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
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
New Killing Fields
Since the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 more than 40 million human beings have been killed by abortion. We make the murderers Hitler, Stalin, and Mao look like pikers. But now we are on the brink of some real killing. We are set to clone human beings, not to assist infertile couples, but to kill them for their stem cells. It is hoped that these stem cells, which have the capacity to become any of the 21 cell types in the human body, will regenerate organs such as hearts, livers, pancreases, etc.
Here is how it might work.
- My DNA would be extracted from one of my cells. These are called somatic cells.
- A biotech company would buy an egg from an anonymous woman, remove its nucleus and replace it with my DNA.
- The modified egg would then be stimulated with an electrical shock to begin embryonic growth.
- The resulting embryo would essentially be my identical twin brother even though he began existence 71 years after me. His biological parents would be my parents.
- When my twin brother reached about 14 days of embryonic development he would be killed for his stem cells.
- These stem cells would then be coaxed into developing the kind of tissue that I need for my illness, let us say, heart cells.
- My dead twin brother’s cells would be injected into me in hopes of repairing my heart.
The thing that is wrong with this scenario is that to have my damaged heart repaired I have to kill my little twin brother. I am sorry about that, little brother, but you have something that I need. I’m sure you could have grown up to be a stunningly handsome individual. If scientists are allowed to clone humans that story will be repeated thousands, perhaps millions of times.
The Senate is now debating bills that would (a) either forbid cloning altogether (Sen. Brownback’s bill) or (b) allow cloning for therapeutic purposes only and forbid reproductive cloning in which the cloned embryo would be planted in a womb (Sen. Feinstein’s bill). If the Feinstein bill passes we could expect to have entire farms of cloned human beings which would be killed for their stem cells. The cloned individuals would have no more value than a mold that produces penicillin. Certain human beings would be given only subjective value and not respected because of the objective value of belonging to the human race, made to the image and likeness of God. Certain classes of human beings would be slaughtered for the benefit of others.
To promote their goals propagandists in favor of cloning have resorted to outright lies and junk science. Let us look at three of their lies.
Lie #1. We are not killing human life.
Before Roe vs. Wade every biology textbook stated that human life began at conception when the sperm fertilized the ovum. At that point there is a separate human individual with 46 characteristic human chromosomes and with its gender already determined. Advocates of cloning would have us believe that cloned cells are only cellular life, of no more value than the cells we lose when we scratch our noses or brush our teeth. That is a lie. Those cells exist as part of an organized whole and have no existence apart from that. A cloned cell is an organized whole. Human life exists in its totality at the first cell stage. So it is a lie that we are not killing a human being in dissecting cloned embryos for their stem cells.
Lie #2. There is a valid distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.
The distinction is entirely false. Cloning does not occur only when a baby is born but when an egg has its nucleus removed and replaced with the DNA of the person to be cloned. A clone used in research is no different from one planted in a womb. Feinstein believes it is not right to clone for reproduction, but it should be permissible to clone to kill. Her bill should be called the "Clone and Kill" bill. Sound morality forbids cloning for any reason. It is also unenforceable. Once embryos resulted from cloning it would be a simple matter to place them in a womb for reproduction. How would the prohibition against reproduction be enforced? Would the woman pregnant with a human clone be forced to abort?
Lie #3. There are no viable alternatives for medical research in this area except by using "surplus" embryos from in vitro fertilization and by using human clones.
The promises of medical breakthroughs from embryonic stem cell research are greatly overblown. To date not one person has been cured by embryonic stem cells, although some have been made worse. Some researchers made the same unjustified promises in using tissue from aborted or miscarried fetuses. We are still waiting for breakthroughs.
The only place that there have been breakthroughs is in alternatives to embryonic stem cell research, in the use of adult stem cells, stem cells taken from bone marrow, from placenta cord blood, and even from fat cells and human skin.
Here are some examples of breakthroughs in alternatives to embryonic stem cells, which do not require killing anyone.
- Stem cells from bone marrow have been turned into liver tissue.
- In Taiwan surgeons restored vision using stem cells from the patient’s own eyes.
- Bone marrow stem cells have developed into nerve cells and heart cells.
- Doctors at Texas’ MD Anderson have cured a rare skin disorder with umbilical cord stem cells.
- Stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood reversed a rare form of leukemia. Also in Singapore cord blood stem cells cured a severe anemia that is often fatal in children.
- Bone marrow stem cells have brought multiple sclerosis into remission.
- In Dusseldorf bone marrow stem cells repaired the damage in a heart by one-third within ten weeks.
- In McGill University in Montreal researchers used stem cells derived from skin to produce neurons or nerve cells.
There have been hundreds of such breakthroughs with stem cells derived from morally acceptable sources. There is an entire website dedicated to cataloging these breakthroughs: www.stemcellresearch.org. If this rate of success continues there should never be a need to kill embryos for their stem cells. But let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind about the matter. Even if certain illnesses could be cured or mitigated only by embryonic stem cells it is morally repugnant to kill innocent human beings in order to assist others. If the only way to overcome the liability of my damaged heart is to take yours I am not allowed to have it. We may never do evil that good may come of it.
Be aware of the issues involved. Write, e-mail, or call our Texas Senators, Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison asking them to oppose the Feinstein bill and to support the Brownback Human Cloning Prohibition Act.
As followers of Christ who brought life we must support human life at all its stages and prevent the opening of new killing fields.
