http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=8&u=/ap/20040213/ap_on_hi_te/cloning_lag_1 

I hope Bush reconsiders. So much of promoising medical technology is based on Stem Cell Research.

choner

choner

since bush never considered the pros and cons, what makes you think he is capable of re considering.

other coutnries that are not run by the christian coalition don't have this religious dichodomy, is it a fetus, is a fetus a person, what does god want us to do.

there was a time when religious doctrine prevented disecting corpses.

perhaps christians should take no asprins or any other medications to aleviate pain or cure a disease.

in israel, they are close to curing alzheimers, some forms of cancer, and they have been able to regenerate some spinal cord injuries to the point that patients can feel their toes and move them.

who knows what other countries are researching and developing.

only in america

bush is a clone!

Did you ever notice the similarity between George W. Bush's name and that of his father, George H.W. Bush? George Walker Bush? George Herbert Walker Bush? Suspicious, eh? Both have the same first name. Both have the same last name. Both have an initial in common. Both are or were presidents of the United States.

But notice, if you will, that one president has ONE MORE NAME than the other: George Herbert Walker Bush v George Walker Bush.

Now think to yourself: what member of a family usually has one more name? Take your own family, for example. Who acquires additional names? SONS, ain't it? Take, for example, Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

And they look the same.

CLONES!!!

RICKAMAVEN wrote:

"perhaps christians should take no asprins or any other medications to aleviate pain or cure a disease. "

My response:

[1] As a Christian, I'm insulted. I fail to understand why it is okay for you to insult Christians any time you feel like doing so by belittling our belief system. Stereotyping Christians is no less predjudicial, offensive and wrong than stereotyping blacks or Jews.

[2] At what point does the "medical research" stop? There is a vast amount of data on disease and injury treatment available in German and Japanese military archives from WWII, but because the experiments were conducted on people without their consent and the scientists were declared war criminals, the data is not exploited to cure disease or heal injuries. My question, then, if it's not okay to use this data then why is it legitimate for scientists to kill an embryo for the same purpose? The embryo is a person. No one can say for sure whether the embryo will live to adulthood, but no one can say for sure that the embryo won't. Can the embryo give consent?

I will illustrate by example:

If a group of scientists concluded that we, as Americans, could cure childhood diabetes by killing all the grandmothers and harvesting their pancreases no one would take the idea seriously...today. However, if we start down the path of killing humans for the purpose of curing diseases then the day will come when killing the grandmothers will sound like a good idea. After all, the grandmothers are all old and they have lived their lives, while the children have an unlimited future, right? After that, no one will be safe.

A final note to RICKAMAVEN:

It is easy to label Christians as crackpots because we take stands on issues of moral importance. Those of you without a moral compass are willing to follow the crowd in whatever direction is popular. Taking a stand requires courage, while following the crowd requires none.

[2]

I will agree with Rickmaven on one point.

That the US is sadly way behind quite a few countries on medical research.

Canada is years ahead of the US in their Diabetes research and while the US has made progress, if they would combine their efforts, instead of finding reasons not to do certain research, then they would be much further ahead.

00camper,

from what you wrote, it is implied that only Christians are moral and that it is morally correct to not do research?

That is awfully arrogant.

Your example.......

They are right now "harvesting" (as you succintly put it) pancreas cells for transplanting into diabetics (see my comments above) in Canada with some limited success. The US has transplanted pancreas organs into diabetics with much success.

As for your commments about the grandmothers, I really have to tell you, that is really reaching to prove a point.

To be honest, I will support Diabetes research with everything I can, even if it means embryo research.

If God, The great spirit or which ever name you wish to call him, had not meant for any research to be done, then it probably would not have come to pass. But it has.... And everything happens for a purpose.

You see, I am very much interested in the pancreas research, as my son is one of those children with diabetes you talked about.

So you are teling us that if your child was diabetic, you wouldn't be interested in ALL research done to cure them? Kind of hypocritical if you ask me.

00camper

why would you feel insulted? i simply stated a fact. i'm not in favor of abortion, but what someone else does is there business, and unfortunatly, by it's very nature, christianity preaches to non christians what is right or wrong. i'll handle my own decisions as to what is right or wrong, and i don't expect any rewards in an afterlife. i also don't follow any crowd.

stem cell research is being done with lab developed embryos that are not people and will never be people and fetuses available from miscarriages.

wierd set of morals, not using data. we certainly had no problem hiring werner von braun to use his expertise to develop long range missles that can kill a lot of people far away. a dichotomy.

extremely dumb example, killing grandmothers. of course i like my grandmother. if i didn't i might

be inclined to discuss the idea. (joke)

i never labeled christians as crackpots. my daughter-in-law is a born again christian and has learned to keep her beliefs to herself, mostly because she finds my family living what is called "the christian life," without being christians and without some of the hypocrisy that is at the minimum, prevelant in many christians.

i will put my morality and rachmones against anyones and not come out wanting.

- 0patience

"from what you wrote, it is implied that only Christians are moral and that it is morally correct to not do research?

That is awfully arrogant. ?"

That's the nature of religionS.

- Rickster,

00camper has a point. He can't help being Christian any more than a black can change being a black, or a jew can change being a jew.

- 00camper

Having a different opinion from yours is not necessarily "following the crowd". Your point of view is a little egotistical. After all, you're following your "crowd".

Not to pick on religion; politics are just as detrimental to our society, perhaps worse.

Rick and others,

I'm not sure where the idea that the US is behind other countries in Medical Research comes from. I know for a fact that the US leads all other countries in research and medical advances. It is the US that has produce the greatest advances in fighting disease in the past few decades. Just look at the list of Nobel Prize winners for Chemistry and Medicine in the past 20 years, the US has recently dominated these fields.

All I want is for Bush to reconsider his stance on Stem Cell research. I don't want the US to fall behind other countries in this particular field, which has a lot of potential.

choner

RICKAMAVEN suggested that Christians should stop taking medicine altogether, an implication that we are all backward and want to keep everybody else in the dark, too. The point of my post was that nothing could be further from the truth. Christians want scientific advances, we just don't want scientists to kill people on purpose while doing it.

0patience:

Taking pancreas cells from a willing donor while leaving them alive is one thing. Killing someone for the sole purpose of making them a donor is another.

I have a niece with Cystic Fibrosis and all the other ailments associated with either CF or the medications used to treat it. My family and I would like nothing more than to see stem cell research lead to a method of regenerating her ravaged body.

Being arrogant or morally superior is not the intent of my post. The intent is to demonstrate that there is another viewpoint on this question.

00camper

let me ask you something without rancor.

i am making an assumption that you are probably less then 30. probably more mid 20's and single.

with that assumption, why or how would you have made a decision about abortion. i suspect no one in your family ever mentioned abortion as something they could consider, so how did you make an independent choice that abortion is killing a person.

I support killing babies up to 2 years after birth. And why not? They are not yet fully developed and can’t talk, many people I know get sick of all that dam crying. And it should be the mother’s right to end the life whenever she wants and sell off the parts, well up to that 2year period of course, we are not monsters.

hahahaha sock it to me

A person is pronounced dead when brainwaves are not present. An embryo has no brain, hence no brainwaves, and therefore is not a person.

Every thing we have is the direct result of science. I think it's a shame that we're letting all these other countries develop what is going to be a billion dollar industry just because the religious right is trying to force their beliefs on everyone else.

By the way, you can change your religious beliefs at any time, but you cannot change your race. Sheesh.

A person is pronounced dead when brainwaves are not present""

Insert bush joke here lol

LOL! I thought the first shot was going to be Mikey Jackson changing his race!

65gtoman

many times you make a lot of sense.

Alrighty then ,

"If" a woman goes to a clinic /doctor.....finds out she is with child , then "chooses" to terminate it or has a miscarrage....i believe if the fetus can be used to save lives , it should. it's already terminated ,for you not to use what "is" available is utterly stupid . untill abortions are illegal or miscarrages stop , this is a chance to go forward and cure people with life changing illnesses. this is my honest opinion , since hearing of my mother having parkensons desease and watching it progress through years of different kinds of med's !! it hurts !!! she's the real champion though...to be able to joke about it like it was nothing. she'll standup and sway so much then ask " Someone get a hoola-hoop quick" hehe . but in all , i've watched it decline and it really sucks not to be able to help cure her and then to see people wanting to stop the reserch ! fools ! you have the knowledge and what's needed to do it. and if you want to bring religion in it fine....god created the heavens and the earth and all that's on it ...correct ? so if he don't want us to do this , i'd say we probably couldn't ! but since we can .. i believe if it can help ease the pain and the suffering of anyone....it is good ! and that is what it is all about...being good ! not evil or bad but good . if your good you get into heaven right ?

are you a vegitarian ? if not then living breathing life is being slaughtered to feed people like yourself and me ( i love steak ) ......but then again......isn't a plant living ? it is "life" ! so if you are looking into religion ..... all life was put on this earth for a purpose , now we are smart enough to realize the purpose of a unborn fetus.don't discard it as if it were trash and waste it !!! remember that it is possible to save life or help the suffering of those with problems we can't cure with drugs......with the help of those stem cells that are "provided" in a very "mysterious" way !! amen

this is only my opinion and seeing first hand the deteriation of my mother who a few years ago could stand perfectly still to now watching her wobble like crazy hoping she doesn't fall over or loose her balance. any argument you may flip my way is going to hit a brick wall ! i'm a firm believer in god and a firm believer in this research ! i do believe it is his will that will show the way. and i also believe that the people against it...if they had a little girl or mother that had a desease that "needed" this type of research to cure it...they either would support it or have the coldest heart there is !

if this were all about an embryo that could grow into a human being, i'd say that there would be a moral issue to discuss. however, a stem cell is not and cannot be a human being. ever. if we follow that logic, we should never clip our fingernails, because hey -- it was a "living" thing! a stem cell is no more of a human life than a fingernail clipping is.

as for the nazi camp "research," we do not use it because it is "immoral" -- there were, in fact, attempts to use this information. we do not use it because it is not empiracally useful. in other words, the tests and "research" done falls way out of the guidelines of being meaningful. if, for instance, a control group is tainted, then nothing coming out of that research is scientifically useful. there are simply too many factors that taint the control group. you cannot say "humans die after being in 40 degree water for 20 minutes" when those humans in the control group have been beaten, tortured and starved. the only scientific "truth" you can conclude is that certain people who have undergone harsh treatment, who are injured, who are malnourished, whose body weight is extremely low, etc. will die after x amount of time in a tub of ice water.

00camper,

"0patience:

Taking pancreas cells from a willing donor while leaving them alive is one thing. Killing someone for the sole purpose of making them a donor is another."

Taking cells from a living host will damage their pancreas, making tham a diabetic. Which is defeating the purpose, so it can only be taken from a host who is not at risk, you know, not living or never having been alive.

All things have a purpose and all things are "created" for that purpose.

Here is somthing to chew on.

A man was washed away in a flash flood, he didn't fear, as God would save him.

A log floated by and he didn't grab onto it as he knew God would save him.

A little later a life jacket floated by and he didn't grab it, as again, God would save him.

Finally, a boat floated by and the man again, let it go by because God would save him.

Finally the man drowned.

When he was at the gates of heaven, he asked God, "Why didn't you save me?"

God replied, "Who the hell do you think sent you the log, the life jacket and the boat?"

Think on it.

00camper,

since we are on this point and YOU brought up about killing for purposes, then I have to ask you.

Am I to believe that Christians believe that ALL killing is wrong? If so, then do you eat meat?

If you do, you are a hypocrite.

Because the animal that the meat came from was killed or slaughtered.

Ahhh, but the Christians don't believe animals have souls?? So that justifies the killing of animals? Correct?

Again, I find that hypocritical.

I hunt, I also respect that the animal provided food for my family when it is taken.

I do not take an animal that I do not intend to provide food for my family. So I suppose I am, as the Christians called my ancestors, a heathen.