If you just fell off the turnip truck you might have missed a news article which explained that President Obama signed off on an executive order to overturn the Bush executive order banning the use of taxpayer dollars use in Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
The New York Times had a short explanatory article with the following paragraph; but you can be sure most any media outlet has a similar story.
“The ban, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since. It specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos — a practice that is routine in private fertility clinics — or for research in which embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury.”
Obama has stated that his administration “make clear that the government intends to support” the use of taxpayer dollars in Embryonic Stem Cell Research; the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration being the use of taxpayer dollars in what many consider a very hot topic and which is just as volatile as the abortion issue.
While driving down the road in between jobs and listening to the news I got to hear the interview; you know the one that had to be coming, the one showing the Bush folks as heartless for having kept researchers from discovering the miracle cure for damaged nerves that kept her paralyzed.
“Obama’s signature today means I’ll be up and back to running four years from now!” I’m not making this up, that’s what I heard in the interview. Never mind the private sector has been doing embryonic stem cell research all this time; the Bush executive order kept taxpayer dollars from being spent, not the research from being done.
I’d bet the same woman who said, “Obama’s signature today means I’ll be up and back to running four years from now!”, lives down the street from the woman who thinks she’ll never have to worry about buying gasoline since the “O” got elected and down the street from that woman lives yet another who thinks the “One” is going to furnish that free house with all new appliances and a new bathroom. All this can be done with a signature from Obama; just think what he can do for sexually transmitted disease, illiteracy or a host of other human conditions.
For the record, the use of embryonic stem cells to secure a scientific break through, even if that break through cures cancer, repairs spinal cord injuries or makes time travel possible; a created human being, even if the creative process was done outside the womb, has the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as any other human being.
When we forget or ignore the rights of one individual it is the same as ignoring those same rights for all. When we perform scientific experiments on humans, regardless of how old they are, we are guilty of the same crimes performed in NAZI Germany on folks who had no say in the matter.
What’s next in the name of scientific medical research; are we going to start dunking people living at the old folk’s home into freezing tubs of water, timing them to see how long they can survive the cold? How about we expose them to extreme heat to see how long before their skins falls off the bone; after all, these folks have served their usefulness and have now become a burden on the health care system.
I don’t see embryonic stem cell research as a step towards a more humane world of science, a world where we no longer have one or two medical issues that once plagued our society. No, we as taxpayers are being told we have no choice except to join in and be a party to the murder and torture of defenseless human beings. I can see flakes of ash falling from the sky; thought it was my imagination at first or the ashes were simply pieces of cardboard from the local trash incinerator. God help us for ignoring what we know to be wrong.
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