Recently Congress passed a bill that would increase federal funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research. It seems that stars such as Michael J. Fox, the late Christopher Reeve, and most politicians tout the promise of how many diseases would be seemingly cured tomorrow if we were just given permission by the government to utilize embryonic stem cells. Let’s clear up a little bit of the science of embryonic stem cells. All of the information is taken from the National Institute of Health advisory board on stem cell research and the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.
Science
Adult stem cell research has been going on for the last 40 years. In the process, cells are taken from the bone marrow of an adult. These cells have the ability to grow into the cells for specific organs, and scientists have used these cells to repair damaged cells in organs that have problems, kind of like a healthy patch of cells replacing broken ones. Adult stem cells can produce almost any tissue, can replace themselves indefinitely, are not prone to growing cancerous tumors, and do not kill the donor. As of July 16, 2006 there are currently 72 treatments from adult stem cell research.
Embryonic stem cell research was patented in 1998. In that time there has been 0 treatments developed to help anyone. Zero. Nada. Nothing. In removing the stem cells when the embryo (baby) is 6 weeks old, the baby dies. Embryonic stem cells are difficult to keep alive, have a tendency to grow into tumors, have an incredibly high rate of rejection by the person implanted with them, and the benefits include words like “could,” “might,” and “probable.” This means that any cures arising from embryonic stem cells are possibly decades away.
Why is everyone trying to do research on embryonic stem cells then? There is an idea that is pushed in the scientific community in the publications that I read that indicated there was the “promise” that they could do research and hope to find a way to manipulate the genes in the stem cells to grow into any type of human cell desired. Meaning, they don’t even know how to do this yet. There are pushes to clone humans to do this by removing DNA from an adult and putting that in an empty egg from a human female and creating an exact clone… and killing them for their stem cells.
Yet celebrities and politicians tell us that preventing embryonic stem cell research would be the same as allowing your sweet grandmother with Alzheimer’s to suffer and die for no reason.
An Easy Pass to Hell?
The Easy Pass might be the greatest invention ever. Instead of tossing change into a basket and dealing with lines on toll roads, I can zoom through the state and federal highway system in the 13 original colonies in the East faster then Paul Revere riding Hidalgo. No waiting. I can even pay for parking at the airport with this little gadget that sits under my rearview mirror. This is because I have already punched my ticket and prepaid through technology so that I can simply fulfill the choice I have already made.
I was having a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago and he mentioned that scientists are trying to use adult and embryonic stem cells to grow a human uterus in the lab.
Like in the Matrix.
To grow cloned humans without implanting them in a woman.
Like a farm.
You can shop for a baby wholesale.
Simply pick them off the shelf and they are delivered from their lab-grown womb to your doorstep in 48 hours.
There is already a giant industry that will allow you to choose the sex of your next child. They simply use a lab to conceive a bunch of kids and kill the ones that don’t fit your perfect mold.
Stalin and Hitler would be proud.
We are punching our spiritual Easy Pass under the false assumption that God wouldn’t dare allow a whole civilization to choose Hell.
Why are we testing this theory? It seems like a “no-win” situation to me. Yet we continue.
We look back and call Hitler and Stalin monsters because they caused a massive amount of suffering in our world that was captured on camera for witnesses to talk about later.
We have learned a lot from our evils. Now we hide behind white coats, the promises of a “heaven on earth”, and we keep telling ourselves that these babies “aren’t alive” and everyone should have what they want anyway. I mean, why shouldn’t we kill a small baby so that Michael J. Fox can do a reunion episode of “Spin City” without us having to face the fact that he has a degenerative disease?
I am sure there are those that would read this and tell me that I am making a huge jump and how dare I associate these poor, desperate individuals to Hitler when they are just trying to be happy.
What is the difference between killing someone for their religion, color, and nationality and killing someone because they have Downs, might be disabled, or are not the correct sex, or offer some research that may or may not yield results that will help the rich who can afford it?
The difference is that the second group cannot speak. The second group doesn’t have the benefit of cameras in a concentration camp to show the atrocities, as they are ripped apart and killed.
Harvard is now conducting experiments to clone humans, mine the stem cells, and then simply “discard” the baby. In Auschwitz, the experiments of Dr. Mengele were notoriously cruel because of the disregard of the human person, treating them as an object to be used only for the advancement of research. He would try to create Siamese twins through obscene surgeries and other hideous experiments.
What we forget is that every time we kill a human being before they have a chance to live their natural life, we become the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany, determining who will live and die based on what we think they are worth to society. Hitler wanted their money, we want their cells.
It isn’t that the Catholic Church is against stem cell research. The Church has applauded the progress of science in the last 2000 years, but has always warned that we need to be careful. When science starts to sacrifice human life for progress, we start to make ourselves God and inevitably the ones that pay for that progress are the poor, the voiceless, and those on the outskirts of society. Those considered “disposable.”
In the Matrix films, human beings are simply mined as a resource for electricity so that the robots can live. It seems that we don’t need electricity to live, but the wealthy can certainly mine the mute, the young, and the poor for stem cells so that they can grow extra organs. It’s almost like we have become parasitic cannibals. We feed off of each other until we kill, and then simply move on to the next one. Each human life is only worth what they can contribute and let’s face it, the young can only contribute their lives. Those precious little stem cells that seem to promise a heaven on earth. An eternal life for those who can afford it.
Like a battery that produces organs instead of electricity.
The robots in the Matrix are here. They are us.
Consider our Spiritual Easy Pass stamped.
