The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha recently announced it had obtained a new embryonic stem cell line for its research enterprise. The Med Center announced more than a year ago its enthusiasm for expanding its embryonic stem cell research after President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of this immoral research.
In an Omaha World Herald story (May 25), Dr. George Daley, whose lab provided the embryonic stem cells to UNMC, said he “obtains discarded human embryos and places them in petri dishes filled with a ‘broth’ of nutrients and chemicals that helps embryonic stem cells to grow and divide.”
He called embryonic stem cells “precious tools” in medical research and said that the cells “were derived from unusable embryos” that “were not viable to be implanted in a woman and would have been discarded as ‘medical waste.’”
Dr. Daley’s reference to tiny, defenseless human beings as “precious tools,” “discarded human embryos,” “unusable embryos,”
and “medical waste” should send chills down the spine of any thinking and feeling person.
It is a scientific fact that human embryos are human beings in the initial stage of their lives. This is not religious opinion or moral conjecture, but scientific fact sustained by virtually every human embryology textbook and scientific reference.
Embryos are real human beings, not mere “clumps of cells” or “products of conception.” Therefore, these are real human beings who Dr. Daley and his collaborators at our state University refer to as “unusable” and destined to be “discarded.” These are real human beings who Dr. Daley is vivisecting so he and others can use their cells as “precious tools.”
Sadly, such dehumanizing terms have been employed throughout the history of man to oppress various categories of human beings: Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, and women among others. Sociologist Dr. William Brennan chronicled this history in his book “Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives” (Loyola University Press, 1995)
As the saying goes, “verbal engineering always precedes social engineering.” In other words, it’s difficult to get a society to embrace killing unborn children (abortion), destroying human embryos for research or killing elderly and disabled persons (euthanasia/assisted suicide).
Hence, advocates of abortion, embryo-destructive research and euthanasia employ verbal deception (e.g. “reproductive freedom,” “pregnancy termination,” “blastocysts,” “precious tools” and “death with dignity”) to advance their destructive agenda.
Another disturbing tactic used by Dr. Daley and other embryo research supporters is to dismiss ethical concerns by saying “the embryos are going to be destroyed anyway.” This response is an appalling cop out.
If supporters of embryo-destructive research had any meaningful regard for human embryos, they wouldn’t simply shrug their shoulders at the prospect of “discarded” humans as they eagerly take advantage of them. Rather, they would question why it is that human beings are being produced and discarded in the first place.
The use of “discarded” human beings as “precious tools” for the benefit of other humans is exactly what happens when man transgresses (e.g. in vitro fertilization) into God’s domain as the Author of Life.
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