The Unconscionable Claims of Michael J. Fox
From The American Thinker:
The popular and appealing actor Michael J. Fox has taken to the airwaves in Senate battleground states Missouri, Maryland, and New Jersey with a highly misleading ad urging defeat of Republican Senatorial candidates opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to fund new embryonic stem cell line research. He states,My Comments:
“Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s…. But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.”
Mr. Fox and his ads’ sponsors are guilty of conflating embryonic stem cell research, which the GOP candidates and many Americans oppose for destroying a human life in the name of curing other people’s diseases, with stem cell research in general, which includes adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.
The only limits in question are on federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines, requiring the sacrifice of new embryos. Private and state-funded research (California voters are spending six billion dollars borrowing money to fund this) is ongoing. The implicit claim that research based on new embryos is “the most promising” is absurd, completely unsupported by the scientific literature, and an insult to voters, based as it is on the assumption that they are incapable of understanding the issue. Too stupid to tell the difference, is the elitist assumption underlying this campaign. (emphasis in original)
Flim-flam is a charitable description.
[More]
"Unconscionable Claims" and "Flim-flam"
Where I come from back in East Texas, we call it "being full of **** ".
Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Missouri: Response Ad to Michael J. Fox
Catholic Official: New Study Provides No “Ethical” Road to Stem Cell Research
"These Boys and Girls Are NOT Spare Parts"
“Mr. President: Veto This Bill”
What a Bush Veto Would Mean for Stem Cells
Rove: Bush Will Veto Embryonic Stem Cell Bill
New Poll: Americans Continue To Oppose Funding Stem Cell Research That Destroys Human Embryos
Missouri Senator's Stem Cell Switch Imperils Re-Election
Biotechnology Industry Leader Says Cord Cells No Stand-In For Embryonic
Pro-Life Conservatives Should Prepare For Another Bush Sell-Out - This Time On Stem Cells
In Heartland, Stem Cell Research Meets Fierce Opposition
Specter Seeks Veto-Proof Stem Cell Margin
Catholic League: Frist is Worse Than Kerry on Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Cardinal Keeler Criticizes Senate Majority Leader Frist’s Statement On Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
Frist to Back Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Jeb Bush Opposes Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
posted by Pro Ecclesia 6:07 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
"Unsupported by the scientific literature"? Is your faith supported by scientific literature? No? Double standard, ya think? Either you use the scientific method or you don't. Are you saying that if scientific research convinced you that stem cell research was fruitful, then you would approve? I'm thinking no. Because your opposition is purely ideological and dogmatic, a stance qualitatively no different than the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.
A stem cell remember, a blastocyst, consists of about 150 cells (one hundred and fifty!) And this microscopic clump of matter is considered by some superstitions to be too sacred to destroy. Human morality, according to the best evidence available, is an intrinsic human instinct, just like language and vision. Consider this. I would guess that most very religious people, including yourself perhaps, do not endorse slavery. Slavery is endorsed in your holy book, the Bible. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that you reject that that part of that Bible as being obviously anachronistic or wrong or something.
But on what basis? How do you arrive at that conclusion that slavery is wrong, despite what your good book says. You arrive at that conclusion because it *feels* wrong, it is just wrong! It's obvious to a mature enlightened human being! So you reject that (as well as dozens of other ideas endorsed by the Bible, little doubt), but accept others. You are cherry picking the Bible, using your own internal moral compass to guide you - there is no need for dogmatic religious based morality, you *know* what's right and wrong already!
Religion often serves to separate morality from genuine human suffering, and increasing human suffering in the process. And different religions often offer competing incompatible claims as to the nature of morality. This is formula for disaster.
Well, David, it's not exactly my own personal spin on the Bible that's guiding me. Nor is it my "own internal moral compass". But rather, I am guided in this by the millenia-old teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the sanctity of life from the very moment of conception.
Included among the Church's more recent pronouncements that specifically condemn embryonic stem cell research are those coming from a Pope who was himself suffering from Parkinson's.
But in the end, this really isn't about religion. It's about human dignity and valuing life at all of its stages from conception to natural death. One need not be particularly religious to make the moral argument against destroying human life - even at its earliest stages - as a means of benefitting other humans.
No use arguing with him, Jay. Such demons are only exorcised with prayer and fasting.
I simply do not consider a clump of 150 cells to be human, they may be potentially human, but so is every sperm, every egg. It's an arbitrary, albeit simple and convenient point to pronounce it as human. Science, as well as other religions have different views.
The God of Islam, apparently, thinks life begins not at conception, but rather when the fertilized egg attaches itself to the wall of the uterus. This does not preclude research on stem cells. Now we have a religious based conflict - two groups of people disagreeing on when to call a bunch of cells "human" and therefore sacred. Both groups say, life starts here, no, it start here - both saying these things based on what? Not scientific investigation, but religious dogma - because my holy book says so, and my holy book is better than yours, so there.
Who are you to say you're right and Islam is wrong? They believe what they do with the same certainty with which you hold your beliefs. Is Islam pretty obviously wrong? Yes! I think so! And I think you think so too. There is no evidence to support Islam as representing any kind of truth. But neither is there any evidence for Christianity.
Bottom line, believe what you want privately, but allowing religious based arguments to guide public policy, more and more as are world shrinks, will prove disastrous.
The 9/11 hijackers *believed* without evidence what they said they believed. They believed they were doing God's will, they really really believed it, as devoutly as you believe what your God tells you do to. I stand by you, in awe and horror at how people could be so deranged. But I also stand in awe of Christians as well, how they could, in the name of religion, allow real human suffering to continue, not just with stem cell research, in other areas also - in the condemnation of condem us in the prevention of AIDs/HIV, for example.
Thanks for reading/responding, take care, David (The Demon! Now I've never been called *that* before! :-)
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