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Post 0

Saturday, October 15 - 6:20am

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the long-term threat to genetic research comes less from the religious right than from the secular left...

As long as religious conservatives object to a specific procedure--destroying embryos--rather than to genetic research or life extension in general, it's possible to treat their concerns as a technical problem.

You can't say the same for the antibiotech left. In liberal Canada, in fact, the law defines cloning expansively. Future procedures that might avoid religious objections would still be illegal. The goal is to stop certain research altogether.

Maybe now, instead of fighting phantoms, you can concentrate on the real enemy.

Post 1

Saturday, October 15 - 9:45am

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Robert,

Even if at some unknown time in the future it became possible to grow replacement organs without destroying embryos or decorticated fetuses, it is not likely to happen in time to be of any use to me, or to you. The religiously motivated interference of Christianist theocrats with the needed research will have caused, by then, tens or hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths, including mine.

The left has religion too - their faith-based beliefs are just as arbitrary and absurd - but Canada is a small country without global influence. When one faces the prospect of one's own unnecessary death, at the hands of our local thugs, the fact that in some other countries things are even worse does not bring much comfort.

Post 2

Saturday, October 15 - 10:14am

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Virginia Postrel's most recent book is The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness. Her Web site is www.dynamist.com.

... and here I thought we had seen the last of Faith Popcorn.

Post 3

Saturday, October 15 - 10:29am

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Adam.

I share your belief that there is nothing wrong with harvesting fetal stems cells. But the truth seems to be that adult stems show much more therapeutic potential. Happily, there are no restrictions on their use.

As to prolonging my life, I am indifferent. By the time I die, I will have lived long enough.

I thank whatever Gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
And even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Swinburne

Post 4

Saturday, October 15 - 11:07am

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Robert,

Transplantation of fully formed organs from aborted fetuses (as in the retinal transplants cited in my article "Why Cloning Really Matters") is a proven technology. The supposed therapeutic "potential" of adult stem cells is a speculative fantasy. The small chance that some day organs might be grown from adult stem cells is not a good reason to kill people now by denying them the benefits - life-saving benefits if fetal organ transplantation is combined with cloning - of an already proven technology.

As for Swinburne, he was a great poet, but no philosopher.

Post 5

Saturday, October 15 - 2:26pm

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Adam

You are really in favor of creating mature clones for the express purpose of harvesting organs?

Post 6

Saturday, October 15 - 3:51pm

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Robert D,

As I made clear, the cloned fetus would be decorticated early on, so that it could not become conscious. It would never be "mature," as you put it. I suggest that you first read any post that you are responding to, before you respond.

Post 7

Sunday, October 16 - 4:14am

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Robert D,

You are correct that adult stem cell research has much more promise than that of embryonic stem cells. There are already therapies developed from adult stem cells for spinal cord damage, while none exist using embryonic stem cells. The problem mostly lies in that embryonic stem cells are too plastic and we have no idea how to control their development. Even if we cleared the many technical hurdles to making embryonic stem cells turn into transplantable organs (one interesting hurdle is that it appears that they need the mechanical tension that occurs in the womb to develop properly), there remains the problem of rejection. Rejection, of course, is not a problem if your own adult stem cells are used on yourself.

So, Reed is lying when he says just the opposite. Even a cursory perusal of the internet regarding the advances in stem cell research will bear this out. Yet, he lies so readily in the face of the facts to justify his bigotry against his bogeymen, those evil scheming Christians.

Andy

Post 8

Sunday, October 16 - 6:49am

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the cloned fetus would be decorticated early on

How comforting.

You are correct Andy. We are in Mengele territory here. There is no hope for this wretched man.

(Edited by Robert Davison on 10/16, 7:08am)

Post 9

Sunday, October 16 - 11:38am

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Andy,

Your post completely fails to address the Christianists' de-facto prohibition against the already proven technology of fetal organ transplantation. Organ transplantation from a cloned and decorticated fetus created for this purpose would be as effective as the use of adult stem cells in preventing immune rejection - and unlike the supposedly "promising" stem cell technologies, organ transplantation is already known to work.

Robert D,

It is difficult to write an accurate characterization of your depraved descent into Jew-baiting ("Mengele territory" etc.) without language that the Editor should rightly bar from this web site. Mengele is a symbol of repulsive evil because he conducted his sadistic "experiments" on real, conscious people. It remains a biological fact that a body which was never conscious is simply an object without ethical import, except as an instrument for furthering the life of the living Man who created it, for the purpose of living the full span of his life on Earth. But of course, once you have abandoned the practice of reason grounded in the facts of reality, you are bound to reduce yourself to Jew-baiting - or to any other obscenely repulsive depravity to which your chosen anti-Human beliefs might lead you.

Feh.

(Edited by Adam Reed
on 10/16, 11:46am)

Post 10

Sunday, October 16 - 12:18pm

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Adam,

I had no idea you were Jewish. There is no end to your appeals for victimhood. Objectivists are not victims. You are just another sociopath masquerading as one; an evil man trying to extend his life by any means. Your immorality is beyond contempt.

Post 11

Sunday, October 16 - 12:59pm

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Robert D,

Outside of the religion-induced delusional state in which you evidently placed yourself, a claim of "immorality" would be grounded in the facts of reality - by means of reason applied to the evidence of the senses. In your post above it is mere invective, and ought to be out of place on a web site dedicated to reasoned, fact-based discourse.

Post 12

Sunday, October 16 - 2:11pm

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Robert Davison,

You wrote above, "Adam, I had no idea you were Jewish."

Let's see. On "The Backbone of Benevolence" discussion thread, your ideological twin Andy Postema spent a good part of post 52 on his claim that I was supposedly misusing my Jewish heritage. You participated actively in that thread, and posted 3 times on the same page as Andy's post 52.

So, which is it? Did you really not read the other posts on a page to which you posted 3 times, not even the posts of your sidekick Andy Postema's? Or are you wedded to "honesty of convenience?"

Post 13

Sunday, October 16 - 4:29pm

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Reed,

Your post completely fails to address the Christianists' de-facto prohibition against the already proven technology of fetal organ transplantation.

That's because:

[1] "Christianists" don't exist except in your fevered imagination.

[2] Furthermore, opposition to creating human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their organs and tissues is hardly a reprehensible position. In fact, it's the only decent position a person can take. It's opposition to reducing a human life to an instrument for another. And that isn't an anti-abortion argument. The case for the morality of abortion is that no human being can force the sacrifice of another to sustain his existence. Similarly, no one can sacrifice the life of an embryonic human for his own existence.

[3] Besides, adult and umblical stem cell therapies are and will continue to make the exploitation of embryonic human life unnecessary.

Andy

Post 14

Sunday, October 16 - 4:41pm

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Robert D,

I had no idea you were Jewish. There is no end to your appeals for victimhood. Objectivists are not victims. You are just another sociopath masquerading as one; an evil man trying to extend his life by any means. Your immorality is beyond contempt.

Bravo! I am thoroughly sickened of a people like Reed who use their ethnicity as a club to intimidate anyone who won't toe their line. I say this as someone who is half-black (my mother is West Indian) and finds few people more repulsive than race-mongers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

We are allowed to talk about the Nazis, to describe their evil in the vilest terms, and to compare their evil to others (including Reed when he spews his blood libels). We do not have to circumscribe our speech to account for the tripwire sensitivities of grievance-mongers like Reed who relish the opportunity to be injured. All the better for him if that injury is in fact not real (as is the case here), because he can then let his imagination run rotten as to he harm he has suffered.

Andy

Post 15

Sunday, October 16 - 5:12pm

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Andy,

What exactly is it about embryos that make them reprehensible for their use in medical research? Is it their rationality? Their volition? Clearly not since brain waves can't be detected until the second trimester, after a baby has developed past the embryonic stage. The DNA then? I'm not seeing any other option; just the fact that they are, or will be, human is what counts. Never mind the turmoil that line of thinking would be subject to should a large enough mutation occur in the human genome so as to create a new rational species. But that's all what-ifs. No, what matters is that "no human being can force the sacrifice of another to sustain his existence." Unless, of course, the other has initiated force, or plans to initiate force, or might be planning to initiate force, or looks like someone who might plan to initiate force. The Arab-Americans thank you for your defense of the helpless, thoughtless little chunks of cells that happen to have human DNA. Because we wouldn't want to sacrifice human DNA to ensure the existence of other human DNA, now would we?

Sarah

Edited: Eats, shoots, and leaves
(Edited by Sarah House
on 10/16, 8:42pm)

Post 16

Sunday, October 16 - 5:36pm

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Quite true, Sarah - it brings to mind the question, when is a bird a bird if not until it hatches... [besides, roughly 20% of all pregnancies end as miscarriages - does that mean 'Mother Nature' is 'murdering' her intendeds?]

Life, for any living organism, begins at birth - when it is 'on its own', certainly not when it makes a slave of the mother...

(Edited by robert malcom on 10/16, 5:40pm)

Post 17

Sunday, October 16 - 5:41pm

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does that mean 'Mother Nature' is 'murdering' her intendeds?]

No, just as 'Mother Nature' did not 'murder' any of those who died during the hurricanes or recent earth-quake. Trying to assign morality to inanimate reality Robert?

Post 18

Sunday, October 16 - 5:43pm

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Moi? no - but others seems to consider it so...

Post 19

Sunday, October 16 - 8:41pm

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Sarah,

Andy's problem is not embryos. That's incidental. The "idea" of the supposed discussion could be anything, raindrops, chili-beans, women's suffrage, anything at all.

He just doesn't like Adam and wants to call him a bigot.

Michael