More on Obama Stem Cell Deception

And duplicity. This is morally egregious.
The details are here (a good read).

Murder: Error of Intellect, or Error of Will?

Can it be that Bill Clinton and Dr. Gupta (Obama's pick for Surgeon General), don't really know what an embryo is? Watch the clip for yourself. Clinton speaks of embryos as non-fertilized, and said if embryos were ever on their way to being fertilized, they shouldn't be used for experimentation. Surely Dr. Gupta might point out an embryo is an embryo because it has been fertilized, that it is a genetically complete fully fertilized egg. Gupta said nothing.

Could simple ignorance of basic medical science be at the heart of this culture war? Could it be we are seeing mistakes of the intellect, not so much mistakes of the will . . .? Nah. I don't think so either.

Politics in Science: Science in Politics: Politics in Science

Everyone lies: but these lies are about human lives.
Read this for background.

Even better: look at this.
Then go to this site: Stem Cell Research news.

Angry Atheism: Bad Science

Now there is a story from Britain, where angry atheism is hugely influential in elite opinion, about a different type of war against science. It seems that Colin McGuckin, “ a professor of regenerative medicine at Newcastle University and an expert on the use of adult stem cells,” is leaving Britain for France, because the only stem cell research the British government wants to spend money on involves embryonic stem cells. According to McGuckin, “A vast amount of money in the U. K. from the government has gone into embryonic stem-cell research with not one patient having been treated, to the detriment of [research into] adult stem cells, which has been severely underfunded. Cord blood has already cured around 10,000 people, but despite this much of the U. K. stem cell funding goes towards other types of stem cells including embryonic stem cells, which are not expected to cure people in the next 50 years.”

Don’t expect to hear any angry denunciations of the climate that caused Prof. McGuckin to leave Britain from Richard Dawkins, P Z Myers, Christopher Hitchens or any of the other usual suspects who are eager advocates of stem cell research that destroys nascent human life but far less supportive of the research that is helping to save human lives today without, however, advancing their agenda of attacking Christian morality.

All this, in spite of the fact that recent advances in stem cell technology obviate the need for embryonic stem cells: see here.

Just Take a Look

Really, I invite you: just look.
But look carefully.

IVF Is Still Unethical and Bizarre

Despite what Ms. Lamothe says, she is wrong.
IVF does destroy something: it destroys innocent human life.

Read both comments here.

The original post can be read here.

Grania at the Museum of Science and Industry

I am Grania.
I am sitting here looking at a baby in a bottle.
Its feathery hair floats in formaldehyde,
Its eyes are closed tight in an undersea nap
From which there will be no awakening.
It has everything,
All the human necessities,
Fingernails
Eyelashes
Tiny conch-like ears
Dimples and creases and a fat little belly.
It’s a great little baby,
Except that it’s dead.

Bottled rudiments, all in a row.
Flecks of humanity
Dropped from inhospitable wombs,
Cold-packed by scientists from
A bleak harvest to be placed
Like a housewife’s summer’s work
On a cellar shelf. This freak show.
Is this one mine? That one yours?
The mothers come as if to Parents’ Day at school
To wonder who is the prize of the display,
Unique in some hellish way.

By this one, I am beguiled.
Observe that plump rump.
Reminds me
Of J. Swift’s recipe
For fricassee
Of child.

In the first flush of love,
My true love gave to me
One embryo
Nestled inconveniently.
She was a girl,
With her sex tucked inward between fat little pads.
Just one of many abandoned by fun-loving dads.

By the third week,
There was a heart,
A mere pinpoint, but
Though its elfin beats are silenced,
They echo and echo,
Sending bubbles of reproach to the top of the jar.
And I hear
And hear
And I feel
Your gargantuan wrath,
but from afar.

Sorry, sweetie,
Mommie simply had to commit you to the jar.

- Rosemary Hamilton

Secrets of Embryology

On dirty little secrets and the choice of words. Facts: Every human being begins as a single-cell zygote, grows through the embryonic stage, then the fetal stage, is born and develops through infancy, through childhood, and through adulthood, until death. Each human being is genetically the same human being at every stage, despite changes in his or her appearance.

Embryologists are united on this point. Consider the following statements from standard textbooks: “Human development begins at fertilization . . . This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual” (Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud); “Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote) . . . The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual” (Bruce M. Carlson); “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed . . . The embryo now exists as a genetic unity” (Ronan O’Rahilly and Faiola Muller).

Whether the new organism is produced by fertilization or by cloning, each new human organism is a distinct entity. Twins are genetic duplicates of each other, but no one would deny that each is a distinct human individual. Similarly, a clone would be a genetic duplicate of another human being, but there is no denying that it would also be a separate individual.

From its first moment, supplied with its complete set of chromosomes, each new zygote directs its own integral functioning and development. It proceeds, unless death intervenes, through every stage of human development until one day it reaches the adult stage. It will grow and it will develop and it will change its appearance, but it will never undergo a change in its basic nature. It will never grow up to be a cow or a fish. It is a human being from the first moment of its existence. As Paul Ramsey has noted, “The embryo’s subsequent development may be described as a process of becoming what he already is from the moment of conception.”

These are the facts, which we can either affirm or deny. Unfortunately, the denial of inconvenient facts has become quite common during the past several decades. Consider, for example, an editorial published in the September 1970 issue of California Medicine, which was then the journal of the California Medical Association. The editorial invited the Association’s members to play a new game called “semantic gymnastics.” The first rule of the game was the “avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.” The goal was to replace “the traditional Western ethic” respecting “the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its state or condition” with “a new ethic for medicine and society” in order “to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing.”

In subsequent years, the dehumanization of the unborn was taken a step further when the concept of the “pre-embryo” was advanced. The term referred to the embryo before its implantation in the womb. Certainly the embryo at this point is “pre-implantation,” and certainly implantation is a highly significant event. If the embryo does not implant, it will die; if it implants, it will receive nutrition and a suitable environment in which to live, grow, and develop. (Every human being at every stage of life similarly requires nutrition and a suitable environment.) But the critical question is: Does implantation effect a change in the nature of the thing that implants? It is clear from basic facts of embryology that it does not. In the 2001 edition of his leading textbook on embryology, Ronan O’Rahilly (an "undisputed authority on human embryology") writes, “The term ‘pre-embryo’ is not used here [because] . . . it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed only at some considerable time after fertilization. [The term] was introduced in 1986 largely for public policy reasons.”

For what public policy reasons was the term “pre-embryo” invented? Princeton biology professor Lee Silver, a noted advocate of all the new biotechnologies, supplies the answer in his Remaking Eden (1997):

I’ll let you in on a secret. The term pre-embryo has been embraced wholeheartedly by IVF practitioners for reasons that are political, not scientific. The new term is used to provide the illusion that there is something profoundly different between a six-day-old embryo and a sixteen-day-old embryo. The term is useful in the political arena—where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo experimentation—as well as in the confines of a doctor’s office where it can be used to allay moral concerns that might be expressed by IVF patients.

As Gilbert Meilaender has noted, the “pre-embryo” is merely the unimplanted embryo. In other words, it is already an embryo, and all embryos are, at first, unimplanted. An embryo subsequently implants unless something (or someone) interferes or the embryo is defective. Its life is continuous from its first moment (whether through fertilization or through cloning) until death. The term “pre-embryo” was developed and used largely, if not exclusively, to mislead: to hide scientific facts about the beginnings and unity of human life; to bolster support for a new reproductive technology; and to obtain funding for experiments on human embryos. It has led to a confused jurisprudence that treats the embryo, in certain contexts, more like property than like a human being.

Bad Things to Little People

The taxpayers of California are paying for a multibillion-dollar Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which specializes in embryonic stem cell research and other cutting-edge technology of the brave new world. Alan Trounson heads up the project and says in an interview that he was at first “very uncomfortable” about dissecting human embryos. But then, on a trip to Naples, he talked with “members of a Vatican ­university [who] persuaded me that if I felt what I was doing was designed to address some problem of human misery, then it was acceptable" (sure). He means well, so that’s all right then. Too bad about the very little human beings, but you have to look at the big picture. Says Trounson: “In a big-picture sense, I want to be up on the mountain looking down on the Serengeti, watching all the animals move through.” You may remember Orson Welles in The Third Man, standing at the top of the ferris wheel, watching all the people moving through the square below, and explaining why this is the perspective in which to judge his dealing in diluted penicillin. When you’re doing bad things to little people, keeping the big picture in mind is a moral comfort.