41 Comments - He Makes Ryan look like a saint - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 9:38 am: When my wife and I had a baby a couple of years ago, they just got rid of the afterbirth. We would have been more than happy to donate it for reasearch, but was not given the option. Having family members with Parkensons AND Alzheimers, and knowing people with spinal chord injuries that this may eventually help, I think this is a great thing. - Leroy - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 9:43 am: $15 million in stem cell research dollars should generate between $250,000 and $500,000 back in campaign contributions from ‘researchers’ who now are dependent on state grant money for their income. The other benefit is simutaneously backhanding those (conservatives) that don’t mind watching victims of disease (especially children) suffer. It is win-win across the board. - Pat Hickey - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 9:56 am: This is going to be a problem for a long time to come; let’s get the real research on stem cell medical direction before taking a ‘feel good’ issue and allowing it be a football for the extremes on both sides of the debate. Still way too early in the game to get legislation and tax dollars involved. - focus - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 10:22 am: Lets keep our eye on the ball here. The debate on this bill was not to end the proceedure - the debate was keep tax payers dollars from funding it. - steve schnorf - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 10:23 am: Uh, I think public policy is supposed to trump religious beliefs. Religious beliefs have no place in consideration of public policy. If it did, there would be jurisdictions where people couldn’t dance, others where condoms couldn’t be sold, etc, etc. Oh Dan, where are you; another poster boy. - whatever - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 10:55 am: Kudos to David Reis. Good to see someone in the GOP House caucus finding a spine - on anything. Maybe House Republicans should consider finding a new Minority Leader, instead of rubber-stamping Tom Cross every time. Folks should remember - no one is trying to ban embryonic stem cell research (as far as I know). It’s just a question of public funding of something many find morally wrong. Tom Cross believes in this cause. Fine. Nothing is stopping him from supporting private foundation efforts and raising money from WILLING donors. - It Doesn't Make Cents... - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 12:02 pm: If the Gov. can’t fund this initiative through his proposed tax increase, he’ll use Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement money to fund it. Too bad for people trying to quit or stopping kids from starting smoking. The fund has been swept more times than the Cards have swept the Cubs. - cermak_rd - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 12:29 pm: Has anyone actually counted the per cent of the IL electorate who is opposed to stem cell research? I bet it’s less than 25% here. Heck, the proportions in the House and Senate were pretty hefty and some of the ones who voted against were more worried about the money (a legitimate concern) than the ethics of the thing. - Truthful James - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 1:22 pm: Embryonic stem cell research is going on, funded in the private sector. To date it is all hat and no cattle. Other stem cell research — umbilical cord blood, etc, has produced results. There is more speculation involved here than meets the eye. Scientists have subjunctively promised much. They have hopped on the pro choice bandwagon to get support from the concept that embryo to fetus to just a hair before natural birth there is no human being involved. All that gained experience in the womb means nothing. Why should all taxpayers have to support a few scientists with good resumes and unproven claims? Steverino, it isn’t religion but the moral and economic sensibilities that are affected. Taxpayers are permitted to give tax deductible moneys to the private sector NFP research firms. So they should. The next bill up should fund he purchase of lotto tickets. There are winners there too. - whatever - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 1:39 pm: For what it’s worth, there is some empirical data on support for this issue that came out of Tuesday’s election. In Chicago, in the 42nd Ward only (don’t ask me why), voters had this advisory question at the end of the short ballot: “Shall the Government of the United States fully fund research for medical technologies that utilize stem cells solely for regenerative cures?” I just checked the BOE website and this question passed 85% to 15%. So pretty overwhelming, but a couple of points to remember. Note the question used the generic “stem cells” and didn’t mention “embryonic” - which is where the real ethical concerns are for the opponents. Second, the 42nd Ward of Chicago is a pretty liberal voter sample. David Reis’ anoulogy is still a good one. We get rid of the Chief because one group was offended. Was the offended group more than 15% of the population? I doubt it. The Chief didn’t really cost much either. - HoosierDaddy - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 2:31 pm: Steve, I think this comes down to a lot more than a religious question. Rep. Reis might be in the minority on this issue, but there have been a lot of minority opinions that have turned out to be correct. When life begins is not a religious question as much as a scientific one. The question of when it is ok to end a life is a moral and ethical question that also does not necessarily turn on religion. If we applied your apparent standard to every law that has a moral component, we would have very few laws. - VanillaMan - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 2:49 pm: Stem cell research is good. Embryonic stem cell research is barbaric and stupid. There is no need for embryonic stem cells. So you want stem cells that are capable of being anything? Well, in the “good old days of 2006″ that meant embryonic stem cells. Not anymore. Researchers have discovered that there are more stem cells with similar features as embryonic stem cells within each pregnant woman’s amniotic sack. So we don’t have to play “Dracula” anymore. Those proposing and passing this obsolete bill are merely a pay off for labs and using lame excuses for last season’s “science”. I’m tired of seeing “science” being played like a political football. Societies have a responsibility to enforce ethical situations for all living things. You don’t enslave others because of promises of medicinal benefits. You really have to wonder where we are going. We mock primative societies and are appalled at similar unethical treatments in other parts of the world, but seem to fall for the same bull crock right here. It is simply unbelievable that so many people who don’t believe in animal testing feel quite OK with using human embryonic tissue when it suits them. Really, whats next? Soylent Green? - NW burbs - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 3:19 pm: Does Rep. Reis not understand that the only frozen embryos eligible are those which are scheduled to be destroyed anyway as IVF storage centers clean out their freezers? Why haven’t Rep. Reis or any of the other 46 representatives who voted against this introduced legislation to alleviate what they consider “killing” (the destruction of embryos) since it’s been going on for decades? There are many options. They could: 1. Ban the process of making surplus embryos and force doctors to insert the embryos they do create (this ties doctors’ hands; limits the ability of couples seeking IVF to bear children since not all embryos may implant; and also could lead to more abortions as doctors and couples decide whether or not to try and bear 5, 6, or 7 fetuses at once) 2. Ban the process of freezing embryos and force doctors to immediately implant all embryos they create (same problems as #1 with the addition that the typcial reason excess embryos are frozen is to alleviate the cost of future egg harvesting and embryo creation in the lab … but perhaps Rep. Reis would like to introduce legislation seeking to fund welfare programs for infertile couples) 3. Ban the process of cleaning out freezers and tossing the abandoned, surplus frozen embryos in the biohazard trash (IVF clinics will be the first to ask for a handout in order to pay for indefinite, infinite storage … including storage long after the donors/parents are deceased) …Every argument I’ve seen from conservatives on this has an air of hypocrisy around it, given that these embryos are going to be destroyed anyway. (And, for the millionth time y’all, the goals for therapeutic cloning are entirely different than reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning has been in existance for decades and conservatives never took an issue with it til they figured out they could score cheap political points with the word “cloning” so they now choose to try and muddy the waters. The initial process may be the same, but clearly no one is trying to create cloned humans through embryonic stem cell research. Oy.) - NW burbs - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 3:26 pm: PS, James (aka, Pete), You ask, “Why should all taxpayers have to support a few scientists with good resumes and unproven claims?” …At risk of straying off-topic, the ‘woe is me taxpayer’ ploy is a red herring. It can easily be applied to everything from welfare to war to farm subsidies to oil company subsidies. In this case, the vast majority of citizens do recognize the value in striving for the potential inherent in the greater good. That a relative few do not understand the science involved and choose to score cheap political points is unfortunate. (And those “results” you claim for other stem cell research… that’s one more conservative falsehood that’s been debunked. What with the amount of government funding and resources other stem cell research has been given, it has not produced much more than the limited amount of embryonic stem cell research that has been able to be conducted.) - Anon - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 3:58 pm: So, it is OK to toss unwanted embryo but not to use for research to cure. Seems kind of moronic. - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:05 pm: ===Embryonic stem cell research is barbaric and stupid. Now, if you have some faith that a soul is infused into a blastocyst, I respect the belief, but other than that how is working with a blastocyst barbaric? Regardless of the claim that there are other methods to obtain stem cells, the science doesn’t demonstrate this. The stem cells in such cases may be very useful, but they are not as flexible as embryonic stem cells. More problematic though is why would such stem cells if they were as useful be any different in their potential for forming a human? - Bill Baar - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:27 pm: Really, whats next? Soylent Green? It’s exactly the movie that keeps coming to my mind. Cook County Judge Jeffrey Lawrence said “a pre-embryo is a ‘human being’ … whether or not it is implanted in its mother’s womb.” Yet Illinois will fund research that destroys human embryos. The law and thinking simply hasn’t caught up with the science and technology…. even though Sci Fi enthusiasts back in 1973 sensed were things were going. As embryos become viable beings at earlier and earlier stages of human life, they’re going to be viewed less as masses of tissue and more and more as what they really are: human beings at the first stage of life, and not fodder for therapies. - VanillaMan - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:27 pm: For a decade, we have been witnesses to a market driven pharmaceutical industry. Ads for every kind of drug; purple pills, green pills, toe nail fungus pills and these ads are working, giving medical businesses millions of dollars. We are seeing the next step - a market driven political agenda that rewards businesses that can create hope for their cures that could not possibly find success on the open market. We are seeing new lobbying efforts to reward companies by finding government funding or government mandate. This has been working too, as we are seeing today in Illinois. For hundreds of years, pharmaceutical companies found investors to make ends meet. However investors are not flocking to embryonic stem cell research enough to meet ends. So, they are turning to us with lots of promises. There are lots of stem cells. Most are programmed to become a specific kind of cell. Cord blood contains stem cells for blood and lymphatic cells. What researchers are looking for is a stem cell capable of becoming anything, a golden fleece theoretically capable of miraculous cures. At one point in our lives, we have stem cells that did that. This happened after we came to be and were in our mother’s womb. Researchers needing more money to investigate these stem cells are asking governments for money. In return, they are promising an endless supply of medical breakthroughs and rainbows. But in order to do this, they want us to turn a blind eye to our medical ethics. We don’t do that. We don’t let people become guinea pigs. A lot of us even feel bad for lab rats. We have ethics, and this crosses the line. The very idea that PETA vegetarians are comfortable with embryonic stem cell research is mind boggling. If ever a hypocrisy existed, this tops them all. They won’t wear fur, but they think it is OK if we use embryos for stem cell harvesting? The embryonic stem cell harvesters want to only talk about “stem cell research”. Michael J. Fox’s ads skirted the issues. Pro-embryonic stem cell supporters skirt the issue. Instead of discussing what they are asking us to do - cross a medical ethics line - they name call those who support stem cell research, but want to maintain our humanity too. They want us to be considered some kind of religious nuts, when religion doesn’t even need to be a guide here. Try some basic humanity, will ya? I support stem cells - not embryonic stem cells. We know that finding those stem cells capable of being engineered into anything are available within the mystery of our biology. We also know that we don’t have to destroy our humanity in order to get there. - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:33 pm: ===We don’t do that. We don’t let people become guinea pigs. A lot of us even feel bad for lab rats. We have ethics, and this crosses the line. Again, other than faith that the blastocyst has a soul, how is it crossing a line? I have no reason to equate a blastocyst with a human being. Undifferentiated cells are not human beings. They have the potential to be human beings, but so would the stem cells that you identified above if they were truly capable of forming any sort of cell. What’s the ethical difference? - VanillaMan - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:39 pm: It simply amazes me that I read all kinds of postings that are opposed to the Patriot Act because it could do some kind of harm. These same folks also are uncomfortable with food products that are biologically engineered. They don’t want to see nuclear power. They don’t like coal, oil or other energy sources they consider harmful. But they think this is OK? How about some consistency? Are we seeing a point where “progressives” have just lost their moral compass to a point where the dang thing is just spinning in their heads? How can they mock those of us with some semblance of belief? What are they, envious? We do not need embryonic stem cell research. There are sources of stem cells capable of doing what is promised of embryonic stem cells that do not require that we become barbarians. Geez, your gut instincts are correct on so many issues, why do you refuse to follow them now? - HoosierDaddy - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 4:58 pm: NW Burbs you assume a lot in your answer. There are many conservative pro-lifers who would, if given a decent chance at passing the legislation, ban in vitro. Second, the fact that the embryos are going to be destroyed anyway is secondary. Did the fact that Dr. Mengele gained valuable scientific knowledge from Jews who were going to die in the concentration camps anyway justify his experiments? The problem that Rep. Reis sees is that by creating a popular and seemingly valuable justification for experimenting on embryos that are “going to be destroyed anyway” you let the law slip a few more inches down the slope toward creating embryos for experimentation… letting the embryos grow a little… letting them grow a lot… implanting them in artificial wombs… letting them mature… experimenting on the little clones… experimenting on the bigger clones… Why not– it’s for the public good, the supporters will always say. - Truthful James - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:08 pm: This thread is proceeding on two parallel lines that will never meet One addresses the question: should embryonic stem cells be used for research? That question has been answered. They are being used for research in the private sector. There is no law against such use, nor is one proposed. People posit that billions of embryonic stem cells are frozen and being cleaned out of freezers. These are the property of the donors. One can say that there was no need to harvest so many. One can say, let them be used for research, whatever the donor wished to do, including sending them to Ben and Jerry’s (OK, Rich, pretty high on the hyperbolic curve.) The other track asks the valid question should public money be used to fund embryonic stem cell research, Should public funds be be used. The Federal government is funding such research, limited to existing lines of inquiry. There have been no reported successes after much research using public and private sector money. Ethics and moral codes come into conflict here. Should the state stand in the middle? For believers, life has an end and there is a better place to go. There is someone on earth probably from our family to take our place. For agnostics, this is the last resort, we dare not shut our eyes. Reis gave a long speech outlining one side of the argument. I have yet to see a similar lengthy piece for the other side. Other than the subjunctive promises of scientists living from grant to grant I see nothing. No results to speak of to date. If you support stem cell research, give your money. Do not give mine. - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:37 pm: ===It simply amazes me that I read all kinds of postings that are opposed to the Patriot Act because it could do some kind of harm. These same folks also are uncomfortable with food products that are biologically engineered. They don’t want to see nuclear power. They don’t like coal, oil or other energy sources they consider harmful. But they think this is OK? How about some consistency? Are we seeing a point where “progressives” have just lost their moral compass to a point where the dang thing is just spinning in their heads? How can they mock those of us with some semblance of belief? What are they, envious? Who is mocking you? You are being challenged though. Who doesn’t have belief? (a rather strange construction) I’m a Presbyterian. I am not an animal rights activists, nor am I against bioengineering of food in the abstract, nor am I against nuclear energy if we can find somewhere to store the waste safely, nor am I against oil or coal other than wanting to move towards sustainable energy. These are all diversions from the point, however. We are talking about blastocysts. Blastocysts made of undifferentiated cells. Calling them human beings or tiny human beings is semantic vandalism. They have the potential to become human beings under certain circumstances. Nearly one-third of all conceptions are miscarried before birth. I respect that some believe that there is a soul infused in those miscarriages, but I don’t find that to be a terribly compelling argument for the sanctity of life for blastocysts. —We do not need embryonic stem cell research. There are sources of stem cells capable of doing what is promised of embryonic stem cells that do not require that we become barbarians. This is not true–there is some thought that pluripotency may be achieved, but it has not been so far. But more to the point, if a cell is a pluripotent cell, how do you distinguish it from one produced by an embryo and one developed by reversion? It has the same potential for life, what’s the distinction you are making? - Bill Baar - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:37 pm: Again, other than faith that the blastocyst has a soul, how is it crossing a line? Souls have nothing to do with it. Blastocysts are humans. If your a secular humanist, that’s all that counts. You can’t be 3/5ths human, or sub human, or just a name for a stage in human devlepmet… you’re just human; and once your humanity’s acknowledged, you can’t be destroyed for another another’s therapy. History is a long process of recognizing other peoples humanity. We’ve been here before. - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:41 pm: ===There have been no reported successes after much research using public and private sector money. Work on embryonic stem cells has only been occurring for 9 years with limited federal funding since 2001. What is remarkable given the limited time frame, limited lines, and limited money is how much work has been accomplished. - steve schnorf - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:42 pm: Folks, I’m just saying that as long as conservatives do things like publically complain about public policy trumping religious beliefs, the great middle doesn’t want them in charge of the state. The Rep is playing to his crowd (Edgar lost Effingham County for being too liberal on abortion). The problem comes when you try to take that show on the road statewide; you get Alan Keyes, who carried the Rep’s district (at least Effingham and Jasper), but didn’t fare too well elsewhere. I still don’t understand why the reality is so hard for some people to grasp. You can be conservative and still be electable: you just can’t be scary. Believing that some people run for public office so that their religious beliefs can trump public policy scares the hell out of that middle. - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 5:45 pm: ===Souls have nothing to do with it. Blastocysts are humans. If your a secular humanist, that’s all that counts. You can’t be 3/5ths human, or sub human, or just a name for a stage in human devlepmet… you’re just human; and once your humanity’s acknowledged, you can’t be destroyed for another another’s therapy. I’m not a secular humanist, but you are factually incorrect. A blastocyst is a ball of about 50-150 undifferentiated cells. That is quite different from a being with differentiated cells of over 100 trillion. - Jill Stanek - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 6:03 pm: Archpundit, what is factually - scientificially, medically - correct? When does human life begin? - archpundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 6:08 pm: It’s really not that hard to understand definitions. A blastocyst is a clump of 50-150 undifferentiated cells. That is not a human being. It has the potential to become a human being and in a female will 2 out of 3 times. I respect that some people feel there is a soul infused into the zygote as conception takes place. However, I don’t believe that a zygote has the same rights as a fully developed human being. Where that line is can be argued, but a zygote or a blastocyst are not human beings. They have the potential to become one. - Jill Stanek - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 6:13 pm: I’m not speaking of souls. I’m speaking of science and medicine. You stated it is “factually incorrect” to say blastocysts are human. What is factually correct? - ArchPundit - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 7:21 pm: It is factually correct to say, as I have, that blastocysts have the potential to be human if implanted in a female and without intervention do so in 2/3 of the cases. The exact moment an embryo acquires all the characteristics of a human is somewhat debatable with several different defintions, however 50-150 undifferentiated cells isn’t anywhere near that line. Sentience requires some sort of nervous system minimally. - Gregor - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 10:44 pm: Reis was right-on about this, and I don’t consider myself a conservative, republican, OR religious zealot, but a progressive dem. This embryonic stem cell issue is the “Dredd Scott Decision” of our times. Whether one is a person or property. May we see the light sooner this time! I feel for Tom Cross and others, but what he’s asking is for us to cross an ethical line here we dare not traverse. Eggs and sperm alone can never become more than they are. Once joined and allowed to implant as nature designed, uninterrupted, the result nine months later, if successful, is always a person. Not a dog, cat, or fish, but a human being. Creating, then killing off multiple embryos in IVF procedures is killing developing humans, direct intervention in the extreme, and purely for reasons of convenience and to reduce costs, the worst possible excuse for unethical behaviors. Nobody wants to work harder and more expensively doing IVF one egg at a time and waiting to see if it takes or not. CONVENIENCE! EXPENSE! These are NEVER good reasons to trample someone’s human rights. I will leave out any discussion of the existence of souls, as that is irrelevant to my point. Which is, we don’t submit humans to experimentation without their voluntary consent. And embryos cannot consent. We remember the horrors of Mengele and the Japanese biowar experimenters in WWII, and Tuskeegee afterwards. No ethical doctor will use the products of that “research” to this day, on moral grounds. To my way of thinking, arguing that we should allow Embryonic stem cell research from the products of “surplus” IVF embryos not implanted “because they would die anyway and this way they would be useful to someone” is on the same level as using that WWII and Tuskeegee data. We dare not go down that road, especially under the aegis of government support. Let’s get down to brass tacks: The pro-embryonics people’s arguments say the weak and those unable to defend their human rights can and should be considered “spare parts” for those of us who are no different, only lucky enough to have gotten here first ahead of those embryos, and that our immediate needs and wants should weight more morally than those of the embryos. Well, If my daughter, who is older and healthier than Cross’s needs a kidney, then should I have the right to apropriate one of Cross’s daughter’s kidneys, since she’s statistically unlikely to live as long as my daughter anyway? Extreme and ridiculous analogy, but the fact is that desperate people searching for cures for loved ones is the worst possible group to ask about the ethics of where those cures come from. Even if Embryonic stem cells could have saved my grandpa from his Alzheimers, I would not ask to kill someone else to cure him for his last decade of life. Let’s look at the law. I shoot a 90-year old terminal cancer patient with dementia, it’s murder. Same with shooting a 20-year-old; I’m guilty. I shoot a one-month-old newborn, it is murder. I shoot him and/or his mom the week before he’s due to be delivered, I’m a murderer, probably a double murderer. Yet if I kill that developing human maybe 20 days earlier in the chain, it’s suddenly legal, and not only that, but one can PROFIT from the murder by selling the remains for experiments. That is insane and illogical. Always was. Fund contraception that prevents egg and sperm from joining all you want, if it prevents the need to cause an abortion. Let’s look at government. Already the stories about the Chinese government’s supposed use of non-volunteer organs from prisoners for transplantation have people worried, apochryphal or not. Now look at Illinois government: the same folks who can’t figure out the utility rates problem in ten years’ time, who can’t balance a budget, who are swayed by any and all lobbyists with a few dollars to contribute… THESE are the folks you want to be in charge of funding and directing ethically shakey science decisions about human life and death? No, Sorry Shnorf and others, the government should stay as far from this as possible, with the exception of maybe passing more laws making it harder to make this ethical breach in the first place. For those who lack a moral compass. - Jill Stanek - Friday, Mar 2, 07 @ 11:08 pm: Archpundit, if you do not know exactly when human life begins, how can you state so assuredly when it does not? - Bill Baar - Saturday, Mar 3, 07 @ 10:01 am: Arch, so when does the Blastocyst become human? What number of cells makes one human? How did Judge Lawrence get it wrong when he wrote “a pre-embryo is a ‘human being’ ? If HHH said the Liberal’s mantra was, “It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped,” then how can opposition to destruction of humans at their earliest stage of life not be the ultimate test of ones liberlism? A test too many failing. - Siwash - Saturday, Mar 3, 07 @ 3:12 pm: Study what VanillaMan says. For my part, it’s a shame to see science so politicized, a shame to see private enterprise benefitting only the rich few being subsidized by taxpayers, and again, the flagrant disregard for inherent human dignity. Sad to see the whole issue be a rallying cry for liberals. - NW burbs - Saturday, Mar 3, 07 @ 4:53 pm: Jill Stanek pops up on this thread with: “Archpundit, if you do not know exactly when human life begins, how can you state so assuredly when it does not?” Jill, you have no credibility on this or any other matter. Your anger and rage (borne of your rank partisanship and hypocrisy) has blinded you from all rationality. Despite your training as a nurse, you repeatedly make and promote false medical statements simply to further your own agenda (let alone your repeated acid-tongued attacks against your fellow Americans). That said, if you’re so concerned that these blastocysts are human lives… why do you not fight (we’ve all seen that you clearly have fight in you) to end the practice of freezing humans (as you call these blastocysts)? Why do you not fight to end the practice of dumping the extra humans (as you call these blastocysts) in the trash? Why do you not fight to end the practice of creating surplus humans (as you call these blastocysts) only to have the weakest that are implanted aborted? In essence, why do you not fight to ban IVF permanently? At risk of being perceived as a “name-caller” your actions (or should I say inaction) is the very definition of hypocrisy. What you and Bill Baar, VanillaMan, James (aka Pete) and the others all willingly, repeatedly overlook (for no explained reason) is that these blastocysts are destroyed anyway — in the trash, no less! – James, aka Pete, why do you repeat a lie after I’ve informed you of the facts several times over? You admit use of mocking hyperbole in writing, “People posit that billions of embryonic stem cells are frozen and being cleaned out of freezers. These are the property of the donors. One can say that there was no need to harvest so many. One can say, let them be used for research, whatever the donor wished to do, including sending them to Ben and Jerry’s (OK, Rich, pretty high on the hyperbolic curve.)” (emph added) Billions? Who has ever said billions, James (aka Pete)? And I know I have repeatedly told you that not every single frozen embryo (or do you prefer “frozen human”) is thrown away, but a goodly number are. Estimates range in the thousands. The others remain in their frozen tubes. Frozen. You also write, “The other track asks the valid question should public money be used to fund embryonic stem cell research, Should public funds be be used. The Federal government is funding such research, limited to existing lines of inquiry.” Should we pay for war? Should we pay for farm subsidies? Should we pay for cops? Should we pay for airplane radar and weather satellites? Should we pay for minting pennies? - archpundit - Sunday, Mar 4, 07 @ 2:03 pm: Because I don’t live in the world of slippery slope arguments. Of course, that’s the genius of not legislating personal religious beliefs as the only reason for law. It allows people to have their own conclusions. However, by no definition are 150 undifferentiated cells a human being. They have the potential to develop into a human being about 2/3 of the time. - Drew - Monday, Mar 5, 07 @ 9:46 am: Leroy, your comments about conservatives not minding it when fellow human beings, especially children, sufffer from terrible diseases couldn’t be more wrong. While you may not agree with the position held by Reis and others, anyone with any intellectual depth can understand that their position is more than you make it out to be. Your comment is akin to Mary Flowers alleging that the lobbyist from the Chicago AIDS Foundation is somehow “callous” towards those with HIV/AIDS last week in the House Healthcare Availability Access Committee. - archpundit - Monday, Mar 5, 07 @ 12:07 pm: ===Arch, so when does the Blastocyst become human? What number of cells makes one human? Read my last post. This is a classic fallacy called the slippery slope. Where one specifically draws the line is debatable, but a blastocyst is not a human being. 150 undifferentiated cells does not make a human being. In 2/3 of the cases it has the potential to become human when in a female. There’s several different ways to define a human life with the basic legal definition being the third trimester. One can argue with it if you want, but that has little bearing on whether a blastocyst is a human being. It isn’t. It has the potential to become a human being. ===Study what VanillaMan says. For my part, it’s a shame to see science so politicized, a shame to see private enterprise benefitting only the rich few being subsidized by taxpayers, and again, the flagrant disregard for inherent human dignity. Sad to see the whole issue be a rallying cry for liberals. Except tax money doesn’t go to private companies, it goes to non-profit entities where researchers are–primarily universities and teaching hospitals. This notion that there are great profits at issue is a red herring. If there were great profits to justify the research, it would be done privately, but like most medical research, the research would be subsidized by the government. Private research dollars tend to go towards highly profitable, but elective procedures and pharmaceuticals such as viagra. - NW burbs - Tuesday, Mar 6, 07 @ 4:19 pm: Sad to see the whole issue be a rallying cry for liberals …Gee, all those “liberals” must have mystical, magical powers to have convinced so many Republicans to join them in promoting common sense medical research. Now I understand not all Republicans are “conservative” (whatever “conservative” actually is these days) but get real. This isn’t an either/or. It’s a case of the vast majority understanding the issue and placing limits on it while a very vocal, but very small minority is trying to spin it any which way to pounce on a few cheap political points (…and fundraising dollars from their hard-core base). - beyonce - Tuesday, May 8, 07 @ 4:03 pm: beyonce knowles naked Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.