News to me, thanks for the revelation. I guess that goes to show that one can be a one side of the liberal/conservative fence on matters of morality (abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc.) and be on the other side of the fence on economic issues like miniumum wage, unionization, affirmative action, etc.
Heh. From here
And possibly that folks will say any damn thing to get elected.
I can only offer my reasoning here, not necessarily anyone else’s. I am reluctant to allow harvesting of aborted fetuses (feti?) for fear of creating a market for abortion. On the other hand, I do see your point about the waste of just disposing of the tissues taken during abortions too - it should be too precious to be just destroyed. At the moment, without successes using stem cells in other mammals I’m going to remain reluctant to see the use of human tissue.
Show me any viable therapy in other mammals with stem cells and a lot of my reluctance will be outweighed by genuine benefits from the techniques. Until then, however, I remain, as I said, reluctant.
BTW, I’d like to point out that Galileo is a bit of an improper example for mindless censoring by religion of someone who had his ducks in a row.
Its so openly and obviously political and opportunistic I wonder what kind of people don’t notice !! Religious circus…
As mice are not men, so long as research on human ES cells is so severely restricted, these doubts will remain comfortably in place for conservatives to cite in their “principled” objections. It’s tough to provide good evidence when the means of doing so is denied. I wouldn’t be surprised that even the strongest evidence in model organisms is shrugged off as “irrelevant” by conservatives, due to the very fact such surrogate endpoints would not be adequate by themselves for clincal applications. These reservations become highly suspect when the doubts that inform them are made permanent by design.
Thanks for the link… didn’t know that. So Galileu is another example of politics using religion, not religion vs science !! Even more appropiate for the thread then. 
Actually you and others who say this are precisely wrong on this point. The persons who want to keep Ms. Schiavo from starving to death are not pandering and are not being opportunists. They can read the polls, too. I believe they are incorrect, but I am convinced that they are acting with good faith from deeply held principles with full knowledge that they will pay a political cost for doing so. That applies to them whatever side of the policital fence they might be on (though I might be convinced to make an exception for Rev. Jackson).
Agreed.
I’m a conservative. At least, I certainly am by the liberal standards here on the SDMB.
Let’s look at your list:
- Keeping people who have become vegetables alive
I support the decision by Terri’s husband to end her life. He’s the spouse, it’s his job to decide what her wishes were and act upon them.
- Women should have unwanted babies
I’m pro-choice.
- People who are suffering horribly should continue to do so with no choice
I’m all for assisted suicide. If you decide to end your life to avoid suffering then you should be able to.
- Fetuses without brains that will die should still be carried to the dire end (Brazil)
I’m not familiar with this, but I’ll give you my gut reaction: No brain? If the parents are willing to let the child die, I’d say let them.
- Sex is good unless your a teenager, unmarried, protected against pregnancy or gay.
Sex is good.
Sex is not so good if you are a teenager, or if you are unmarried. Certainly we can all agree that STD’s and unwed mothers are a bad thing?
Protected sex is fine with me. We should (and do) encourage people to protect themselves.
I’ve got no problem with gay sex as long as it’s with consenting adults.
- Criminals somehow have no right to life even if a vegetative bulimic does (USA)
Criminals who commit certain types of heinous crimes lose the right to life. I’m actually opposed to this, but only because it gives too much power to the government, not because I feel sorry for the criminals.
- Stem Cells can save life and improve it… but no can do… its Gods prerrogative.
I say use them.
So, I’m a conservative, and I only partially agree with one of your seven statements. I’d say you better be more careful with that brush.
You seem to be ignoring the political costs that would be incurred among a core constituency that was arguably responsible for many Republican victories, from the Pres. on down, should the purported “Culture of Life” advocates have chosen to ignore this case, at least not too long ago. There is such thing as payback in this spending of political capital. Given how rapidly the poll ratings have headed groundward, I’m not surprised some of the most powerful players have been oddly silent.
I can’t begin to fathom the motivation of some of the left-wingers involved in this case, except almost pure attention-whoring. In that regard, seeing the Naders and the Jacksons come out of the woodwork is not entirely surprising, if, prima fascia, somewhat paradoxical.
Did you mean to accuse me of lying, Loopydude?
I’ve stated what I view as a minimum before I’ll change my reluctance to allow Federal funding for research use of human ES cells. Meet this minimum and I’ll change my position on human ES cell research. Until that happens, however, I don’t see any benefit to supporting human ES research, and have yet to see anything other than pie-in-the-sky discussions of the ‘promise’ of ES research. If it is so promising, why is it such a hurdle to ask that it be proven to work in other species first? And if it’s so difficult that you view it as unlikely to work with mice, or cows, or sheep, what makes you believe that it will ever work with humans?
I’m well aware that mice are not men, but until a technique is shown to work in other mammals, what proof do you have that any amount of use of ES cells will have any practical benefit? A great deal of the promise for ES cell research has been made by making extrapolations of what ES cells do in a developing fetus, until there is some technique that can reliably mimic that outside of a developing fetus why should anyone be swayed by what might be developed from the raw materials?
Secondly, let’s be honest here: The current ‘ban’ on human ES cell research is nothing of the sort. It’s simply a ban on Federal funding for the topic. There are projects outside the US being done using ES cells (Without all that much success, yet, BTW.) and inside the US without Federal funding. No decision by the Feds will stop research that looks profitable. (Which I believe ES cell research would be if it can be made to work as promised.) At the moment I view the majority of the people who are boosting the potential of ES cell research in the public’s mind as snake oil salesmen - They may not be lying, but they aren’t exactly giving out reasonable scenarios, either.
Rashak Man, I never said that Galileo wasn’t an appropriate example for this situation, just not quite the way you had been saying. 
It also seems to me as if you are trying to demonize the ‘conservatives’ side…or at least paint with an overly broad brush. There are plenty of ‘conservatives’ who would not agree with your definitions of their supposed positions (especially on the TS issue), and there are ‘liberals’ who more closely resemble the position you are trying to paint ‘conservatives’ into.
Case in point from my own family. My dad is about as ‘conservative’ as it gets. He thinks that TS should be allowed to die, and goes further asking why she can’t simply be given a lethal injection of some kind to make it easier on the family. My sister, again about as ‘liberal’ as one could get thinks that TS should be allowed to live because her ‘soul’ or ‘life force’ is still there and she could recover.
For my own positions, pretty much what Debaser said.
-XT
You’re either lying or willfully ignorant. If you can’t understand what a chilling effect on the entire industry a ban on public research that limits us to the study of extant lines that are hopelessly contaminated with feder cell DNA has, there’s little point in arguing the funding aspects. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for private interests to pick up all of the slack.
As for results, they are being provided apace, and yet are consistently ignored by conservatives. Like I said, many of the proof-of-principle work in animals has been done, and we might be ready for Phase-I trials soon if there were widespread access to good lines. Lack of such due to complicated IP issues does not benefit the field at all.
Evidence? I’m not going to spend all day giving yet another list of cites people who choose to ignore them. I’m tired of waging battles of info attrition against people who don’t give a shit anyway. Here’s one, from a highly reputable journal, in an extremely robust primate model. It’s just a recent example of some of the most promising data being generated that suggests the great potential promise of ESCs for neurlogical disorders (from out of Japan, interestingly). Other such promising data is being generated for cardiac disease, endocrine disorders, spinal cord repair. The July 10th issue of the Lancet is full of commentary on the current state of ESC and adult stem cell research, and speaks volums about the immediate need for public support, advocacy on the part of scientists, and realistic perspective. Ignoring the advances that have been made, and characterizing all of them as “overblown” tends to reveal how implacable the critics really are. I’ve lost all confidence opponents make good-faith arguments based on considerations like potential efficacy. They appear to magnify any and all reasonable doubt out of proportion to keep the field in a permantent holding pattern, if possible.
Fortunately, there is some industry money, and plenty of research going on overseas. Unfortunately, America seems bent on ceding its preeminant role as the unparalleled mecca of cutting-edge biomedical research. These days our esteemed leaders seem more interested in pouring money into bioterror efforts on the outside chance somebody does the virtually impossible. Sort of like our missile shield. We’re fond of boondoggles these days.
Make up your mind, please.
First you say this:
Then you say this:
Which do you mean to be true? Hmm?
Your cite is interesting, and does offer more progress than I’d been aware had been achieved. (And, as a chem tech, I admit I understood approximately 10% of what I’d read.) It does back up the claims of support for PD therapies being near breakthrough. I’m still uncomfortable with ES harvesting - but this is far more progress than I’d been aware had been made.
What’s so fucking difficult to understand? Some is better than none, but a lot more would be closer to enough. As I wrote in my post, and would have been immediately apprehended if you weren’t fixated on spurious contradictions, industry can’t pick up the slack for such an enormous effort, and the fact all the big money and effort needed may be applied overseas is not exactly something Americans who care out our preeminance in biomedical science ought to be jumping for joy about.
I’ve had enough of this garbage.
I am. But mostly right now I’m pissed at you for perpetuating their smarmy idiocy. And even moreso at you for using “conservative” as a libelous slur - no matter the beliefs of whomever applies the label to themself. While certain members of the body politic may have hijacked the label conservative for their own misuse, I only see the guys residing on the left side of the aisle connoting the term with negative attributes.
Again, I would ask, since you quite obviously hold the label “conservative” to have derogatory meanings, didn’t you place this thread in the Pit? Your OP is nothing more than a tranparently disguised rant.
Well, I’m just trying to understand exacly which people you’re claiming hold the meanings you’ve given of “life.” My overall impression is that you’ve arrived at your thesis exactly back-ass-wards. You oppose all of the things in your list; you hate “conservatives” (even though at the moment you are refusing to define explicitly just what a conservative might be to you even though the term would appear to have a vastly different meaning from the way it’s defined by the self-described conservatives who have appeared here); therefore, anyone holding the views you oppose, must, by definition, be a conservative and an enemy to be hated and shouted down with libelous terms.
In which case, as I’ve said twice, and will repeat for a third time, this thread is nothing more than a rant and better suited for the Pit. Because it certainly ain’t a call for a reasonable debate.
I’m ignoring nothing. You are ignoring that some people in the world have actual principles and sometimes even act according to them. The reason people get core constituencies in the first place is shared values. That’s all I’m saying here. Bush and the Republicans in Congress didn’t champion that dumb bill because they were pandering to a core constituency; they have that particular core constituency because honestly and in good faith they believe in the causes of the constituents.
The left wingers who came down on the side of Ms. Schiavo’s parents or otherwise concluded she should not be starved have similar motives. Their core constituencies are built from different cores and they disagree on this one, is all. Senator Harkin doesn’t need any publicity, he needs to sleep at night. Plenty of people read Hentoff; he’s just pro-life.
I’m with Debaser here. I’d like to take a look at this list too. I consider myself a moderate conservative.
- Keeping people who have become vegetables alive
Nope, I think brain dead people’s families ought to be asked if they’d like for them to be organ donors, and if not after a reasonable time with no improvement (say a year or two max) the plug should be pulled. Comatose people, who do have brain activity, on the other hand should be maintained in hopes that they regain consciousness.
- Women should have unwanted babies
Women shouldn’t have unwanted pregnancies, with healthy fetuses. With modern birth control we oughtn’t have most of the unwanted pregnancies that we do. If one happens anyway, I’d far rather see the child carried to term and put up for adoption. And in the worse case senario - the kid is never adopted? A bad childhood is better than none at all, and many people turn their lives around as adults. Living children have a hope of a better life, and aborted ones do not. (I don’t believe in reincarnation FTR)
- People who are suffering horribly should continue to do so with no choice
People who are terminally ill ought to be allowed assisted suicide once their pain is no longer manageable. I don’t think suicide is a great choice in most cases, but suffering hopelessly is even worse. I’d like to think that God forgives those who can no longer bear pain.
- Fetuses without brains that will die should still be carried to the dire end (Brazil)
This ought to be the parents’ choice. I know someone who didn’t carry such a baby to term, and I think she made the best choice for her. One caveat I have with abortion is that if the child isn’t going to live anyway, I don’t really object to termination of the pregnancy. But if the parents wanted their brainless baby to be born, that’s fine too.
- Sex is good unless your a teenager, unmarried, protected against pregnancy or gay.
Birth control very good - far far better to prevent a pregnancy than end one. Gay sex okay, preferably in committed relationships. Unmarried sex okay if you’re an adult, but again committed relationships are better. Teens ought to be allowed to mature to the point that they’ll have the wherewithall to protect themselves against disease and unwanted pregnancy before having sex - this point varies person to person.
- Criminals somehow have no right to life even if a vegetative bulimic does (USA)
People with souls should be alive, and those without shouldn’t. Neither TS nor mass murders demonstrate possession of a soul or human sensibilities. I object to neither shuffling off this mortal coil.
- Stem Cells can save life and improve it… but no can do… its Gods prerrogative.
Theraputic value has been demonstrated with the use of both adult and umbilical stem cells. Embryonic stem cell value is still theoretical. Let’s exhaust the use of the two former before delving into the moral ambiguity of the third. ASFAIK the only reason that embryonic stem cells are preferred over umbilical is that it’s easier to create a supply of the former via maintaining cell lines, but why not routinely ask mothers-to-be for the use of their umbilical cord blood at certain research hospitals? Even if 50% say no for some reason or other, that’s still a lot of stem cells that could be collected in a way that harms no one.
All right, then let me restate my objection: There’s something very wrong with people who values a pair of cells and a parkinson’s victim equally.
Not at birth maybe but at this stage calling it a bunch of tissue would be a compliment. It’s not even that. It’s a bunch of cells.
By the way you’re “I’ll wait till I see some successes” is just a hedge. Either it’s wrong to kill one of these blobs of cells or it’s not. And there’s no logical merit that I can fathom in discounting probable benefits and only considering certain benefits. Almost all ethical calculations (particularly in the medical field) deal with probable benefits. There’s very little certainty in medicine as in life.
And by limiting funding you’re clearly reducing the probability that real suffering and dying human beings will be helped.
To all those who object to calling the OP’s seven statements “conservative:”
Yup, it does appear that you’re right and the T.S. issue is not really a conservative/liberal issue. See this poll. And in particular this quote:
But I think the OP can be forgiven for not knowing that because of the visibility of the administration and the Republican Party on this issue. I admit it did raise my eyebrows when I read that that this was an evangelical issue. I was familiar with the Catholic Church’s seamless cloth, but I didn’t know that the protestant evangelicals had a dog in the end of life fight.
As for the rest of the OP’s statements, well they may be parodies, but these are clearly parodies of conservative positions (abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights, etc). The fact that some of you personally don’t believe in some of these positions doesn’t really prove anything. There are liberal positions I don’t hold (e.g. I don’t object to this war, I believe in welfare reform, etc). But I wouldn’t call my opinions evidence that anything is or is not liberal. In fact, when my opinions do diverge from the “liberal” line you’ll hear me complaining about “liberals” loudly.
Hmm…I’m guessing you are a libertarian, who are also called classical liberals. If so, this is NOT what most people in the US consider “conservative”. I’m a mild anarcho-syndicalist, and I happen to agree with all your points pretty much.