Saturday, July 08, 2006
Stem Cell Research and Fertility Clinics
Debate On Both Sides of the Atlantic * "Religious Persecution" * "Glove Puppet"
Scientists in England have strongly reacted against Roman Catholic Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo's call for excommunication of those who are involved in embryonic stem cell research. The BBC reported that: "Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, made his comments in Famiglia Cristiana, a Catholic magazine. He said research carried out on embryos was 'the same as abortion'."The threat of excommunication is not likely to be effective. Just as many Catholic couples routinely practice contraception---use condoms and other means, and do so with a clear conscience, those involved in stem cell research are not going to be deterred by the edict of Cardinal Trujillo.
- Scientists in the UK called his comments outrageous and said they amounted to "religious persecution".
- "Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos."
- But Dr Stephen Minger, leading stem cell expert at Kings College, said: "Having been raised a Catholic I found this stance really outrageous.
- "Are they going to excommunicate IVF doctors, nurses and embryologists who routinely put millions of embryos down the sink every year throughout the world?
- "It is more ethical to use embryos that are going to be destroyed anyway for the general benefit of mankind than simply putting them down the sink."
- Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, called the cardinal's comments "insensitive and unhelpful".
- He added: "I cannot really believe it represents the thinking of the Roman Catholic church."
- Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in practical ethics at the University of Oxford, warned: "This amounts to religious persecution of scientists which has no place in modern liberal societies.
One gets the feeling that Cardinal Trujillo and others like him long for the days of the Inquisition.They have friends in high places. President Bush is a champion of those who oppose stem cell research. Michael Kinsley, in his column False Dilemma, points out the hollowness of their position, that they totally disregard what happens in fertility clinics. "In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then -- like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately) -- they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have the choice of attending a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away -- or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy."
- And fate isn't much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.
- In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps -- with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.
Found following entry in the Urban Dictionary
"Refer to George W. Bush and his whole ****ing Oligarchy
The dictat-president is a mentally deficent glove puppet."
