Thursday, June 26, 2014

"The Time Has Come to Outlaw Human Cloning"

Wesley J. Smith:

Scientists recently announced that they had successfully cloned human embryos for the first time, using the same process that produced Dolly the sheep. 
[T]herapeutic cloning already poses an acute threat to human dignity. As Charles Krauthammer, who served on George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics, warned in the New Republic in 2002, creating cloned embryos for research—now accomplished—is “dangerous” because it reduces the cloned embryo to “mere thingness,” justifying “the most ruthless exploitation.” He went on to say: 
It is the ultimate in desensitization . . . The problem, one could almost say, is not what cloning does to the embryo, but what it does to us . . . Creating a human embryo just so it can be used and then destroyed undermines the very foundation of the moral prudence that informs the entire enterprise of genetic research: the idea that, while a human embryo may not be a person, it is not nothing. Because if it is nothing, then everything is permitted. And if everything is permitted, then there are no fences, no safeguards, no bottom.
The only effective preventative is to enact a comprehensive legal ban on human SCNT, not just the uses to which a cloned embryo may be put. Contrary to what the science intelligentsia, the biotechnology industry, and the mainstream media might claim, banning human SCNT is a step that is widely supported internationally. Indeed, in 2005, the General Assembly of the United Nations votedoverwhelmingly in support of a non-binding resolution calling upon member states “to prohibit all forms of human cloning.”
The devil will be found in how the term “cloning” is defined. In particular, we should be on the lookout for phony bans that actually legalize the SCNT process using human DNA. For example, many proposals would only outlaw “reproductive cloning.” But as we have seen, such a “ban” would not outlaw cloning at all, merelyone potential use that could be made of embryo made through cloning.
Outlawing human cloning would provide salutatory benefits. First, it would deprive cloning researchers of the funds to further perfect human cloning techniques. Outlawing human cloning would also be a clarion call to our scientists demanding that they stay within proper moral parameters as they serve society through the pursuit of knowledge. And it would protect women. Recall that human eggs are the essential ingredients in the cloning recipe. As I wrote here last month, the need for human eggs in cloning threatens a great “human egg rush.” 
But retrieving human eggs can be very dangerous to women’s health and fecundity. Banning cloning can thus prevent the further objectification of the female biological function. 
Finally, on a positive note, once human cloning becomes beyond the pale, we could begin to row in the direction of areas of biotechnology that are morally licit, freeing human and financial resources for the pursuit of the abundant avenues of moral andefficacious biotechnological research—such as adult stem cell research, genetically tailored chemotherapy, and other medical treatments. 
We can achieve remarkable biotechnology breakthroughs in this century without surrendering our ethics. Outlawing human cloning is the essential progressive act.
It is the ultimate in desensitization . . . The problem, one could almost say, is not what cloning does to the embryo, but what it does to us . . . Creating a human embryo just so it can be used and then destroyed undermines the very foundation of the moral prudence that informs the entire enterprise of genetic research: the idea that, while a human embryo may not be a person, it is not nothing. Because if it is nothing, then everything is permitted. And if everything is permitted, then there are no fences, no safeguards, no bottom.

Of course, a human embryo is a person, more than "not nothing", endowed by God with a right to life.

But Krauthammer  and Smith get it otherwise right. Human cloning is the literal desecration of man-- the manufacture of man. The purposes are likely to be ultimately as vile as the procedure-- the use of the manufactured person for tissue and organs, for vanity or slavery of every imaginable type. 

Ban it now. 

26 comments:

  1. Four days and 5 threads after this blog was officially declared dead. It's rapidly becoming a Lazarus on a bypass.

    Egnor appears to have shot himself in the foot, figuratively speaking. Most of his readers appear to have deserted him.

    I wonder if an anonymous commentator on the tsunami thread is right in supposing that Egnor is going to cease on June 30.

    Can't come soon enough.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I suspect that these are Egnor’s dregs automatically posting until they run out.

      -KW

      Delete
    2. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 7:41 AM

      bumfire: "Most of his readers appear to have deserted him."

      Where are you getting your reader statistics? Please provide a link.

      If you are suggesting that the number of comments is an indicator, most of the comments here were the result of trolls like you or general trollish outrageous, insulting, and pointless lackwittery masquerading as “comments”. Now that most of the trolls – like you, “Doctor” - have been exposed as lying frauds, they tend to post less.

      By the way, bumfire, seeing you comment on web statistics is especially amusing. You can't even read graphs. And graph reading is required for American high school dropouts to pass their General Equivalency Diploma test. :-D

      Delete
    3. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 7:43 AM

      Morning, Popito!

      Can't resist the urge to troll, eh?

      Power washer is ready for Popito the Parrot!!!

      Delete
    4. Senile old fart,

      I don't lie. You're slandering me. Wonder if I should sue you?

      Anyway - perhaps since you're such a computer 'expert', perhaps you can reveal Egnor's statistics? Egnor got a lot of agreeing comments normally, before he announced he was taking a break. They've disappeared. The comments that is. I did note that his readers appear to have deserted him. 'Appear' isn't definite.

      Your reading comprehension is as substandard as your intelligence. Pity senility is largely incurable unless there's an organic cause for it, such as vitamin B12 deficiency.

      Delete
    5. Senile old fart,

      I wrote that Egnor's readers APPEAR to have deserted him. If you think that they haven't, then prove it.

      Delete
    6. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 10:16 AM

      bumfire “I wrote that Egnor's readers APPEAR to have deserted him”
      I know. And that was really, really stupid. First, my digital illiterate bumfire, I presume you meant unique visitors, as no one can ever know who reads what on the web unless you ask them personally. The APPEARANCE of commenters has nothing to do with the number of “readers”.
      And I neither know nor care how many people visit this blog. I have no claims to support. Therefore, I need prove nothing.
      It is your ignorant remark that needs proving.

      Delete
  2. The best thing about this blog dying is never having to suffer Boggs’s vileness again. Good riddance little man.

    -KW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 8:34 AM

      Not gone yet, Popito Parrot!

      But I'm curious... If Egnor is a "bigot" and my comments are "vile"...

      Why are you here?

      Just stupid? Or out-of-control trolling? I hear they have a version of AA just for socially maladjusted trolls.

      Or the ladies at jezebel can take care little Popito...

      Trolls suck.” (jezebel.com)

      Delete
    2. Senile old fart,

      Personally, I like to read Egnor's blog because I often think that conservatives aren't necessarily batshit crazy. Egnor and you are useful in convincing me that I'm wrong and conservatives are just meschugge.

      Delete
    3. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 8:54 AM

      Oooooh!!! German! So sophisticated! So erudite!

      Troll. Ignorant, innumerate lying troll.

      Delete
  3. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 26, 2014 at 9:58 AM

    [Yiddish] originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the pre-existing language of the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vocabulary.

    Innumerate troll.

    Anyway, the your current blogspot page lists you as a German expert and pathologist. Check the German Translation for "meschugge". If you know how.

    So now you're a Jew, too? Or a Yiddish expert? Geez, you're just an expert in everything, aren't you, "Doctor" Lying Troll? Just a regular chachem!

    :-D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Senile old fart,

      'Meschugge' is a Yiddish word, not German. A lot of languages borrow foreign words (or invent them). English has done this extensively too. Words such as 'kindergarten' and 'cul de sac'.

      Anyway. I'm not surprised that you're so ignorant of language, particularly since America doesn't have a national language.

      Delete
    2. Senile old fart,

      And I've just checked my profile. I'm listed as a retired pathologist (true) not a pathologist, and one of my interests is German language (not that I'm an expert as you claim).

      Reading comprehension is one of the normal abilities that appears to have suffered with your senile dementia.

      Delete
  4. Manufacturing people. Reducing them to 'things' to be produced, used, and discarded. The basis for any number of Dystopias. Haven't KW and the Fiend ever read Huxley?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Human cloning is the literal desecration of man-- the manufacture of man. The purposes are likely to be ultimately as vile as the procedure-- the use of the manufactured person for tissue and organs, for vanity or slavery of every imaginable type.

    Sounds very biblical to me. Eve was cloned from Adam, after all. Jesus creates identical twins by cloning all the time. Nothing wrong with slavery either according to the Babble. So what's the problem?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So, Troy, if nothing is wrong with slavery according to the 'Babble', then why is it that the only movement in human history to abolish slavery was organized by people informed by the 'Babble'?

      Delete
    2. Well, accepting arguendo your ridiculous premise is correct, it's because some smart Christians (unlike you) realized that the Babble's full of shit but didn't want to give up on the illusion of a comfy afterlife, so they started to cherry-pick and re-interpret to make their Christianity closer to a more enlightened humanist worldview that rejects slavery.

      Delete
    3. David,

      And when America managed to abolish slavery as a result of the Civil War, the South turned around and almost immediately instituted convict leasing with freed slaves being gaoled for trumped up charges and then leased to private employers and forced to toil under worse conditions than under slavery. Or to get some protection, the newly freed slaves were forced to accept the virtual serfdom of crop-sharing.

      Perpetuating poverty amongst African Americans well into the 20th century, and still persisting in the 21st.

      Delete
    4. The slavery abolitionists in the US appealed to the Bible. But while the original form of indentured servitude on the cotton fields and whatnot was abolished, slavery is still intact. First, there are the government dependents who leech off the state -- in this instance the servant is completely reliant upon the master (state) for sustenance. Second, there is tax and debt slavery -- the government spends beyond its means, driving up the national debt which is then tabbed to the American public. Then the (privately-owned) Federal Reserve lends more money into circulation (usury), driving us further down the hole. Third, try not paying your income tax or owning a piece of property without paying any utilities and you'll find out real quick just how "free" you actually are.

      Slavery is alive and well in the world, most prominently in communist states such as North Korea. In China, in order to prevent the indentured servant class in China from killing themselves, they use suicide nets. And the kicker is that corporate entities continue to foster more of the same via outsourcing, solely for the sake of saving on labor costs.

      "Well, accepting arguendo your ridiculous premise is correct, it's because some smart Christians (unlike you) realized that the Babble's full of shit but didn't want to give up on the illusion of a comfy afterlife, so they started to cherry-pick and re-interpret to make their Christianity closer to a more enlightened humanist worldview that rejects slavery."

      This is just psychobabble. Humanism is "enlightened" about as much as one could say Stalin and Hitler espoused "great leadership." Humanism, born of Marxist-atheist ideology, is a form of intellectual prostitution which allows for moral relativism to shape policy, leading naturally to eugenics, euthanasia, abortion, slavery and genocide. IOW, communism. Hence, Christianity is diametrically opposed to humanism.

      Freedom is derived from God, not man/state. Where people put their faith in state rather than God, the state becomes their "god" and they lose their freedoms, as history has shown. It is as simple as that.

      Delete
    5. Michael,

      So how do you feel about Pope Francis when he criticises capitalism and excessive economic inequality?

      The aims of liberalism are 1. To provide a safety net for the unfortunate in times of need, such as unemployment and ill health. 2. To provide the means for individuals to thrive, such as adequate education and healthcare. 3. To provide the necessary infrastructure, such as roads and railways, to allow future economic development. 4. To regulate the rich and powerful to prevent abuse of market power.

      The rich and powerful don't want to be regulated. They want to be even richer and more powerful, which is the reason why people, such as the Koch brothers, finance the Republican Party and the Tea Party, to prevent the 4th aim, and also as a side effect, the other 3 aims.

      And as a result, the ordinary supporters of the Republican and Tea parties suffer, but not as much as the poor. Everyone, except for the rich, suffers from education and health systems that are worse than they should be. The rich are able to pay for their education, healthcare, security (gated communities and private security) etc, and avoid the progressive rundown in public facilities.

      Delete
    6. Michael:

      The slavery abolitionists in the US appealed to the Bible.

      And so did the proponents of slavery. You can justify almost anything by selecting the right Babble quotes.

      You're just a useful idiot, Michael - a low-IQ drone. Your masters long for the days when your church was in cahoots with the big landowners. The priests got their way with the children of the poor, and the landed gentry had the droit de seigneur.

      Delete
    7. "So how do you feel about Pope Francis when he criticises capitalism and excessive economic inequality?"

      The current economic system is fostering class warfare. Usury, outsourcing, "treaties" drafted by corporate enterprises (in secrecy no less), rampant lobbying, bailouts at the taxpayers' expense, speculation, et al. None of these things are good.

      "The aims of liberalism are 1. To provide a safety net for the unfortunate in times of need, such as unemployment and ill health. 2. To provide the means for individuals to thrive, such as adequate education and healthcare. 3. To provide the necessary infrastructure, such as roads and railways, to allow future economic development. 4. To regulate the rich and powerful to prevent abuse of market power."

      You're joking, right?
      1. Welfare programs are abused left, right and center. Social security and medicare savings have been raided by both sides of the aisle. The latter are entitlement programs funded by the working class.
      2. Yeah, if you mean an education in Marxism and the broken and busted Obamacare. In fact, Common Core (Agenda 21) has gone global, prompting a UNESCO member to state that it wasn't part of a "takeover plot." Anyone with a functional brain will see that for the dead giveaway that it is.
      3. Our infrastructure is failling apart everywhere. I could link to hundreds of articles in this regard, but what would be the point?
      4. Yeah, right. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

      From Wikipedia:
      "Findings on this issue show that the top 1% of wage earners continue to increase the share of income they bring home, while the middle-class wage earner loses purchasing power as his or her wages fail to keep up with inflation. Between 2002 and 2006, the average inflation adjusted income of the top 1% of earners increased by 42%, whereas the bottom 90% only saw an increase of 4.7%."

      source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class_squeeze

      Cost of living increases are increasingly disproportionate to the working class' income. That, along with outsourcing, dumbed-down cirriculum in education and massive debt, is killing our middle class. By design.

      "The rich and powerful don't want to be regulated. They want to be even richer and more powerful, which is the reason why people, such as the Koch brothers, finance the Republican Party and the Tea Party, to prevent the 4th aim, and also as a side effect, the other 3 aims."

      I can list off Democratic financers just the same, but what would it prove besides that both parties are corrupt?

      "And as a result, the ordinary supporters of the Republican and Tea parties suffer, but not as much as the poor. Everyone, except for the rich, suffers from education and health systems that are worse than they should be. The rich are able to pay for their education, healthcare, security (gated communities and private security) etc, and avoid the progressive rundown in public facilities."

      Heh, the progressive rundown in public facilities. But I jest. Anyway, if Democratic policies were truly effective then explain Detroit, Chicago and LA.

      "And so did the proponents of slavery. You can justify almost anything by selecting the right Babble quotes."

      Correction: they can reinterpret anything; however, in order to do so with regards to slavery, they need to flat-out ignore Jewish slavery in Egypt.

      "You're just a useful idiot, Michael - a low-IQ drone."

      I find that quite ironic, your usage of the term "useful idiot." It was first coined by Vladimir Lenin - a Marxist-atheist - to refer to those who he used cynically to further his agendas.

      "Your masters long for the days when your church was in cahoots with the big landowners. The priests got their way with the children of the poor, and the landed gentry had the droit de seigneur."

      Uh, yeah, that's what I want. (Or maybe not...)

      Delete
    8. Michael,

      You've mixed your reply to me along with the one to Troy.

      Actually, I think you've made my case better than I did. I consider the American Democrats to be almost as bad as the Republicans.
      There is a difference between 'liberal' and 'progressive'. There are very few liberals in the Democratic Party, and both parties have veered to the right since the '80s. Both parties are responsible for the hollowing out of the middle classes. The rich don't pay tax if they don't want to, and the poor can't. So governments everywhere don't have the money to pay for necessary services. Such as good quality education. And maintaining good roads and railways. And all the other functions that government provide equitably to its population.

      If you rely on private enterprise to provide the current public services, even if more efficient, they won't be affordable for the poor, perpetuating poverty.

      I'm certainly not wanting the public sector to be inefficient or not accountable to the public. Their results should be commensurate with their costs.

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    9. Fiend, in the U.S. of A. the railways are almost entirely privately owned, and the railway companies pay for their own capital projects and maintenance. And they are in better shape than the publicly owned highway system. And these companies have to pay local property tax on the railway rights of way, while the owner of the highways (the State) does not pay this cost. And piling irony upon irony, most people on the right think trucking is private enterprise and the thought that the highway system is socialism of the first order never enters their minds.

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    10. Troy, you didn't answer my question. So I'll put it another way. Show me where in all the sorry catalog of human crime ANY society other than ours has taken on the project of ending slavery. And our failures in pursuit of that end are not answers to my question.

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