Posted by
fiddler on Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:00:00 AM
In an era when moral standing is granted to opine on political matters to those who suffer from problems related to the issue in question, I hereby assert my moral standing with regard to Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a person with multiple sclerosis.
I was diagnosed 7 years ago, although I have had the illness for probably 30+ years. I desperately want to see a cure, as do all those who suffer from chronic illnesses. The good news is that research has shown that one's own adult stem cells may provide a cure, or at least an effective treatment for MS; the bad news is that so far, only a small study has taken place at Northwestern University, and it will likely take years, and many large-scale clinical studies, before any conclusive evidence is found, one way or the other. The point is that this was done on adult stem cells from the bone marrow of the patient being treated, and so far he is doing well and showing no signs of the disease. Maybe it will pan out; maybe it won't. But it wasn't done using ESR. If ESR were really as promising as its proponents keep saying, government funding wouldn't be an issue, since private funding would flow freely (imagine the money to be made by the company that successfully used embryonic stem cells to cure diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes, MS, and a host of other chronic illnesses). The fact that it apparently hasn't should at least raise some questions about the real agenda of ESR proponents.
Regardless, even ESR were to provide the only cure for my illness, I would not - could not - use it in good conscience. The deliberate destruction of human life to serve my own selfish ends is unconscionable. I would have to live with the knowledge that my cure (in a body that is going to die anyway) came at the expense of another human life, one who never had a choice as to whether to give his or her life for mine or anyone else's.
That raises another issue. I know "slippery-slope" arguments are supposed to be weak, But in the time since then, as we have gone down the path of deciding that some humans (unborn babies) are not human enough to merit the right to life apart from the mother's decision, we have begun to tread the dangerous terrain of deciding that some already-born people should be "helped" to die.When the abortion debate was heating up in the late sixties and early seventies, the slippery-slope argument was put forward, and immediately dispensed with by those who wanted legalized abortion. Sounds compassionate - give someone in great physical or emotional pain lethal drugs at his request - but who can really say that a suffering human being is in the best position to make that decision? And who's to say that the suffering patient hasn't been pressured by his family, who is also suffering emotionally? Even as the slippery-slope argument is considered to be a logical fallacy, we have been sliding down that slope.
All of those arguments aside, the willful destruction of human life, without recourse to justice, is a grave sin. As a nation, we should not be in the business of infanticide. We should commit ourselves to doing what is right, period.