
What do you mean by that, Pabs?
We were a tad of a failure debating this, but here’s another piece, which brings up a Mother Jones article, regarding the attachment couples have to those frozen embryos.
… Of the 58 couples Nachtigall and his group interviewed, the average couple had seven frozen embryos in storage. The average embryo had been in storage for four years. Even after that much time had elapsed, 72 percent had not decided what to do, and a number echoed the words of one patient: “We can’t talk about it.” The embryos keep alive the question of whether to have more children, a topic on which many spouses disagree. “I still have six in the bank,” said one woman, who had not given up the idea of bearing them. “They call to me. I hate to talk about it. But they call to me.”
Couples desperate to have children, who then KNOW what those little frozen bits of cells turn into – I’d bet they’d rather those frozen baby popsicles go to other childless couples (or defer making ANY decision) before they willingly allow them to be turned over to the likes of nishi.
If I decide to put my dog to sleep (thus, the life and death decision has already been made) is it then ok to just give the dog to science for them to experiment on?
I mean, I’d already made the life and death decision.
O/T: Madagascar II was teh awesome. Those penguins …
Why are people still engaging the talking telephone poles?
Sorry, Rob, because I agree with your premise. I just didn’t realize “sylvie_oshima” was yet another nishi avatar. Too busy lately.
The medical profession has essentially determined that a pregnancy isn’t viable until the ninety day mark is passed.
Peter, how many pregnancies have you had?
Carin
It is a sad fact of our society that a dog has more rights than a human fetus.
That an expectation of being able to patent the human genome without any particular reason to have such an expectation is an unwise basket to put all your eggs in, fiscally speaking. You might as well try to patent feet and collect royalties from walking.
Oh, ok. I completely agree, then.
Celera’s attempts to protect IP it had developed in the process of sequencing are just fine with me, though. IP protections don’t keep other people from achieving the same result, they just protect your data from being burgled by others, and impose consequences on the burglars.
I’m not sure what they were thinking with all the patent applications, though.
Peter, how many pregnancies have you had?
Three.
Re: SDN #174
Yes, but he made sense eventually. Plus what “Deathwalker” discovered seems to be Nishi’s goal.
I love the “Hour of scampering”.
That’s a problem that plagues a lot of biologics research, including ESCR. Supposing you find the Holy Grail, once someone else figures out how to do what you did your profit potential craters. And when you’ve got to publish and be peer reviewed into order to make it to market it’s a given that you have to let the cat out of the bag. With drugs, you’ve got a tangible thing to patent and you can make a killing. With biologics, not so much.
That’s interesting. About the attachyness. But I don’t know that it follows that people would want to have these dealios adopted. The idea that they all should be enwombed and nurtured and fed and clothed and college funded can’t be right. That’s just sort of extreme. I just really don’t see the problem with using them to figure stuff out if people want to do that. Embryos are cheap and plentiful. Babies not so much. These things are not sui generis.
Re: 158, 174, 197 – lurvs me some B5 in a political thread. I had almost thought it forgotten.
Though I see Nishidiot as more like the unambitious emo kid who wants to grow up to be Jha’dur, provided she doesn’t actually have to grow up to do it.
She’s just an attention whore.
Which, if you’re a complete moron, equates exactly to me calling her a whore.
Happy – I think the issue is that some people would want to, and some wouldn’t. Prolly a lot wouldn’t because they’re stupid enough to believe that life, even potential life, is precious.
But, I believe the issue the professor had with this whole dealo was the idea that once the decision was made (to donate) the idea of the “Life” was already terminated. Because, technically, no such thing happened. A couple makes the decision, but nothing had changed except someone’s thought process. The potential of the embryo exists until someone actually does something with it.
Just like my dog, Just because I’ve decided to give him that sweet shot of sleep/death, the dog is actually still alive until it … it isn’t.
What is appears is that Green is just hoping to avoid that whole yucky talk about whether embryos are potential life but merely stating they are already dead. By fiat, or something.
Three.
Okay, it’s true that I didn’t personally, physically experience the pregnancies, but during all three my wife had a Kung Fu Grip on my boys so tight I might as well have. And we did all three home births too. My wife is bad ass.
Hey, remember that “what to do about social liberals vs. social conservatives” argument ?
Yeah, so you really think that the Republican party’s agenda should be driven by people that equate using discarded embryos for research and Nazis ?
Since it was well written, I think JMS studied theology IIRC, and revolved around religion and politics, it is often on my mind in discussions of this nature.
But if you let him out in the backyard, he’s gonna be OK. You don’t wanna try that with an embryo.
Of course, my comparison is ridiculous. But, what Green is suggesting is that we declare the embryos non-viable by decision. It’s not the same as saying that they are biologically non-viable, because they are just as viable as the ones being implanted.
The issue is that if we want to make it possible for women to donate their embryos, why the need to cloak it under terms he believes make is sound nicer?
Because it isn’t about this action but setting the stage for actions to come later. “First one’s free”.
In theory, you’d have a point. In reality, they’re not viable. They need a willing womb to have any chance whatsoever at viability. Without one their potential is zero.
I just can’t go there. No one gets particularly excited about the odd sperm or egg but you throw them in a test tube and give it a shake and bam you have something sacred and precious? This is defining sacred and precious down I think. God I suck at this topic.
*shrug*
Better than basing the agenda on people who think listening into over-seas conversations between terrorists is a “fascism”. Or that think all whites are racists. Or think government has your best interests in mind. Or that corporations are evil incarnate and would slaughter you in a minute if it would bring them profit.
Because, while I may not agree with the level of reverence given “discarded embryos”, I can understand its basis and see how it flows logically from there.
That’s exactly where I land, feets. Implanted and growing, yes. Assembled and frozen, no.
Thanks Pablo. I feel like an awful person cause I understand people’s religious beliefs but I just can’t see how those beliefs have any bearing on the policy decisions that get made any more than insipid treehuggery should have any authoritative claims on environmental policy. That’s not compatible with democracy really.
I want a new thread. This one is uncomfortable and not very helpful.
A “willing womb” with the money for the procedure and one that the entire staff of the clinic and the donor approves of. As in adoption there are hoops that must be jumped through. Quite a few.
But, I’m not saying I disagree. I’m asking for a bit of truth in advertising. Green wants people to donate their embryos for destruction. The lie is that Green is advocating a policy similar to Bush’s. It’s not. He calls it an extension. It’s not.
I’m not making any value judgement on whether or not they should be used. But, there is a slight of hand being used here in his argument.
Yeah, so you really think that the Republican party’s agenda should be driven by people that equate using discarded embryos for research and Nazis.
One pretty good operating Theory is: once Faux Liberals/Progressives insinuate themselves into control of any practical issue, a slippery slope eventuates – the result is always something macbre. This also includes the meaning of words themselves.
BTW…
All of those options already exist, and the decision belongs to the “parents”. Thing is, there’s a whole lot more embryos than there are people looking to adopt them. O! gots nothing to do with it.
Honestly, I feel uncomfy about the whole dealo. If I couldn’t conceive (ha!) I’m sure I would have travelled to all ends of the world to make it happen. But, looking from my comfortable seat on the outside, the whole IVF thing is plagues with ethical issues. Fetal reduction, for example.
I meant “plagued” – I wasn’t doing a happy imitation ;)
oh. I agree that Green is a douche, but kind of just a run of the mill douche. Baracky is moving the douchey goalposts on a daily basis I think. Mostly I’m a lot part of the thread degeneration problem what Ric talked about. This was not a perfect Sunday discussion post I don’t think.
We dontated ours. To another couple, not to science.
Carin, this is a matter of access to funding, period. This is not going to be a radical step, and I think Franck mischaracterizes it as such. Politically, this is a done deal and it would have been a done deal had McCain won. The only thing that has kept this from becoming policy is George Bush.
By Franck using the term “hamfisted” he’s throwing stones from his glass house.
Well, someone needs to wake Jeff up and get us a new thread, but honestly we didn’t do this thread the justice he wanted. He may be disappointed in us. How about we talk about Gregory Craig as White House Counsel?
the whole IVF thing is plagues with ethical issues
Yes. Yes it is.
It’s easy for me to moralize, since I got pregnant looking at my husband, but the issue is better left to those who are involved. Like JD. Good on you guys for donating. I like to think I would have done the same, but I’m sure that would have left me sleepless some nights as well.
Oye.
I just think people what are free to donate their embryos to people should be free to donate them wherever. There’s nothing particularly ethical about making moral choices in the absence of other kinds of choices and it’s hard to argue that the impetus behind narrowing people’s dining choices is any less nannystatist than people telling you what you can and can’t do with your embryos what you made. I will go make coffee and go downstairs and smoke a cigarette I think and speak no more of these awkward uncomfortable touchy little embryos.
Carin – It did not bother Better Half to donate to another couple at all. I am going to have an irrational fear of walking down the street and meeting a child that we donated at some point in my life, or even worse, be called upon to pay child support for a child later on down the road.
Pablo, I think you are flat wrong about the history of the genome project. I believe you are selling NIH propaganda, why, I don’t know, but then, it’s your choice, so go right ahead.
geoffb wrote:
In #57 and #141 Ric Locke pointed Kate/Nishi toward a new name.
I have a suggestion too, Jha’Dur.
Only if Na’Toth meets her.
I think there’s a fair amount of hubris invested in the notion that man can create life in the lab as opposed to simply manipulating the process.
So is that supposed to mean you have some personal animus toward Craig Ventor? Fine. Lots of people do. But don’t play games with the history. It’s complex and takes a lot of work to come to grips with. Airbrushing won’t help people who haven’t spent the time nor done the work to know.
This is just one of the many reasons that doggy style just works.
This is just one of the many reasons that doggy style just works.
Yet would place oral sex in a less than favorable position … just sayin’
There’s always blindfolds, I suppose. Or old-fashioned drawing of the shades and putting the lights out.
Have we gone Too Far, yet?
I do not imagine this conversation would go to well …
Slarti : I am going to blindfold you and turn off all the lights, then you can give me a hummer.
Ms. Slarti : Oh, really?! Give me a moment to let me sharpen my incisors.
Yes, I did.
Two words: extracting. forceps.
:-)
This is just one of the many reasons that doggy style just works.
Before I tell this tale, let me preface it with the fact that I had 5 children in the course of 7 years. I was pregnant MOST of the time, and thus – about three of four children in I got a tad weary of the questions. Plus, I “never” found out, or was interested in knowing beforehand, the gender.
SO .. when a lady approached me at a mall and asked me if I knew what I was having I replied:
“I think it may be a puppy, because we did it doggy style.”
And then I walked away laughing.
One of the problems here is that the discussions keep degenerating into whether or not ESCR is moral or ethical, something the trolls are happy to encourage because such a discussion is always and inevitably not fruitful.
The ethical and moral status of ESCR is settled. It’s not. It’s a horror, wanting only a few comic-opera Teutonic names and a little dark-stained oak trim to finish the casting and set. This is most obvious in the case of Kate (nishi, quellcrist_falconer, sylvie_oshima, kokkor_hekkus, et. al.), who wants to live forever, sees this as a possibility, and is demanding social acceptance of her vileness, thinking that it shifts it over into the “virtue” column (which it would not, even if her wishes were granted.)
It fails to matter.
We do a lot of things via Government that would be morally and/or ethically unthinkable for an individual. At the top of that list is taxation. Demanding money at gunpoint is not a morally or ethically questionable practice, it is a morally and ethically wrong one — but Government does it every day, as a regular practice. Kidnapping for ransom is clearly morally and ethically wrong, but call it “arrest” and “a fine” and it’s routine. The libertarian formulation (“Government is that organization which assumes and enforces a monopoly on the use of force and violence to gain its ends”) applies, in spades. This does NOT mean that the practices somehow become virtuous or morally and ethically correct. It means we accept them as necessary evils and go on with our lives.
So the question is not whether ESCR is morally and ethically wrong (it is), nor is it whether or not the Government can do it (in an odd way, that’s what Government is for). It is whether or not it is sufficiently valuable to society to add it to the list of morally and ethically repugnant things that Government does as a matter of course. My opinion is, the answer is “no”. Your mileage, as usual, may vary.
Regards,
Ric
Oh, wow. And your profile, it still looks pretty kickin’.
My mom: six kids delivered in a space of six years and two months.
Carin – How did she respond? That was awesome.
Slarti – Extracting forceps could be used to Bobbitt you, or to be inserted into your skull. Good choice of weapon.
My grandmother had 10 girls in 12 years. My grandfather drank a lot.
Cause and effect? Which is which?
Oh, wow. And your profile, it still looks pretty kickin’.
My mom: six kids delivered in a space of six years and two month
Why thank you- I work out a lot.
I even worked out while pregnant. Mostly so I’d still have the energy to chase the rest of the gang.
My first two are 13 months apart. After that, I learned to space ’em out a bit more. Almost 2 years exactly. They were all born between November and January.
Slarti – At varying times, I am sure it was both the cause, and the effect.
If I recall, the lady got a shocked look on her face, and then she laughed. I mean, how mad can you get at a pregnant lady for making a blue comment?
#1 and #2 are thirteen months and a week apart. #2 and #3 are 11 months apart. #3 and #4 (me) are 366 days apart. #4 and #5 are nearly 19 months apart (whee! vacation!). #5 and #6 are 17 months apart.
She slacked off, a bit, toward the end. I think it took them a while to a) get the hang of the rhythm method, and then b) realize that the rhythm method doesn’t work worth a damn, and administer the Final Cut.
Ric, Kate is insane. The only question she settles is whether or not she’s insane. She is.
Actually, we figured out the RM pretty quickly. But, it doesn’t work very well if you drink too much gin one night. We call him Ethan.
Feel free to expand on that, sdferr.
No, not at all. Venter is a brilliant scientist. And I hope he’s onto something with his algae as biofuel deal. But I don’t think the Celera genome project rebuts my point in #142, and I think that suggesting that it does twists the history.
I won’t if you won’t. All one has to do is look at Venter’s CV, and read his genome paper:
Celera didn’t write the book on this despite what they might want to tell you from a marketing perspective. This was not solely the product of free market enterprise. This was an NIH guy with NIH data who went to the private sector and did what the NIH was doing in parallel.
Quick note to Bob Reed–Thanks for your thoughtful reply and apologies from me for criticizing the exchange of pleasentries on this thread–I didn’t mean that I found them objectionable. Just frustrated that the thread was becoming so side-tracked. I was a Dallasite during the Aikman days, so I’m still somewhat of a Cowboy fan.
Cheers.
Anyone interested in the history of the Human Genome sequencing project(s) can read among others a book “Cracking the Genome” by Kevin Davies. Wherein he says in conclusion on p. 251:
I don’t claim that Celera wrote the book, but that contrary to your initial assertion
they were a significant part of the story. Perkin-Elmer invested $1billion in private funds in their project, used instruments invented by P-E, created Celera Genomics and worked to sequence the Genome. They also pledged to make the entirety of their sequence public (and did). And an aside, Celera had no plan to patent the genome, as seems to have been suggested upthread.
I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to talk about… appointing justices? Or using deceptive language?
If it was language I was going to mention that nishi made a point in parallel to the guy wanting to use language to manipulate the situation and get people to do what they wouldn’t otherwise do, which is agree to use Federal tax money to fund research done on embryonic stem cells from newly donated embryos.
It was her chortling about pro-life women using a pill that prevents implantation.
It sounds like I’m not the only one here who had all of my kids fairly close together (four in six years) and then went for a snip-snip. But before that I was on birth control and did my best to avoid the sort that prevent implantation only. The pill was supposed to prevent ovulation.
Now, if this was a *lie* then someone like nishi going “neener-neener, you baby killer you” is not going to make me feel guilty, it’s going to make me feel angry because someone who knew I had those concerns lied to me.
Green wants to use language to mislead and get his ideas implemented, quietly… “Oh, sure… the “life and death” decision for these embryos was already made.”
This whole issue, beginning with abortion and going from there, is rife with deception and it seems to be on the pro-abortion side of it more often than not. (And I’m not including people who honestly argue that conception is a silly point to use to define life… they are being clear, just as those arguing that it’s the obvious point to use to define life are being clear.)
“The life and health of the mother” is a lie that is designed to include “I’m going to get stretch marks and swollen feet” if someone wants it to.
This lie includes the lie that abortions for pregnancies that actually *are* life threatening are not available. (When I was active duty abortions could not, no-way, be performed in military hospitals and yet I knew someone who had two of them.)
The idea that taking away the ability to abort at any point takes away a mothers “choice” is a lie. All it does is take away her right to change her mind after her initial choices got her pregnant.
The implication that parents with leftover embryos from IVF processes *can’t* donate those embryos for research is a lie. Of course they can, and some do.
“Embryonic Stem Cell research has been banned in the United States,” is simply an outright lie.
Though the lie usually includes “… banned in the United States by people pushing a repressive theocracy.”
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