That’s an absolutely appropriate and defensible approach.
My problem is you seem to feel that it’s the ONLY approach - that the opposite view, that using data derived from torture victims without their consent shouldn’t be done is a crazy view, utterly without any merit, such that no rational person could possibly hold it.
This is where we disagree.
Why do you continue to presume that others cannot or do not understand the other point of view? Why do you continue to have such sympathy for the other point of view? I ask because I don’t get alot of satisfaction that those holding the other point of view understand mine. If it’s murder, then I’m condoning murder. If data came from a tainted source, then it’s incomprehensible that one would believe it might be put to good use nevertheless.
It’s time to stop presuming ignorance in others, Bricker. I say again that one may be quite pissed off at the views and acts of another while simultaneously fully understanding their motivation.
There’s a difference in the quality of the invective when you undertsand the motivation but are simply pissed at the act.
Example:
That’s not “I understand where you’re coming from, but I disagree, and the results of your view piss me off.”
That’s “No, you’re simply wrong; no reasonable person could think as you do on this topic!”
Bricker, are you fighting ignorance, or would you prefer to point at it and snicker?
No offense, tashabot, the viewpoints you’ve described struck me as old-school, die-hard Catholic, even before you mentioned the source. Most Protestants are a bit more liberal. Even in the Catholic church, IME, those stances are more theoretical than practical. I know plenty of Catholics who enjoy sex, use contraceptives, get divorced, etc, though they’ll sit happily in church on Sundays while the priest tells them how wrong these things are. Or not, depending on the particular church.
There is no Catholic doctrine that suggests that a couple should not enjoy sex. On the contrary.
Catholics – but by no means all Christians – are told to never use contraceptives, and never under any circumstances have an abortion.
Of course, that was in response to this:
I’m just not reading much in there that is left out by Derleth’s response. “This is unbelievable” and “I am completely stunned” and “How on earth could you consider this justifiable” pretty much rule out even the most basic comprehension of how another person might understand a differing position, since she’s pretty much fucking saying “I cannot comprehend another position.” Derleth succinctly and accurately paraphrased her statement. How is it otherwise?
I think the real issue is that you just may be uncomfortable siding against the right on the issue, so you have to have some scrap of a baton to whack others with. Since you agree with the position, you have to disagree with the methodology or process or some such… Your charge appears to be “You are not inferring in the arguments of others a breadth of understanding that is absent from what they are actually saying.” The irony is, of course, that is exactly what you are doing in your comments to Guinastasia and others here.
Fair. I don’t expect sympathy.
I’m not sure that I agree with this notion entirely, but it could be that the casual, commonsensical approach that I’m observing rubs me the wrong way as much as the moral issue.
I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure that this is an opinion based on logic. But, life begins at conception, to create life and treat it carelessly is bad, and just because someone is dead doesn’t mean that we get to do whatever we want with the body. I’m deeply and profoundly uncomfortable with cloning.
I think this is my position in a nutshell: It is not appropriate to treat an embryo, especially a human one, like just another set of cells to be played with and manipulated in the laboratory for fun and profit.
Yes, and no. Yes, those who are Christians should not be moral relativists–though I bet you can find some who are. But No, one need not be a Christian to object to Moral Relativism. I’m not sure I can separate them in my life, but that doesn’t mean that other people can’t.
Yes, but . . .
Seriously, it really depends on the situation. If I were a pharmacist and someone came to me wanting the Morning After Pill, I’d give them the pill. If I were a librarian and someone came to me wanting information that I found objectionable, I’d probably give it to them(leaving some wiggle room for what-ifs where I might decide not to). But if I were a lawmaker, I’d pass laws forbiding immoral actions, rather than say “that’s immoral, but it’s between you and your God, not for me to judge.”
That’s a reasonable question. If we don’t do research, we’ll never know. I can live with that. And science may not rely on hunches, but there are a lot of situations in the US today, where medical science relies on hope and a willingess to try anything rather than on distributing medical care effectively.
Truer than you know, if she hadn’t had the surgery, she’d probably be dead and that would be a bad thing (whether the chemo did any good or not is not possible to determine objectively).
Fair, reasonable, but not a trade-off I’m willing to accept. I’ve not read the GD thread, and while I probably should, I’m not likely to participate in it. I have avoided words like “murder” on purpose.
Actually, if I was sure that several hundred lives could be saved with a few cells, I’d probably be willing to accept the trade-off. But I’m firmly convinced that there is more hope, more potential, more dreams of what could be, tied up in Stem Cell Research than there is logic or proof.
And so we are back to where we started. You want research to be done, so that we know whether Stem Cells can do what the dreamers think can be done, and I don’t want research to be done, which leaves us in the world of “we’ll never know”
That’s reasonable. If I held your views, I think i’d be annoyed, too. I’ll try and be more sympathetic in my approach.
I don’t see why not, though. For example, i’m all for mandatory organ donation (unless the person’s religion dictates otherwise) for dead humans of any age, be it a year, ten years, twenty. It’s not a nice thing to think about, but sometimes we have to force ourselves to consider these things in the pursuit of trying to help sick people.
I think you’re going a bit far with the casual approach, now . 
Fun and profit? No, in order to find ways to help sick people. Come now, I understand your position, but you can’t just handwave away the reasons for doing this as being so shallow.
Crap. Could a mod delete everything in my post from “Yes and no” down, please?
It DEPENDS. I am not suggesting that chemo always does more harm than good–though it almost always does do some harm. I am not advocating a refusal to treat those who appear likely to die of cancer. I do think that there are times, especially with advanced cancer or with the elderly, where doctors do something, anything, hoping for the best and it ends up prolonging the situation at great cost and possible great pain, where other choices might be better.
Intellectually, I agree with you. Emotionally, I do not. To me, treating human potential as something that can be freely manipulated in the laboratory as if it were bone marrow or toenail clippings is worse than treating it as trash.
Sure I can. Actually, one of the things which bugs me about the pro-stem cell research people (in general) is the tendency to use the big, difficult, intractable diseases as reasons for stem cell research, possibly due to the way that they tug at people’s heartstrings.
Cerebal Palsy? Cancer? Diabetes? Alzheimers? --just in this thread, hope for Parkinsons, for the paralyzed and others have been mentioned other places.
There’s a reason all of these conditions have so far been resistant to cures. Now, I’m not going to claim that Stem Cell Research can’t find cures for some of these, but it contributes to why I feel like hope and hype, rather than logic, are driving this push for funding.
Not that I would favor Stem Cell Research if they came back with an ad campaign saying “Stem Cell Research, Seek the Cure for the Common Cold.”
And to deny that anyone who finds success with Stem Cell Research will get their name written down in history, and some companies will make big bucks, would be silly.
Fun and profit may be trivializing things, but if an altruistic wish to help sick people was the only motive, there are more immediate ways of accomplishing that goal. I can understand the desire to do research, I’m just not convinced that it is the right thing to do.
Who the hell gave you the power that you should determine what information people have access to and what is moral and immoral? Why can’t you have your beliefs and not impose them on everyone else?
But Eureka, there’s a good chance that stem cell reasearch could help with those things. Your reasoning for not supporting it - researchers only want to get rich/famous, we don’t know if there will be any results, the results suggested are just made up to make it sound noble - could be applied to *any * medical advance. There are other things that could be done to help sick people? Certainly. The funding could be used to stick with cures we’ve already found. And centuries ago we could have stuck with moss and lichen. Continuing research means we’re able to cure many more sick people (or at least, that is the hope).
Plus there’s the fact that your reasoning is flawed. If stem cells aren’t actually really thought to be able to help all these things, then researchers surely wouldn’t use them if they want to to get rich/famous? They wouldn’t have any motivation to do this work.
And what might that reason be…? You’re not going to imply that it’s God’s will are you?
This is just argument from ignorance, frankly. Ignorance of the developments that have been made. I’ll tell you something, although you’ll likely just dismiss it as another appeal to emotions. My son was diagnosed with diabetes at 3 years of age, now 8 years ago. During those early years, I would hear on the radio on a fairly regular basis how the new efforts to develop cures were coming along, and they would make me cry with hope. It wasn’t a hope born of fantasy or desperation, but of logically following the course of developments. Believe me, when I first was dealing with my son’s condition and the significant increases he faces for devastating complications or death, fantasy and desperation were my regular buddies. However, since Bush’s fiat, the number of new developments has dried up. It’s been a few years since I found myself in tears listening to the radio on the way home.
Did you know that juvenile diabetes is caused by the death of specific cells in the pancreas? Pancreatic transplant has been a method used for many years, but one problem is the risk of rejection, and a second, perhaps greater problem, is the small amount of donor pancreases available. A new treatment that has been developed over recent years is the transplant of those specific cells, called islet cells. However, each transplant still requires a donor pancreas, and there is still a significant risk of rejection.
Researchers have been able to use mouse embryonic stem cells to grow insulin-producing mouse pancreatic cells. They can create cells that are less likely to be rejected. This is how close we are - we have a transplantation technique that just needs a greater number of cells with a lower risk of rejection. We have evidence of success in developing those cells in animals using embryonic stem cells.
Don’t tell me that there is no logic to the need for embryonic stem cell research. That’s pure ignorance. Educate yourself. I doubt you’ll change your mind, but you may at least stop saying things that are divorced from reality.
And as to the reason why my son developed an incurable disease? Please do tell… I’m all ears, because it’s a question I’ve wrestled with and blamed myself for for 8 years.
Um…those humans give their informed consent in the form of a donor card. Embryos, clearly, can do no such thing. Not that I oppose embryonic stem cell research (I support it), but can you not see the difference?
Not really. The donor parents must give their informed consent, in the same way that, were it the deceased child of a parent, they must give their consent for organ harvesting, as a minor is not legally able to do that.
Depending on whether this hypothesis pans out, this may be much ado about nothing:
Ah. I did not take that into consideration. Are parents really allowed to give consent for their kids? I guess that would make sense. I really need to pay closer attention to Gray’s Anatomy. As a parent, I’m embarrassed not to have known that.
What is the basis for this firm belief of yours? What educational background do you have to lead that’s led you to this conclusion? What scientific studies, published in which journals, support your conclusion? Which authorities in the field agree with you on this subject?