What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
The Victoria Advocate recently printed an editorial attacking Representative Geanie Morrison of Victoria for her role in trying to pass legislation that would disallow embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) in Texas educational institutions. The paper calls the move anti-cure and anti-life. The ironic thing is that these four words describe exactly the situation of ESCR proponents. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have produced no cures and require the death of hundreds of thousands of human embryos.
The mantra of the mainstream media is that ESCs offers the greatest hope for cures and the Bush Administration’s ESCR funding restrictions have caused America to fall behind in the great international race to develop effect ESC treatments.
The problems with harnessing ESCs as treatments appear to be growing, not shrinking. Boosters claim that these cells are “immortal,” that is, they can be maintained indefinitely in culture. Not true. Over time ESC lines develop chromosomal abnormalities similar to those found in some cancers. Their useful shelf life is probably limited.
The assertion that ESCs can be used to create any kind of cell in the body apart from their presence in the embryo has not been validated in experiments. Few researchers have been able to differentiate ESCs into the precise kind of cell they are seeking. Most often attempts to morph ESCs into specific cell types have resulted in a wide variety of unwanted cells.
ESCs have produced tumors and teratomas (tumors consisting of such things as teeth, hair, bone, cartilage, or muscle). This fact alone would delay human experiments not by years but by decades, if indeed the problem of tumors can ever be solved. ESCs also display gene expression from the donor which could cause problems of rejection in the recipients of the cells.
If an ESC treatment requires cloning there will be a problem with acquisition of human eggs. Currently hundreds are needed for a single clone. Millions of women would have to become human egg mercenaries and undergo a dangerous and uncomfortable procedure to obtain the eggs.
The number of persons who have been cured by ESCs treatments is zero. Following the longest and most troublesome path in achieving cures makes little sense, without considering the ethical burdens borne by ESCR, especially when promising ethically sound alternatives are available. There is nothing in recent research that establishes cannibalization of other human beings, human embryos, is the best path to cures for others human beings. It is tempting to label this misguided activity as anti-cure. Instead of describing this debate as religion versus cures it might be more accurate to call it ESCR versus cures. Some claim that using adult stem cells for treatments is a dead end. Using ESCs is worse; it is a dead beginning that causes deaths of fellow human beings and so far has produced no cures but only damage.
Whether ESCs will ever produce useful treatments is uncertain, but it is certain that their use is anti-life. It is important to define precisely when another being becomes one of us. It will not do to say blithely that becoming human is a journey without establishing the beginnings and the end of the journey. It is not enough to say that “that thing in the Petri dish” is not part of humanity. Some ESCR proponents like Dr. Michael Gazzaniga would limit membership in humanity to those who can acquire “memories and loves hopes that accumulate over the years.” Human infants do not have any of these experiences under their belt. Would Dr. Gazzaniga countenance harvesting their organs?
The ESCR community takes great pains in trying to convince us that an embryo is not an embryo. For example, the Victoria Advocate editorial states: “Putting something other than human sperm into a human egg cannot create a new human life.” Something other than sheep sperm was put into a sheep egg to produce Dolly, the first cloned sheep—genetic material from another sheep. According to this logic Dolly could not have been a new sheep life since she was not produced by sheep sperm.
Pro-lifers are accused of being anti-cure and anti-life because we do not believe in the practice of using “leftover” embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics. These embryos in the editorial are said to have “no value.” We should beware of buying into the philosophy that some lives are valueless. Historically the results of this kind of thinking have not been pretty. Think back to the days of slavery when blacks were defined as less than human and in the Nazi era when Jews were so defined. Some say that these embryos will be discarded and die anyway. We do not harvest organs from the elderly or death row prisoners on the grounds that they are soon going to be dead. There are ethical lines that a civilized society should not cross. Killing very young human life is one of them. Far from being useless the frozen embryos in these clinics are valuable to the parents who seek other children and other couples who have adopted them. President Bush welcomed many of these “snowflake families” to the White House. Once the destruction of human life is permitted in the name of science all life is devalued and the culture of death becomes more pervasive. A Science that approves using one form of human life to serve another would have no scruples against using all human life to serve itself.
There is a great gulf between the promise of ESCR and the real therapies coming from Adult Stem Cell Research (ASCR). ASCs, which are already in our bodies and act as a sort of repair kit. They are criticized for the very qualities that make them safe and effective for human treatments—controlled growth toward replacing specific cells. Researchers from around the world have documented that ASCs from bone marrow, blood, amniotic fluid, placenta, umbilical cord blood, and nasal tissue show the plasticity claimed for ESCs but without the problem of tumors. Rejection by the recipient’s immune system is not an issue with ASCs. Unlike ESCs they do appear to be immortal in culture.
Space does not permit cataloging the exciting developments in ASCR. There are so many of them that I plan to devote my next article to the subject. So far 65 therapies have been developed from ASCR and 0 for ESCR. Isn’t it time for the umpire to end this game now that the ASCR team has scored 65 runs to 0? At the present rate we will be able to see ESCR only in the rearview mirror of ASCR. The United States far from falling behind in research is doing very well in producing real therapies as opposed to promises that may be fulfilled in future decades by selling out our souls. The difference between ASCR and ESCR is live patients and dead mice.
The pro-life community believes in the worth of all human life at all stages—whether that life is the result of sexual or asexual activity as in cloning—from conception to natural death. To take a life intentionally for research, no matter how noble the goal, does not honor that principle.
Representative Geanie Morrison has upheld the finest traditions of morality in this matter and has reflected the values of thousands of her constituents. I congratulate her for standing up for LIFE and urge all her colleagues to do the same.
(Printed June, 2006)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
