http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/13621295/detail.html

This has got to be one of the most obnoxious moments I have ever read about. In my days as an ER nurse, I had to constantly perform procedures on children that they did not want, could not understand, and were painful. Now I am not necessarily comparing ear piercing to medical procedures, but children can and do react very dramatically to anything they perceive as threatening even when there is no real danger. If ear piercing, even suspected forced ear piercing is child abuse, then what about circumcision? Like the officer said, the ear piercing could've been for religious or cultural reasons in which case the government or the law has no right- ethical or legal- to interfere.

My 2 year old loves a bath, but pitches a fit that would shatter the Crystal Cathedral when it comes time to wash his hair. The same thing happens when I need to cut his hair, which is not necessary for hygienic or medical purposes. I could just let it grow since he is so emotionally traumatized by a trim. So, am I an abusive mom because I force my kids to get haircuts? Give me a break.

I realize that ear piercing to many of us, is not a necessesity like hygienic or medical procedures, but apprently it was very important to this girl's mother. And so what? The little girl would have gotten over it. Who knows- her mom may have had plans to take her out for ice cream or something like that afterward. I can guarantee that the stranger made it far more traumatic by interferring. She stressed the mom out which stressed the little girl out even more. The stranger thought she was helping the little girl, but so many of us just can't stand to see a kid really cry. We think we are relieving their suffering, but we are really relieving our own. Compassion is a good thing, but this seemed misguided.

IVF produced children are "fundamentally different"?

From http://www.kumc.edu/stemcell/."Blastocysts produced by a fertilized egg (IVF) and SCNT are considered by many to be fundamentally different, and no SCNT-blastocysts should ever be implanted in a uterus. There is no conception of new life via SCNT."

A blastocyst is the term used to describe a stage of developement of an embryo. I find it interesting that they classify both IVF embryos and SCNT embryos as being "fundamentally different". IVF is in vitro fertilization, a common procedure used to assist couples unable to get pregnant through plain ol' sex. In IVF, eggs are removed from the women's ovaries and mixed in a petri dish with sperm donated from the man. Thus fertilization takes place in a lab dish. The fertilized eggs are then placed inside the women's uterus where at least a percentage of them will latch onto the uterine wall and grow like any other traditional pregnancy. In most cases, there are embryos that are leftover from the in vtiro process and placed in cryoprotection (frozen) for the couple to use at a later date.

I personally know children who came to exist through IVF, and I do not believe their parents would consider them "fundamentally different". Nor would I. I do not believe that anyone including a medical doctor or scientist could distinguish an IVF kid from a "traditionally produced" kid. If one could scan their DNA and compare them, one could not distinguish the two to know which was an IVF baby.

What they have done is try to throw the "leftover" IVF embryos into the same category with the SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer- the same process by which Dolly the sheep came to exist. ) embryos. If they can convince us to think that these embryos are somehow less than human, maybe we won't mind destroying either type for use in medical research.

"Many researchers hold that an embryo at the stem-cell stage does not constitute a human, and so its loss represents a small price to pay in exchange for the potential medical benefits they see in using stems cells." A more ethical way to harvest stem cells? by Peter N. Spotts. The Christian Science Monitor. Oct. 17, 2005

What exactly makes an embryo derived from IVF or SCNT "fundamentally different" such that it would "not constitute a human"? Both have all the DNA needed to become a fully developed human being. They are both growing inside human eggs. Human materials are used to create both types of embryos. This argument simply cannot hold water when it pertains to the IVF embryos. We have too many children successfully produced from this method. All those little frozen embryos out there being stored in fertility clinics are not fundamentally different in any way. They are humans in the earliest stages of developement, just like you and I once were.

But what about the SCNT embryos? Why do they say, "There is no conception of new life via SCNT." Dolly the sheep was new life- a seperate, individual sheep from her genetic donor. Like IVF embryos, the DNA of SCNT embryos is fully human. The materials used to create them are human. They are developing inside a human egg. According to Dr. Chang of Washington University, St. Louis, they metabolize energy and require nutrients to develop and grow just like any other embryo growing in a woman's uterus or in a lab. Many researchers believe that at the current level of science, they could not continue the developement of the SCNT embryos past the stem cell phase. In other words, they would die anyway so we might as well get the stem cells from them. I believe this shows the true colors of this whole intiative. There is new life via SCNT, but it cannot continue to live past a certain developemental stage. Therefore, they want to use SCNT technology to create a life, knowing full well it cannot develop past a certain point, and then use it as a "supplier" of stem cells. This is exploitation, plain and simple, ugly and loathesome.

"It's not quite fully human", they say. So it's okay to exploit it for our purposes, especially for the "good of the general public". Hmmm.....haven't we heard that argument somewhere before? Isn't that what Hitler said about the jews and anyone else non-aryan? Of course, his intent was to outright eradicate all non-aryans. And since they were going to be murdered anyway, Hitler's minions did all sorts of horrible experiments on jews and others. And wasn't this also the same argument used to enslave blacks for hundreds of years? After all, they do look different than whites, even a bit more primitive some have said. They must be somewhat less than fully human. Or maybe they are in an earlier stage of developement or evolution. So we can exploit them for the greater good of society. Those plantations must be kept running at all costs. Our economy, the good of the people, depends on them.

Medical science will eventually catch up to the point where researchers will be able to develop the life of these SCNT produced embryos beyond the stem cell phase and eventually through to full reproductive cloning, as was the case with Dolly the sheep. And what then? Will it still be ok to destroy these embryos, even for "the greater good"? Are they really "fundamentally different" given that their DNA sequence is complete and fundamentally human and that they are living beings with a metabolism. Even if they are "fundamentally different", does that really justify their destruction, even for a good cause. Does simply being a human in the earliest stages of developement make one "fundamentally different" enough so as to be non-human? At what stage of developement will a human being be recognized as a human being? Who will decide when humanity begins? Everyone reading this was once an embryo. Some of you might even have been IVF embryos. Are we, as a people, so desperate to have cures and treatments for various diseases and conditions that we are willing to sell our souls and sear our consciences to obtain them?

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

In the state of Missouri, a proposed amendment will be on the ballot this November. It states, in part, the following:

1) No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being. The Initiative's definition of human cloning says: "Clone or attempt to clone a human being means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being." This definition clearly prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst into a woman's uterus. In other words, it prohibits the creation of a human version of Dolly the Sheep (i.e., what is sometimes called "reproductive cloning").It also prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst or embryo in a woman's uterus for any other purpose. For example, it prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst into a woman's uterus and later using it as source of stem cells or "body parts." The Initiative only allows SCNT technology to be used to copy a patient's cells in a lab dish. This is sometimes called "therapeutic cloning" because it involves copying, or cloning, genetic material from a patient's cell to make lifesaving stem cells that will match the patient's genetic makeup and avoid transplant rejection problems. www.missouricures.com

"Let us freely admit that the procedure used to produce human stem cells for research is cloning, but not in any way part of a process for creating human babies. The distinction should be clear. Society is not yet ready to condone laboratory procreation of humans. The ballot initiative specifically prohibits using embryos produced for research from being used for human procreation." Henry J. Waters, III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune, Columbia, Mo.

Ok, hmmm....It's cloning. It's not cloning. Cloning. Not cloning. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) is the process that was used to create Dolly and other animals that have been cloned since.So then the question becomes was Dolly a real sheep. She looked like a sheep. Sounded like a sheep. I bet she even smelled like one.

The definition of cloning from Merriam-Webster is: "clone : the aggregate of genetically identical cells or organisms asexually produced by a single progenitor cell or organism b : an individual grown from a single somatic cell or cell nucleus and genetically identical to it c : a group of replicas of all or part of a macromolecule and especially DNA 2 : one that appears to be a copy of an original form...”

According to that definition, Dolly was a real sheep developed from cloning. Likewise, according to that same definition, these embryos will be human clones, genetic duplicates, whether or not they are implanted in a women's uterus. And when the stem cells are harvested, these embryos will be destroyed just like traditional embryos.

Let's look at a definition of cloning from within the medical community. The following are from the KUMed website http://www.kumc.edu/stemcell/.

Cloning: To create a copy. “Therapeutic cloning” creates a line of stem cells genetically identical to the originating cell for use in research. “Reproductive cloning” creates an organism genetically identical to the organism providing the originating cell.

Notice that they say therapeutic cloning creates a line of stem cells. That is a serious misrepresentation made by a member of the scientific community. Nothing makes just stem cells accept stem cells. Stem cells, once harvested, will self- replicate in a petri dish indefinitely. Therapeutic cloning creates an embryo (organism) just like reproductive cloning, from which stem cells then be harvested thus destroying the embryo.

Back to the KUMED website:

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer: A laboratory procedure that produces a blastocyst by replacing the nucleus of a donated egg, which has not been fertilized, with the nucleus of an ordinary body (somatic) cell (e.g., from a single skin cell), which contains all the genetic information of an adult. While SCNT has been the technique used to clone animals like "Dolly" the sheep, there is no evidence that it could also successfully clone a human due to the increased complexity of the human organism.

Blastocysts produced by a fertilized egg (IVF) and SCNT are considered by many to be fundamentally different, and no SCNT-blastocysts should ever be implanted in a uterus. There is no conception of new life via SCNT."

Wasn't Dolly a separate, individual sheep? Won't these cloned embryos be separate and individual though genetically they are the same as the original? How about twins? They are genetically the same. Yet any parent of twins will tell you that each is his/her own person. How can we be sure that there is no conception of new life when using SCNT. Wasn't Dolly new life? If there were no new life at conception through SCNT, we would not need to differentiate between therapeutic versus reproductive. Reproductive cloning would be a moot point for the purposes of research. If it were not a new life, then one could not successfully implant the cloned embryo into a uterus anyway. Furthermore, if it were not really a new life, how is it that we can harvest embryonic stem cells from it for human use? It has the full DNA sequence of a human being and is groing in a human egg. It just needs time to develop and the right growing environment-just like any embryo. Such was the case with all of us. We all started out as zygotes, then embryos, then fetuses and so on. When you compare therapeutic cloning versus reproductive cloning, you find that the major difference is the intended purpose of the cloning. The procedure is the same as you can see from the above definitions. Therapeutic cloned embryos are intended for medical research and/or treatment. Reproductive cloned embryos are intended for procreation, a seemingly definite no-no in our society. But as long as we are just going to experiment on these cloned embryos, well, then that's alright.

Welcome to sci-fi becomes reality. Eerie isn't it. Cloning human life for the purpose of destroying it through research and medical experimentation is sick. And that is exactly what they want permission to do. In fact, they want our state constitution to guarantee, even protect this practice of human cloning. No matter how they try to redefine it, it is still human cloning. It is immoral, unethical, Hitleresque. Didn't these people learn about WWII in school? What about slavery? Maybe they read Dune too many times and think cloning is cool. Or maybe they didn't watch Star Wars enough. Regardless, in the words of Rygel, this is fahrbot.

K.M. Flanagan