Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this posting, please click on this link.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research & the Veto; also the Middle East. A bad moon on the rise.
House Sustains Bush's Veto of Stem Cell Bill. The House was unable to override President Bush's veto of a measure that would ease limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. By foxnewsonline@foxnews.com. [FOXNews.com]
"These kids are not spare parts," Bush said over the cheering of people who clearly can't tell apples from oranges, shit from shinola, or a cluster of frozen cells from a human child. He was referring to the chubby-cheeked little former embryos who got turned into children.
But are human embryos the same as children? Are they even very similar? To say yes is OF COURSE an example of the typically faulty reasoning that the GOP constantly deploy for fine rhetorical effect. They don't believe it; I don't think BUSH believes it. But the GOP wants the votes of those who do.
Man, it's one thing to speculate that an embryo growing in a womb is a child and that it has a soul. But a cluster of cells in a petri dish?
Here's Tim Grieve's War Room at Salon.com. Farhad Manjoo succinctly sums up the egregious fallacies underlying the whole 'stem cell research = murder issue' and Bush's position on it"
[quote from THE WAR ROOM begins]
As far as I can tell, George W. Bush, who opposes destroying human embryos for stem cell research, has never referred to such destruction as "murder," a word that some on the right often reach for when fighting embryonic science. But today, Tony Snow, his spokesman, used that word:
"The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it's inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder; he's one of them," Snow said when asked why Bush plans to use his first veto to block passage of a bill that would increase federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Snow went on to say that "the simple answer is he thinks murder is wrong."
But if Bush thinks that destroying embryos amounts to murder, he sure has a funny way of showing it. As Bush knows -- and as Snow pointed out Tuesday -- under federal law and in most U.S. states it is perfectly legal to destroy human embryos using private funds. Such destruction isn't rare -- it occurs all the time, and research on stem cells derived from embryonic destruction has led to many breakthroughs in stem cell science. According to Bush, this destruction must be something like mass murder. But Bush does not favor making it illegal to destroy embryos. He only supports preventing federal funds from going to research on cells derived from destroyed embryos.
Isn't this an odd way to respond to murder? If you believed that people were being killed for research, wouldn't you speak out in their favor? Wouldn't you try to go after their killers? Wouldn't you do more -- much more -- than simply blocking the money going to fund the murderers?
Not Bush. Indeed, he has actively resisted outlawing embryo destruction. In 2004, when some conservative Republicans attempted to insert a plank in the Republican platform calling for restrictions on stem cell research, the White House fought them. What's more, Bush supports in vitro fertilization treatments for infertile couples, a process that necessarily creates and destroys "spare" embryos....
[quote from THE WAR ROOM ends]
As for the unused embryos that are not needed for manufacturing new humans, they will simply be chucked in the furnace and therefore wasted or else the poor little souls---assuming arguendo that they have souls---are going to be stuck in suspended animation indefinitely. Is that better than curing Michael J. Fox? I have always loved Michael J. Fox and to see him on BBC World now almost unable to speak and looking completely unlike you remember him is heart-wrenching.
And what about Reagan? What about him, eh? Would all these people who have touchingly decided to remember him as a the greatest President EVA not have wished to save him the indignity and lingering death through Alzheimer's?
I am trying hard to be heartened that there WAS enough support to get the legislation passed (if not to override the veto), making it a virtual certainty that once Bush is gone, the legislation will be passed. What is WRONG with these people? Why do they care more for a cluster of undeveloped cells than they do for their living fellow human beings? The 'they' in question isn't everyone; sane people (other than politicians) know that an embryo isn't a child.
I continue to maintain that it is because your basic Evangelical Christian---not including the politicians who feed on their souls--- is all too often (not invariably, but often) a self-satisfied self-serving complete bastard who focuses attention on the sins of others to avoid confronting the mess in his or her own interior.
Boy howdy, do these people need to review some of Christ's withering denunciations of the "righteous" people of his own day. The perils of sanctimony are many. I really believe that today's Right-wing Christians would be the FIRST to denounce Jesus if he returned. They wouldn't recognize him; he's nothing at all like they keep telling everyone.
I am trying to believe that there are enough Christians of good faith and intelligence to ensure that eventually, not too far in the future, the stem cell bill will pass so that we can do more to help our fellow suffering human beings. That's the heartening bit.
As for the Middle East, it's tearing me apart. I don't know what to think, but I know how I feel: apprehensive. Sad. Apprehensive & sad....
RELATED POSTINGS
Heartening or Heartbreaking? Embryonic Stem Cell Research and the Veto
The Faulty Reasoning Almanack: The Embryo Huggers v. PETA
Schwarzeneggar Steps Up! [homage]
What Your Representatives Don’t Know About Embryonic Stem Research
Drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!
10:51:58 PM 
|
