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Monday, July 24, 2006

Number of Embryos “Adopted” is Negligible

Posted by on July 24 at 11:29 AM

So far, according to Newsweek, only 128 of 400,000 frozen embryos stored in medical facilities around the country have been “adopted,” resulting in pregnancies. Thanks in part to Bush’s veto of legislation expanding federal stem-cell research last week, the vast majority of these embryos will be thrown away instead of being used for potentially life-saving research—research prominent scientist Steven Hawking, who suffers from incurable motor neurone disease, called “morally equivalent to taking a heart transplant from a victim of a car accident” in a statement to the Independent this week.


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The comparison to organ donation has always seemed particularly apt. Both involve the collection of human tissue from what most people would not consider to be a living human being.

The rules for organ donation also seem like they would work well for the creation of new embryonic stem cell lines ; no buying or selling of human material, consent, and public oversight.

To me this is the most asinine aspect of Bush's policy: It does nothing to address the serious moral concerns involved during the destruction of even a very early embryo. Public funding of sensitive research guarantees that the public gets to set and enforce the rules, and that everything that is being done gets scrutinized. Under bush, if you have money, anything can be done, and it can be done in the shadows.

Wipe your shit on the Torah while looking at piss christ. All bibles should be burned. Religious Christian fanatics who are anti-abortion are as bad as the fanatic Jews who say the bible gave them Israel. If we could get rid of religion there would be fewer wars and oppression of women.

Steven Hawking = Hero

Science proved that embryos are not life years ago. These anti-science religious fanatics in the Bush administration are idiots.

When you can stuff all the snowflakes that Bush crows about in a subbasement of the White House with noone the wiser, while nearly half a million unwanted embryos are discarded (burned) each year, it makes you realize that it's not a moral stance, it's a stupid incompetent stance by the WH.

What you are seeing is the sad attempts by frightened people to impose some kind of picture of orderliness on a chaotic world that is too fast-paced, shifting and confusing for them. We think they're talking about "embryos", but they're not; they haven't a clue what embryos are. They're scared, and so they're falling back on "protecting human life", because protecting human life is a good and comforting thing when the world is scaring the crap out of them.

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