Per the letters of early September regarding stem cell research (“Didn’t we settle here to escape tyranny?” and “We should consider the gift of health,” both Sept. 1): It seems that callous “religious leaders” and brilliant “founding fathers” are in conflict again.
The deceased founding fathers have an endless supply of mind-reading advocates, while the soon-to-be- discarded (killed) embryos are defended by religious leaders who would rather see the diseased and crippled suffer. Each premise defies logic and the most casual observation.
The founding fathers, the majority of whom were deeply religious men, would no more have permitted infants at any age to be destroyed for “the common good” than they would have considered the deceased to be a major food group for the starving colonists. They feared God, and spent no time polling religious leaders. They were religious leaders and founded our nation on their obedience to His perceived will. The left wing held no sway, and a flawed but universally acknowledged moral imperative dismissed the stem-cell canards of the times.
This is America. Follow the money. Current estimates hold 200,000 to 1 million human embryos are in storage nationwide – frozen in vats of liquid nitrogen. Biotechnology companies, which stand to profit hugely, claim that these human embryos are not really life; scientists who hope to reduce these embryos to their constituent cells dismiss them as potential life. Some, to dehumanize them further, call them pre-embryos, rather than the scientifically correct term, embryos. Biotechs hold out hope of miracle cures for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
The trouble with this pie-in-the-sky premise is that embryonic stem cell research has not shown any therapeutic benefit, but fetal tissue trials – involving cells taken from aborted children – have actually had harmful effects on victims of Parkinson’s. Current reports confirm that stem cell lines may not even be able to sustain themselves, much less be able to cure diseases (Ceci Connolly and Rick Weiss, “Stem Cell Colonies’ Viability Unproven,” Washington Post, Aug. 28).
Despite these and other setbacks, many a wild-eyed scientist continues to destroy life, promising that experimentation will someday bear much fruit. Some 2,100 human embryos were destroyed in establishing the 60 stem cell lines that exist at present. In societies where some people aren’t really people (Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, et al), this poses no moral dilemma; in America, it ought to be a call to cease and desist immediately. Or were the morally-grounded founding fathers just a bunch God-fearing whackos who got lucky against staggering odds and whose sacrifice gives us no guidance today?
Marysville
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