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The Faulty Reasoning Almanack Part 1:
The Embryo Huggers vs. PETA
PETA: Sacrifice Human, Not Animal Life for Medical Research. PETA's support for embryonic stem cell research shows that the organization values animal life over human life. By foxnewsonline@foxnews.com. [FOXNews.com]
It's so sweet when they try to support this position by recourse to reasoning. Well, reason of a certain sort. But when you start from your conclusion and work backwards, the process always requires some awkward sidewise leaps and painful twists and turns.
This article ought to make me furious or very sad or something, but instead it made me laugh out loud.
The argument goes (roughly) this way.
PETA overvalues animal life at the expense of human life.
PETA say that animals are entitled to the same consideration as people. Stem cells are people (assumed, not stated).
If an action constitutes cruelty to a live animal, it follows that the same act constitutes cruelty if performed on a nonsentient clump of cells.
PETA opposes animal research.
Some of the people who oppose animal research are the same people who support stem cell research and some of those might be in PETA.
PETA is therefore saying that people aren't even as important as animals and that it's okay to be cruel to people but not to animals.
CODA: Gloria Steinem should support animal research if she's so damn concerned about women's health issues.
Hee! Of course, the whole argument is premised on the notion that an embryo arising from the fusion of a human ovum and a human sperm is a human child. If I actually believed that, I would have to oppose the cultivation of embryos in the first place because it would be really mean to put a bunch of children in cold storage, but, you know, EMBRYOS ARE NOT PEOPLE. And the difference between embryos and even a baby animal is that the baby animal is designed by nature to feel pain. Pain is nature's signal to animals, including us, that we need to change our circumstances, and I could certainly make an argument that some of the methods used in research may inflict pointless suffering.
I'm not going to make the argument, though. It's something I try very hard not to think about (the harm we do to the innocent). But I don't have any trouble at all thinking about things that could be done to embryos.
Note that PETA can tell the difference, as the author acknowledges:
[quote from Fox Online article by Steven Milloy begins]
As it turns out, PETA supports ESC research as a way to end animal research.
While PETA acknowledges that “unfortunately, the majority of stem cell research is done on animals,” PETA sees the research as having “the potential to end the vast majority of animal testing.”
[quote from Fox Online article by Steven Milloy ends]
Um, and....? I could quarrel with the 'unfortunately' if I really understood what PETA means here, but a clump of cells is a clump of cells. It can't feel in the sense in which a human child or a baby animal can; the receptors haven't developed. It's the nature of life to resist death (otherwise, no entity forced to endure stress would put up with it long enough to carry on the species) but a rudimentary aversive response isn't pain as we understand it. We use living tissue all the time in many medical procedures; the fact that it's the product of meiosis rather than mitosis surely shouldn't make that much difference.
The whole "reasoning" process on the stem cell issue is one big slippery slope that starts with the notion that a fetus at any stage is the same as a baby. And I guess if you think that a human fetus that is too undifferentiated to be distinguishable from a horse or cat fetus has a human soul, then you have to think that the fertilized embryo is as well. What about the sperm and ovum? Do they have souls or does the soul only happen when they fuse or when the first division takes place?
I don't know what has happened to people. None of this is a political issue; it's philosophical, religious, ethical, and reasonable people differ. It's not something that we should be making laws about at this stage of civilization under a government that isn't meant to be a theocracy.
It's not the business of the government to punish sinners for sins or to prohibit sins not traditionally recognized as crimes. Nor is it the business of the Executive branch to resolve disputes between science and faith.
If the protectors of stem cells are the only Christians among us who are going to Heaven, here's hoping for their sakes and God's that God either has a sense of humor or that he isn't much brighter than the people who presume to speak on his behalf. Otherwise, God is going to get really bored and fed up with them. As for Christ, I have a feeling that some of the people who are most vehement in his name wouldn't actually like him very much. His priorities seemed to be somewhat different from theirs.
Since I am so certain that God has a fantastic sense of humor and is way brighter than these people seem to be giving him credit for, I feel free to shake my head and laugh over the ways his followers find to waste time and resources in his name. Did Christ go through all that he went through so that those who call themselves Christians can ignore the poor, starving, homeless and hopeless to fight over the civil rights of fertilized eggs?
11:35:04 PM 
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