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 |
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
As this is being written the Senate is considering competing bills on human cloning. One of these, the Brownback bill, forbids human cloning altogether. Bills by Senators Feinstein and Harkin would permit cloning of humans so that they could be killed for their stem cells, so-called therapeutic cloning, although there is little therapy for the clone that is killed.
Backers of bills permitting human cloning for stem cells are not much encouraged by current research. Not one human being has been cured by embryonic stem cells but some have been made worse. Proponents claim that embryonic stem cells have the facility to become every kind of 210 cell types in the human body whereas adult stem cells are limited in their capacity. The lack of determination of embryonic stem cells may be a problem rather than an advantage. Embryonic stem cells injected into human beings have produced hair and bone rather than brain cells as hoped and have made persons suffering from Parkinson’s disease more frenetic than before. Meanwhile almost every other day there is some new breakthrough and some new cure from adult stem cells. Not that you would learn this from our news media.
Cloning proponents think they have good news in an experiment that was conducted mixing embryonic stem cells with adult stem cells. This resulted in the formation of tetraploid cells (having two sets of chromosomes) that would be dangerous if injected into a human being. The scientists concluded from this experiment that adult stem cells are dangerous and may not have all the good qualities discovered by other researchers. Nature magazine concluded that adult stem cells might be worthless. The Washington Post said that adult stem cells have been found to be less useful than embryonic ones. The Agence-Presse France warned that breakthroughs in adult stem cells are nothing but hype. An Australian newswire says that this research tips the debate in the favor of embryonic stem cells. The conclusion: our salvation can be found only in embryonic stem cells that we develop through human cloning.
You are not alone if you have difficulty following the reasoning in play here. Common sense and logic tell me that the conclusions drawn from the experiment of mixing adult and embryonic stem cells are silly and absurd. If you want to judge the efficacy of adult stem cells as opposed to embryonic ones why would you combine them? That is like a "three-legged" race in which the inside legs of a pair of runners are tied together and then the victory or defeat is attributed to one or the other runner. There is no way of knowing which is responsible. Yet proponents of human cloning confidently attribute the bad results of their experiment, formation of tetraploid cells, to adult stem cells. Indeed in experiments where the two types of cells are not combined the adult stem cells win every time.
Indiana State University biologist David Prentice also has difficulty in following the reasoning for the conclusions drawn from this experiment and he calls them nonsense. The adult stem cells did exactly what the researchers knew they would and their experiment has no practical application. The mixture of adult and embryonic stem cells could never occur inside a human body because it has no embryonic stem cells. Inside the body adult cells would do what they do best and do continually without forming tumors: assume the characteristics of the surrounding tissue and repair it. They become what they are exposed to and already they have become corneal tissue, liver tissue, heart muscle, etc. There are 30 different anti-cancer applications from adult stem cells and more than 100 adult stem cell experiments in animals that have been successful against a variety of diseases. Adult stem cells do not possess the nasty propensity of embryonic stem cells to form malignancies. Adult stem cells do not have to have eliminated the protein that makes embryonic cells universally rejected.
There are other advantages to adult stem cells. They can differentiate into pretty much anything that embryonic cells can. Adult cells are malleable which means that they can be coaxed into becoming a desired type of cell rather easily. They exhibit "immortality," that is, a capability of being maintained indefinitely. They do not seem to have the tendency of embryonic cells to grow uncontrollably and form tumors or cancers. Adult stem cells which up to now have had most advantages may now have every advantage.
Cloning proponents have another problem. Only one embryonic stem cell line was successfully cultured starting with 202 cloning attempts in mice. Translating this success rate to humans would mean that 303 million human eggs would be needed to treat the 1.5 million Parkinson’s patients and 3.2 billion eggs would be needed to treat the 16 million diabetes patients in the U.S. Obtaining these eggs is not a walk in the park for women. They would probably come mostly from poor third-world women whom some eugenicists consider as "degenerate" or "inferior" but probably useful enough for supplying eggs.
Genuine successes using adult stem cells are ignored, dismissed, argued with. Meanwhile successes with embryonic cells have been miniscule and often do more harm than good. Yet adult stem cell successes scarcely earn any coverage in the media while even highly doubtful conclusions concerning embryonic cells are trumpeted with the same coverage that greeted V-J Day. The differing coverage seems to be a matter of money and ideology. If you staked your future on embryonic stem cells you would be panting to have taxpayers pick up the enormous research expense. You would minimize a more successful rival approach as much as possible.
Further, human cloning for stem cells serves certain ideological positions. Those who favor abortion as do most members of our media do not like the fact that embryos are given any value greater than zero. If these embryos must be respected people may conclude that fetuses also must be respected. We must avoid even remote questioning of the right of abortion that allows for irresponsible sex.
Additionally eugenicists favor human cloning as a means of developing a super race. Kingsley Davis, for example, wanted "the deliberate alteration of the species for sociological purposes." This would be "a more fateful step than any previously taken by mankind. When man has conquered his own biological evolution he will have laid the basis for conquering everything else. The universe will be his at last." One wonders if the architects of the brave new world will also conquer death. To paraphrase Jesus, what good does it do to gain control of the universe if we cannot prevent our own demise?
There is no need for immoral human cloning and the destruction of human beings thus derived. Even should some benefits accrue from cloned human stem cells we may never kill an innocent human life to benefit another. Do not be fooled by the distortions and outright lies of cloning proponents. Write, call, or e-mail your Senators and ask them to support a total ban on human cloning. Or else be ready for farms of cloned human beings brought into existence for the express purpose of being killed.
