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False Choices and False Prophets
WASHINGTON (AP) - From tiny embryonic cells to the large-scale physics of global warming, President Barack Obama urged researchers on Monday to follow science and not ideology as he abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research. "Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values," Obama declared as he signed documents changing U.S. science policy and removing what some researchers have said were shackles on their work.
"It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology," Obama said.
Think what you will be the effectiveness and importance of embryonic stem cell research, this is not only pure nonsense it is pure arrogance on the part of a six-week-old president.
Apparently, some in the "scientific community" felt slighted by the Bush Administration when the former president failed to federally fund certain kinds of research because of his belief that human life begins at conception and deserves moral consideration at that moment. This, according to our new president, is a "false choice." What is false about it?
It is a choice that newly pregnant women across this country make every day. They chose between giving life and terminating it. For many it is a very hard choice, either way. But there is nothing false about it. It is as real as love itself.
When given the opportunity by Pastor Rick Warren, during the campaign, to tell voters at what point a baby "should get human rights," Barack Obama humbly said the answer to that question was "above my pay grade."
That was a lie.
The man was running for president of the United States and a president gets to decide - has to decide - many life and death issues.
Once inaugurated as president Barack Obama was not so humble anymore. He swiftly lifted the ban on federal funding of foreign abortion clinics. Before the election, Obama wanted to sound moderate and didn't want to offend pro-life voters by clearly stating his own views on abortion. His actions and previous votes, however, suggest he is one of the most pro-abortion politicians in America.
The scientific question of when human life begins is hardly a serious question anymore, among scientists, anyway. It begins at conception. A new living being, human - not in potential but in genetic reality - has been created.
The moral and political question is when to assign this being the full complement of rights and political protections we give other human beings.
That is a choice. It is both a personal choice and a societal choice.
Barack Obama has made a choice. He has chosen to give fewer protections to nascent human life in the hope of future scientific breakthroughs to help the sick and infirm. Just as he has chosen to borrow and spent trillions of dollars on social and economic programs in the hope of improving the U.S. economy.
To govern is to choose. And Obama is choosing.
He and followers flatter themselves by claiming their choices are not ideologically driven but are made on facts and facts alone. Really? What "fact" led Obama's Energy Secretary and phyicist Steven Chu to suggest that by 2100 there would be no arable land left in California thanks to anthropomorphic global warming?
That is not a fact. That is an untestable, non-scientific prediction.
What "fact" led Obama's top science advisor John Holdren to predict (wrongly) back in the 1980s an "age of scarcity" due to over population? Back then Holdren, the co-director of the graduate program in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, bought into Paul Ehrlich's famous "Population Bomb" theory. Ehrlich's predictions of world-wide food shortages and natural resource depletion were universally wrong. (See NYT science writer John Tierney for more on this.
The point is a president doesn't have to politicize science when he hires politicized scientists to advise him.
That's a choice too.
UPDATE: Princeton's Robert George and Eric Cohen have more to say on this in today's WSJ
posted by Spencerblog at
6:42 AM
11 Comments:
this is nothing surprising - we mentioned during the election season that Obama is a huge pro-abortion advocate. We heard the "I don't want my daughter to be stuck with a baby" speech while making his rounds - totally negating any medical/life risk shield the pro-abortionists prop up in these arguements.
The stem cells are just the beginning.
Being against murdering a baby is now a false ideology... I guess if you make people who are against murdering a baby seem like they are "the crazy ones", maybe they will shut up and sit down and stop getting in the way of killing people because it is inconvenient to have them around. This is the new Holocaust and now Obama is driving the train...
The "false choice" was that it was wrong using frozen embryos that would have been thrown away as medical waste anyway. There is a difference between life and potential life. These frozen embryos do not qualify as "conceived" and "life begins at conception" is a religious slogan, not science. An embryo is not a baby.
It's a false equivalence to compare a woman deciding on a abortion and the disposal of a half-dozen extra frozen embryos left over after a successful in-vitro fertilization.
As for Obama, there wasn't a single intelligent voter that believed he wasn't going to lift these federal bans and put science back at the forefront.
If you have a real moral objection to embrionic stem cell research, then I think you have the right, and an obligation, to refuse any treatments that result from this research.
So lets say Gil, or Steve, or Carter develops Parkinsons disease 10 years from now, and we have a cure as a result of stem cell research. You're all going to refuse treatment. Right? And of course, if its one of your children, well thats just to damn bad. Let em suffer.
your response is to shame us? Lets turn that around - how about if you accept a vaccanation that was created by way of destroyed lives while knowing there were other viable stem cell methods not involving destruction of the unborn.
Steve - To shame you? No. To ask you to be consistant. And yes, if I or someone I love has a disease that can be helped with that injection? Line em up. And Steve, Stop loosing sight of the fact that they embrios that were to be destroyed anyway. You make it sound as though we are aborting babies to make medacine.
Steve- If someone doesn't believe that the "unborn" were ever really alive in the first place, they aren't going to worry about where a vaccine came from. How many people need to die while waiting for these other stem cell methods that might never work? The problem with the Bush rules was that the stem cell lines he restricted everyone to were not as good as advertised or contaminated with mouse DNA and became dead ends.
The religious groups were against performing autopsies and medical teaching using cadevers. They were against blood transfusons and organ transplants. Some are still against envitro fertalization. Stem cell research isn't going away either.
bob, it IS destruction of life. You're not convincing me otherwise.
Steve - what do they do with the unused ebrios now?
Maybe they can take the unused and make a vaccine to help Bob with his spelling.
The frozen embryos stay where they are until the owner decides what to do with them.
Bush never said not to explore stem cell research, he just said Federal funds could be used to pay. He wanted private industry to pay, which is the right way. There never would have been any new research if we just paid and never have been forced to explore anything else. Scientists could still apply for Federal money, but their research couldn't use embryos. As it is now they are finding that they don't have to use embryos, what a surprise!
Monsterblog -You said "Bush never said not to explore stem cell research, he just said Federal funds could be used to pay." Maybe they can make a vaccine that will help you compose a sentence.
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