Michael Schrage Quotes

When couples use in vitro fertilization to have children, they usually produce several fertilized embryos one of which is implanted into the womb of the mother. The other embryos can produce stem cells which are cells that can grow into any other kind of cell—brain cells, bone, cells, kidney cells, stc. Therefore they have the most promise for medical research. However, some people regard the embryos as human beings at an early stage of development and see the embryos as life. For them the notion of using that “life” for medical research where a human being will not be produced but instead a medicine or replacement cells for a sick person crosses a moral line of what is proper for a life form. Others observe that the embryos are kept alive in freezers and will be thrown away if not needed so why not use them to help mankind. At the other extreme some are opposed to allowing in vitro fertilization to begin with, but there have been over a million people born with this technique to couples who otherwise would not have been able to have children.

Most of the biological scientists and research physicians had good reason to believe that Fetal Stem Cell research could have large payoff in terms of regenerating organs and other therapies. However, there was a very passionate minority who wanted it made illegal to do research with fetal stem cells. They argued that if the research was very successful, and fetal stem cells could be used to grow new healthy organs, abortions to “harvest” the fetal stem cells would increase. There were other fundamentalists who opposed doing any kind of research in creating life or organs. Only God may create life they argue. Specter, although aa Republican whose party mostly opposed Stem Cell Research did not believe that the religious views of some Americans shuld revent others from longer life and the benfit of medical research. However, conservatives of his party remembered and ousted him aat the Primary Election even though as a Republican he could easily win the state election of ll the citizens.

At the time there were some religious extremists who interfered with important research as they did not believe that man should try and do what before only God could do. In modern times the religious interference in scientific research has tended to be about research involving contraception, abortion or embryonic stem cell research. The most dangerous by the 21st century were the PETA and other “animal rights” terrorist groups who not only physically sabotaged some scientific research but harmed people and endangered human life in the process. Note that Dewey placed the moral burden on society to enable scientific research, not just to resist special interests opposing science.

Stem cells are cells of the body that transform into all other cells as needed. Embryonic stem cells are the ones most easily transformed to create other needed cells. There was and is a large supply of embryonic stem cells but religious abortion opponents were concerned that if there were enough success there would be a market for fetal stem cells which would encourage some women to have abortions so that they could sell the embryonic stem cells. President Bush, to placate his religious right wing, had banned federal funds being used for fetal stem cell research. President Obama, who had campaigned on this issue and been elected, then overturned the ban with this quote.

At the time the president made this quotation there were over 400,000 frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics across the country that were no longer necessary for the couples who had created them and for which no other couples could be found. Each costs about $2,000 a year to maintain in a viable state. Some are destroyed as no longer necessary and others are given to scientists for research. Most just stay in frozen storage with no prospect of ever being brought to term.

This is a classic example of a legislator, concerned about the ethics and morality of certain types of scientific experiments, and not understanding the scientific meaning of the terms used, would also make illegal existing and important technologies and cures. In this case, he thinks of cloning as reproducing another exact human being, but we clone human cells every day to produce many of the beneficial medicines we use commonly. And the combination of animals and humans is common in many aspects of modern medicine. For burns the tissue of pigs is used to cover the wound and act as a scaffold on which human skin cells grow. There are millions of people in America and the rest of the world who are leading a normal life with a pig or a cow heart valve. There are ethical problems to be sure but most legislators have little clue as to what they are, and tend to want to outlaw whole areas of science out of their ignorance in in reaction to public pressure from others who do not understand what it is that they want to prohibit.

At the time there were some religious extremists who interfered with important research as they did not believe that man should try and do what before only God could do. In modern times the religious interference in scientific research has tended to be about research involving contraception, abortion or embryonic stem cell research. The most dangerous by the 21st century were the PETA and other “animal rights” terrorist groups who not only physically sabotaged some scientific research but harmed people and endangered human life in the process. Most scientists however were not intimidated and lived up to their ethical obligation to continue scientific research despite the danger of the terrorists.

He was commenting on a proposal many in public health were making of using modern technology, genetic and chemical, to wipe out the mosquito population and thereby eliminate Zika and Malaria, along with other mosquito carried diseases which do terrible damage to humans worldwide. There are some who regard the extinction of a species as a major moral and ethical conundrum. Others worry about the effect on other species if there were no mosquitos. There are many other species, including some birds and fish, that feed on mosquitos and their larvae. The in turn might become endangered or also extinct.

One of the extreme religious fundamentalists in the Congress, Brownback was referring to Federally funded medical research which uses embryonic stem cells. The cells are generated from in vitro fertilization procedures and potentially if implanted in the womb of a woman could produce a child. Several cells are produced by the fertilization process but typically only one or two is needed. So some religious extremists believe that just because the cell has the potential for human life, it is human life. This is the same logic which opposes birth control on the grounds that sperm and egg cells are incipient life forms. It was as late as 1973 that bans on birth control devices were declared unconstitutional be the Supreme Court.