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Coming soon: stem cell showdown

From the Washington Post:

Senate leaders from both parties agreed yesterday to schedule a vote on a package of bills that would loosen President Bush's five-year-old restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research.

With head counts suggesting there are enough votes to pass the legislation and with Bush having promised he would veto it, yesterday's action sets the stage for what could be the first full-blown showdown between the chamber and the president.

Bring it!

The package would allow federal funding of research on embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics--embryos rich in the useful kind of stem cell. (Bush yesterday called them "society's vulnerable members." How's that for a frame?) As Mother Jones reports this month, there are lots and lots and lots of those embryos.

And so, far from going away, the accumulation of human embryos is likely to grow, and grow, and grow. And in growing, the embryo overstock is likely to change—or at least complicate—the way we collectively think about human life at its earliest stages, and morally what is the right thing to do with it. At some point, embryos may alter or even explode the reproductive landscape: It is ivf embryos, after all, that are at the center of the nation’s stem cell debate, which itself has prompted a new national conversation about life and reproductive liberty, creating new alliances as well as schisms. In 2001, as one of his first major domestic policy decisions, George W. Bush banned federal funding for labs developing new stem cell lines using leftover ivf embryos; then in May 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill approving funding for stem cell research using these same embryos, setting the stage for an eventual conservative showdown. In the course of this debate, embryos have emerged as another tool for truly hardline conservatives looking for new ways to beat back abortion rights. Like “fetal rights” laws that seemingly protect unborn children from acts of homicide, “embryo rights” are being waved about as a weapon in the assault on abortion rights, as anti-abortion lawmakers talk about seizing control over frozen embryo stores; limiting the creation of new embryos; or both.

But the impact of the embryo is also taking place on a more subtle and personal level. The glut’s very existence illuminates how the newest reproductive technologies are complicating questions about life; issues that many people thought they had resolved are being revived and reconsidered, in a different emotional context.

Read the full article, by Liza Mundy, here.

Posted by Julian Brookes on 06/30/06 at 11:14 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us

Comments

I first sent this different perspective concerning stem cells to the President in October, 2004 (no reply), perhaps with the debate heating up we can get this into the mainstream?

Article follows:

Life Begins When?

I would like to bring a new perspective to the divisive debate surging around stem cell research by asking Christians, and non-Christians, this question: When does life begin?

Every Christian I have approached with this question has immediately replied, “With conception.” And I have asked, “How do you know that?” And have received the same answer from all, “The Bible says so.” “Oh,” has been my reply, “where, exactly, does the Bible say that life begins with conception?” And no one has been able to show me where the Bible says that life begins with conception. I am usually quoted just this one verse as the authority, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5 NKJ) And I am quick to point out that “formed you in the womb” does not say life begins with conception. And then I am sucked into the Ultimate Christian Rationale for when life begins, “Well, it is better to err on the side of caution . . .”

Why is better to make a mistake instead of getting it right? I believe the Bible does tell us when life begins, and it is not at conception! The Bible clearly states in Leviticus Chapter 17 Verse 11, “The life is in the blood” and in verse 14, “for the life of all flesh is its blood.” And even earlier in God’s instruction to Noah, the Bible says, “you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen. 9:4). And again in Deuteronomy 12:23, “the blood is the life.”

In fact, from the Garden of Eden to the Book of Revelations the Bible is one Great Big Teaching on the importance and value of Blood. It is the shed Blood of Christ on the Cross that “makes” a person a Christian in the first place. Christianity is the ultimate sacrificial Blood-Based-Religion in the world! If there is no Blood, then there is no Life. No one in the Christian community has ever debated this point with me.

And that is my point, if there is no blood, then there is no life! And it is many days after conception that a fertilized embryo can be said to have rudimentary blood cells. And if there is no blood, and “life is in the blood,” then an embryo without blood cells has no life. If you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, if you believe that “life is in the blood,” as the Holy Scriptures state, then embryos without blood cells should be made available for stem cell research because they have no life, and this national debate on embryonic stem cell research can be resolved and we can move on to other important issues of the day.

Additionally, in the normal course of things, it is several days after conception that an embryo arrives “in the womb,” conception usually occurring in the fallopian tubes. God knows what He is saying when He says He formed us in the womb. By the time you arrived in the womb, or very shortly thereafter, you had blood, you had life, and you were subsequently formed and in due time brought forth into this world we all share.

It is quite easy to fall into the common trap of believing man’s doctrine and dogma to be more important than Scripture, especially if you have not read the Book. My informal survey of Christians finds that the majority have not read the Book they love to quote. Instead they allow someone else to tell them what the Bible “says” and then they mindlessly parrot what they have been told to believe. (Is this you?)

“Life is in the blood,” and bloodless embryos should be made available to researchers who envision treatments and possible cures to debilitating illnesses that you, or someone you love, may one day encounter.

Doyle Doss, PO Box 2, Fortuna, CA. March 07, 2006

– May be reprinted and distributed in its entirety only --

Posted by: D. Doss on 07/16/06 at 2:33 PM