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Friday, March 13, 2009
Charles Krauthammer :: Townhall.com Columnist
Using Embryos ... Without Limit?
by Charles Krauthammer
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.

Charles Krauthammer's e-mail address is letters(at)charleskrauthammer.com. (c) 2009, The Washington Post Writers Group

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About The Author

Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.

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Reply # 1
Date: Mar 17, 2009 - 12:59 PM EST
Disgusting Policy
Logically, it isn't possible to view any type of research with embryonic stem cells as anything other than human experimentation. If human development is a process, the earliest stage of development is still the development of a human, is it not? We are kidding ourselves by thinking we can set parameters at which it is morally allowable to play with human development. We can't and we will continue to change the parameters when some promising research reveals that we ought to allow research on those in a vegetative state or the mentally-challenged. That cannot be allowed. I know we're going to regret this.

Another problem is that research on embryonic stem cells is subject to the whim of the current administration, not some agreed upon moral bright line which is debated and discussed by everyone. So, it becomes a political football. How is it possible to have any continuity in the research if the next administration stops this?

I was, am and will always be opposed to this research and I sincerely hope it leads nowhere. There is no difference between us and the Nazis if we go down this path.
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Reply # 2
Date: Mar 15, 2009 - 5:33 PM EST
Embryonic Stem Cells
In order to make embryo stem cells practical for therapeutic use, it would be necessary to create a new stem cell line for each patient that needs treatment. Embryonic stem cells are extracted from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst,a highly differentiated, highly developed embryo that has grown to the point where it is ready to attach to the uterine, and has reached a stage in development that requires activation of the embryo's own genes, called genomic activation. The genetic information is extracted from the nucleus and replaced with the genetic information of the patient. Researchers hypothesize that when the genetic information from the cells of a patient is used, the stem cells will be able to make customized tissue that will not be rejected by the patient.
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