Redstate

about human sacrifice that defeatocrats can't get enough of.

will permit industrialized cloning and breeding of fresh, baggage-free lab specimens for biochemical and drug company new product R & D. In spite of the fact that the fetus and embryo are not legal "persons" as that term appears in the Constitution, their legal status as "human beings" remains a controversial issue that the R & D lobbyists are now asking some state legislatures to resolve in their favor.  Republicans as well as Democrats are being urged to legislate that the embryo is not a "human being" disposing of opposition to human cloning.

on therapeutic cloning that they were objecting to in this bill, not the cord blood banking.

As for Hwang Woo Suk et al. what can I say?

Six months after publishing his bogus results the man has gone from darling of the nation of Korea to jobless, discredited, and a likely suicide case.  

The system works.  

Why is the government involved in this AT ALL?

As far as we can say with any level of certainty, we are dead when our brinwaves stop. If there are no brainwaves there is no person. Everything before and after brainwaves is the realm of faith and religion  ... and is not the realm for the government legislation.

You are welcome to believe that personhood begins before that, you are welcome to believe that you live on as a person after that, your are welcome to believe that personhood begins at conception, you are free to believe that every sperm is sacred.

But it IS NOT the governments place to tell you, or me what to believe. If you want to protect YOUR embyos from testing ... DO SO. That's your personal choice. Don't legislate your faith upon the rest of the nation.

If you believe that the government should be regulating such choices, then you are not a not a conservative.

.......

My mother is a midwife, and several years ago was working with a couple who had a genetic dispostion to give their children a rare anemia. They already had a daughter who had this anemia, who was 3 or 4, and would probably die soon unless she got a form of stem cell treatment (I don't know the details).

The family was working with my mother after they'd gotten artificially inseminated, and the doctors tested the embryoes that were forming for blood compatibility with the couples daughter. They picked the one embryo that was a match and kept it for the term.

My mother got special training on preserving as much umbilical and placental stem cell tissue as possible. After the delivery, they supposedly used that tissue to help/cure the daughter. I don't know any other details, but this situation seemed almost fantastical to me.

What do you guys think?

From lecturing me about what conservative is or is not. Especially when it comes to the protection of each and every human life.

Point 2, you are threadjacking. Stop it.

What you're describing is indeed possible.  Except it wouldn't be artificial insemination--it would be in vitro fertilization.  

The distressing part about this is that the second child was selected for characteristics useful to the first child.  That child's existence is predicated on his or her usefulness.  If she or he hadn't won that genetic lottery, he or she wouldn't have been born.

Think about that.  You find out the circumstances of your birth, that you were created to save your older sister.  That your fellow embryos were rejected because they were not useful.  How does that make you feel?  Loved?  Needed?  Somehow I don't think so.  

What about reproductive cloning for procreation? What about reproductive cloning for spare parts? If government forbade any of this would you consider that "regulating faith"? Just because religion might inform some people's opinions on the issue doesn't make it a religious issue. I don't really see what this has to do with religion at all.

The kids-as-spare-parts concept is very disturbing to me. I don't see how the kid would grow up without feeling resentment towards his parents and probably towards his sibling as well.

Only the sovereign state has the duty and power to clearly identify who and what is a "person" and" human being "when enacting homicide legislation. The State of California, for example, defines "Murder" as the "...unlawful killing of a human being or a fetus...". Homicide may be both unlawful in the case of murder, and lawful in the case of self-defense. The U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade says that the fetus is not a "person" strongly implying that it is a "human being".  The fact that homicide is also a religious issue does relieve the state of it duty to clearly identify what it considers to be the subject of such killing.

He is correct about the separation of church and state on this one.

Religion cannot be a part of government regulations.  It's time the Hill came off the fence and told us when science can declare the beginning of life.  It declares the end of it with the end of brain activity...

Oh, and the diary itself brought this topic into the discussion...

Apparently, a bill about cord blood research raises an issue of the separation of church and state?

This, actually, was the point of the story - cord blood research is a non-controversial issue that a rational group of humans (clearly, not an appropriate description of the Senate Democrats) can agree upon.

Now, you may disagree with my stance on embryo dissection, but you have yet to explain why agreement on that issue must necessarily preclude agreement on cord blood research. Insofar as you or riley wish to make that contention, it is appropriate within the context of this thread.

Insofar as you wish to debate the merits of human experimentation, you'll have plenty of opportunities to do so on other occasions, when it is relevent.

I am sorry to say that it will still have nothing to do with separation of church and state.

Sure today we may be selecting for things that are serious conditions, but tomorrow will it be for stuff less life threatening and more of a preference?

No thanks-I would rather avoid these slippery slopes altogether.

There's clearly a poison pill in this bill that you're not mentioning.  What's the bill #?  Link to the vote?   I support stem cell research and the study of developmental biology, but only as a byproduct of my support for killing babies.  I'm so bored with issues such as this.

I don't see anything in the stuff you linked to that suggests that:

"Senate Democrats have placed a block on the bill because it does not contain any pork for the dissection of humans."

I'm so bored with issues such as this.

I missed the part where anyone required, or even asked, you to participate in the discussion of it.

I support stem cell research and the study of developmental biology, but only as a byproduct of my support for killing babies.

Now, that's unfair, I'm fully aware that some support stem cell research because they're indifferent about the killing and dissection of humans, not because they actively support it.

I wasn't aware that there was stem cell research that came about any other way. If there is, I'm all ears.

I best Susan Smith agrees.  They were her children, and what she does with them would be none of her concern.

Where do we draw the line?

A unserious red meat post. That's fine, as long as I know what I'm reading.

Make that "none of our concern," since HER clumps of human cells were the ones drowned, right?

Well, that was a revealing comment.

does anyone chose to be born?  Do not we all as individuals have recourse for resentment, whether real or perceived, against our situation?  To impugn victimization immediately is shortsighted.  Just as likely the appreciation of one existence, especially in the light of being intimately linked to ones sibling.  

However, as a principal, it would certainly be desirable to cure these diseases without resorting to questionable moral embryo selection.  But, again, we have two lives perpetuated, instead of one death.  And at some point, each of us must forgive, clean out the weeds of resentment, jealousy and covetousness.  Irregardless of our origin.

Soon we will face worse, when many congenital problems will be aborted away.  After that period of horrors, genetic screening of embryos will occur.  Add a new factor to class distinction, the rich, famous, and genetically pure.  Scary.

into these discussions the people in favor of the "slicing, dicing, killing etc" side of the equation start crying "separation of church and state."

All ethics and morals are based on some construct-for most people that is a religious one, but the discussions and applications of those ethical and moral standards do not equate to a first amendment infringement of the establishment clause.

The reality is that all law is based on somebody's moral positions, the question is whose are we going to choose.

The people on the other side of this position want to paint the dispute into a religious corner, because when their arguments start to fail, they can always fall back on the "seperation of church and state" meme.

...it is at conception.

science has declarde spermatogenesis/oogenesis as the beginning of life.

have a name? Or is science giving it's own press conferences these days?

Here ya go.

S-1317

Note that it was introduced by one of those d*mn Republicans who don't care about people.

Because I haven't seen that in my limited following of it. S. 1317 is cosponsored by 34 senators including Clinton, Schumer, Feinstein, and Durbin, so I can't imagine there being anything too repulsive in the bill (unless it was added late). My understanding is Frist needs unanimous consent to bring it to the floor for a vote this session and that there is some unidentified small faction of Dems holding out because they want more guarantees with the embryonic stem cell bill.

I looked it over last night, and I did not see one.  I had read an article a few weeks ago that said that there was, maybe it was removed?  Or I could have confused this bill with a state bill somewhere.

Anyway, from skimming over this bill it looks good to me.  I understand why the Democrats are blocking it, they want to be sure a date is scheduled to vote on HR 810 the ESCR funding bill, but I would definitely like to see this bill passed.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyI
D=2005-12-17T015457Z_01_KNE706842_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-BLOOD.xml&archi
ved=False

That's good.

guess the senate does some good every once in awhile.

But I am an impatient one. Begin contributing here or go find a dungeon to lurk.

To embryonic testing that he was arguing.  Not the cord blood (or at least, I took it as that).  That was the position I was supporting.

Cord blood is cord blood.  It is no different, legally, from donated blood.  I'm sure there are ways to get the funding for research on it around the block.

And I find myself trying to defend a position on a topic that (digging through the ways I would try to defend it and finding what the topic I've dragged myself into is) I really have no position on in the first place.  For some reason this seems to me to be rather stupid, so I'll shut up now.

WHY MY POST IS RELEVENT TO THIS THREAD:

The first sentence of the post beginning this thread: "...the House voted 431-1 last spring to approve a measure that would facilitate the donation of umbilical cord blood..."

My comment is in direct response to the absurd idea that we should need a special measure allowing people to donate umbilical cord blood in the first place.  Why should it be ANY different than the donation of any other blood?

On what basis was it  EVER made it illegal or difficult  to donate umbilical cord blood ?!?! Who was the legislator(s) that first imposed this silly restriction?

Secondly, I felt the need to also respond to your (Leon's) obnoxious lecturing which accused people performing embryonic stem cell research of  "kill[ing] humans for scientific experimentation". This was followed by another post calling the research "human sacrifice"; clearly these are positions that can only be defended by appealing to a faith-based assertion of when personhood begins... and of course you are entitled to those convictions, but I choose not to let them slide unchallenged.

Accusations of "killing" ?

You, and too many others have fallen prey to fundamentalism. You can no longer see the difference between things you believe could be true based on faith, and things that are known to be true based on fact.

You've so convinced yourself that "human flesh" and "human life possessing of a soul" are equivelent, that you no longer question it. No facts needed, your beliefs are ready to be imposed on the masses.

"Personhood" (not "life") is what has legal significance.

The end of human personhood has been defined legally: it ends when your brainwaves end.

Unless you want to make a legal argument that a person is still a person after their brain has powered off, then, to be consistent, you have to accept that -as far as the law is concerned -  personhood does not begin until AFTER the brain fires-up. While there are brainwaves, there is good factual basis for personhood, Before and after brainwaves... we don't know! The realm of the unknown is the realm for faith and religion and personal choice.

A litmus test for conservatism:

If you're a woman, you have three choices:

1. Choose to donate umbilical cord blood/stem cells because you don't believe that you are killing/abusing a person by doing so.
   
2. Choose NOT to donate umbilical cord blood/stem cells because you DO believe that you are killing/abusing a person by doing so.
   
3. Choose that the government should make your choices for you concerning the realm of the unknown including the ensoulment of flesh, and force everyone else to be likewise subjected to government interference in such matters.

My conservative beliefes tell me that if your answer to this question is "3", you are not a conservative. You might be a fundamentalist, which is more and more being confused with conservatism - but (by my litmus test of course) you're not a conservative.

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The fundamental ethical and moral compass of our nation has already been established in the constitution. Within the context of those initial laws we expect to guide ourselvs - as much as possible- on objective truths while doing our best to respect the basic constitutional rights of other individuals.

There is a difference between having your laws based on a belief system and making your belief system itself a law.  I may for instance believe that God is loving, and so make laws consistent with that belief, but it would be a violation of church and state   to turn my claim that "God is loving" into a law, and jail anyone who violated the repercussions of that claim.

These two reasons, when taken together, are why this type of legislation is wrong and a violation of church and state:

1. There is no factual basis for asserting that "personhood" begins at conception. It's a belief; it's based on faith; it's religious in nature. I think we can all agree.
   
2. The belief concerning when personhood begins is NOT a general moral that informs our lawmaking. It's a very specific  claim.

....