Of course, everyone has “unclean hands.” I am not of the opinion that just because we are imperfect people in an imperfect world, that we should not try for something better. Lets take your points:
That I live on land forcibly taken from its original occupants without their consent, possibly as the first step in a program of cultural annihilation?*
This is true of all land everywhere. Lack of records does not make it any less true.
In this example, then, all humans on earth are equally morally culpable in this. So, in this sense, yes, all of our hands are dirty. Does this mean that all of us should stop making ANY efforts to be moral or make moral judgments in this area? Seems kind of pointless to me. In addition, in the example you gave, you admit that there is NO ALTERNATIVE to living on these stolen lands, since all land everywhere is tainted. This is not true of scientific research. If the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY to study a certain necessary area of science is to use data gained in an ill-gotten manner, then I might be inclined to feel differently about it.
Um. I realize this may sound like a ridiculous question, but in precisely why do you feel the IVT embryos are being researched “unclean”? As pointed out earlier, the full informed consent must be obtained from the parents; if they don’t want those embryos being used, they won’t be. Please see our earlier comparison to a child who has died and his parents give consent for organ harvesting. It’s pretty much the same thing.
If I have, I appologize. I saw it as another one of his attempts to pidgeon hole someone with his, “Why don’t you liberals do this-you’re a hypocrite!”
If you are referring to me & Derleth’s exchange, we weren’t talking about IVF, we were talking about the hijack about the Nazi data. I DON’T consider the IVF embryos to be “unclean” in the same way at all. This is not my objection to it. Actually, my personal opinion is that if IVF is legal, then there is no legal leg to stand on in not allowing the parents to donate the embryos to medical science if they so choose.
It is important for you to recognize there is no such thing as scientific advance without sacrifice. We use animals, human volunteers…there is no research without experimentation. The people who volunteer believe that the research is important enough and will save enough lives that it’s well worth their while.
I’d also point out, for some reason medical research is ALWAYS being decried as going too far. Doctors used to have to literally rob graves in order to study anatomy. It was risky, because grave robbing was (and still is) very illegal. Now, we have first year medical students studying anatomy on corpses of people who donated their bodies to medical science.
It seems the pragmatism of this is what bothers you so much. Bear in mind, the people doing this aren’t doing it out of a callousness or a disregard for human life. On the contrary. It’s out of a desire to help save lives.
Oh, I understand that, I just think there have to be ethical limits. I think at the very least, consent of the person in question, or the next of kin, needs to be obtained.
I heard a White House spokesman say that Bush believes that destroying an embryo – a miniscule clump of very useful cells – is equivalent to murder. If he really thinks that, then why in the world isn’t he trying to get IVF outlawed altogether? Why isn’t he having the Justice Dept. bring homicide charges against the doctors involved?
It’s worth noting that most embryos are destroyed. I’m not talking about in vitro embryos at labs. Throughout humankind, when a woman’s ovum is fertilized by sperm in her Fallopian tube, it will, more than half the time, not successfully implant in her uterus, but will instead be gone with her next menstruation. This happens all the time, every day; would Bush like to see tens of millions of women charged with involuntary manslaughter?
Embryos are a dime a dozen, as far as nature is concerned. It’d be fine with me if Federal dollars payed for the IVF and destruction of a million sweet little embryos, for the purpose of stem cell research.
I generally don’t say this about a sitting U.S. president, but I kinda hope that guy falls off the wagon, chokes on his own bourbon-stinking vomit and fucking dies. Bit harsh, but honest.
Yeah, I suppose the only thing that could improve on that would be the Japanese coming up with a stem cell-based cure for choking to death on one’s own vomit the VERY NEXT DAY!
And as I stated in my post, I’m not an expert on Christianity or Catholicism, and that this is what was explained to me by someone who, while obviously not an expert, still had more insight into it than I did.
You’re an asshole. I’ve never liked your posts, and insulting me because I related what I was told by someone else is just downright stupid.
And now ignoring you, I have an honest question for the populace who is obviously more informed than I: Is there any historical evidence for which sect of Christianity came first, timeline-wise? I was always taught that it was Catholicism, and that seems right, but it could easily be wrong because some of my history teachers weren’t the brightest.
Your return is telling him his mother dresses him funny?
Don’t get me wrong, Rick can be obnoxious, but that was a fairly mild response, really. Also factual. I grew up Catholic. I was told (first marriage, pre-marriage counselling by a priest) that sex between a man and his wife is not a sin, it’s a consecration of our marriage. Now, sex outside of marriage…that’s a different thing.
Hoping this won’t hijack, basically, the Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox church developed simultaneously, before splitting off from one another. As well as some of the Coptic and Antioch churches, IIRC. (I could be wrong on that).
Having been raised Catholic, I can tell you, it’s not quite the way you paint it, although I do disagree very strongly with the church.
I’m with you, Maureen…I don’t get where Tasha sees the insult in Bricker’s post. Odd reaction to a simple explanation of the Church’s teaching, which many of us who were raised Catholic will attest to.
Actually, the Armenian Church pre-dates the Catholic Church by a bit. Here’s a link to its history. According to the website, Christianity became the state religion or Armenia in A.D. 301, which means it was the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion. The Mother Cathedral of the Armenian Church near Yerevan, the capitol of Armenia, is considered the oldest Christian cathedral in the world. The church is still quite active in the US as well as Armenia. How do I know this? Simple. I’ve been dating an Armenian-American whose mother works for an Armenian church. By the way, while I haven’t polled his family, he’s in favor of stem cell research. His mother told him that, in terms of belief, they’re closer to the Catholic Church than the various Eastern Orthodox churches.
Yes. The people murdered by the Nazis are a sunk cost. They are dead and remain so regardless of what we do now. We have a choice of either recouping some of the losses by using the data, or letting everything go to waste out of some notion of ‘morality’.
This same argument prevents us from making torture commonplace because the costs associated are so high. These costs are not only human lives, but the psychological and social damage caused by creating and/or finding people capable of carrying out the torture. We could only spend so much if we knew the outcome would be so wonderful as to outweigh the costs. Having such foreknowledge means we are no longer doing research.
The debate was about a one-time event: The discovery of Nazi data that is somehow magically scientifically valid. The concept of sunk cost applies, as I outlined above, since we cannot go back and reverse the outcome of history by ignoring the data. My point in that post was that any moral objection to that concept was mooted by the fact that nobody comes to the discussion with clean hands.
I should probably just leave well enough alone, because every time I try to clarify my point of view, I just get more posts from people who are more unhappy with my viewpoint. But, I can’t shake the part of me which says “if I just explain it right, they still won’t agree with me, but they will respect me anyway.”
I am not as stupid or as ignorant as certain posters think I am.
( Although, that is the universal cry of message board posters accused of stupidity or ignorance, so I don’t expect my saying so to change opinions.)
Voyager’s description of how research really works actually strikes me as being quite similar to how I had thought it worked.
On the other hand, Voyager had a good point. I know just enough about the need for Institutional Review Boards when doing research on Human Subjects to be dangerous. Still, even when the research consists of filling out surveys on innocuous subjects, some review is generally required. So, why would one assume that embryonic stem cell research has less oversight than administering surveys? Especially given another valid point–not neccessarily made by Voyager or not only by Voyager–there are only a limited number of embryos available for research, and it is somewhat likely that those would go to researchers who can best show that their research shows potential.
It is also true that ALL research starts with Hype and Hope, if the results were known in advance, it wouldn’t be research. I still feel that the battle over Embryonic Stem Cell Research or its funding is too much fought in the public eye, and so a lot of attention is given to the “we can maybe someday cure horrible diseases” and not enough time is given to the “we can cure diabetes in Mice, this research is almost practical” side of things.
On the other hand, a lot of my points are really side points to my main objection. I do not approve of embryonic stem cell research. This is not a conclusion reached by logic and research, it is an instinctive, emotional, gut reaction to the very idea of such research. I can’t really explain it, and my attempts to defend it have mostly been failures, but it remains true. This thread has given me a lot of insight into why other people support stem cell research beyond the obvious, but it has not made me change my mind.