George Bush using religion to make decisions regarding cloning GRrrrr

[Sashatheman]

What is it with religious fundamentalists that they feel the need to force their personal religious views onto everyone. If necessary, at the expense of the greater good.

 

From GWB's State of the Union address ...

 

"I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research - human cloning in all its forms: creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids; and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator - and that gift should never be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale. "

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4668320.stm

 

What's wrong with cloning? What's wrong with using embryos for research?

Human life is only a gift from a creator if you believe in that sort of thing. There is certainly no scientific basis for that statement.

 

I guess blowing the crap out of people doesn't devalue that gift. Or sending them off to be tortured.

 

What a monumental hypocrite.

 

If people like GWB don't like it, they can boycott any medical advances discovered using these methods.

[silkworm]

Yeah. The fact that the Bush administration is increasing its body count every day is not lost on me either. Culture of life my ass.

[Sashatheman]

i really wish the next president of the US to be less religious, and more inclined to help advance scientific research in all fields including closing.

[Severian]

They voted him in to run the country and that includes making moral judgement calls. A huge proportion of the decisions that he must make are moral ones - if you forbid him from making such decisions then there is no point having a President in the first place!

 

I do disagree with the decision, but I think it is his right to make it. If you disagree, vote him out next time.

[Sashatheman]

i wish i could, i live in Australia btw

[pcs]

What a monumental hypocrite.

 

I'm not so sure what's hypocritical about defending unborn children from the most grotesque, lethal form of scientific slavery.

 

If people like GWB don't like it, they can boycott any medical advances discovered using these methods.

 

Or win elections and ban it. If you want to win, play the game better.

[Sashatheman]

why do you think a killing few cells is "grotesque, lethal form of scientific slavery."?

Especialyl when the advantages of those cells make other life better

[Pangloss]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/worl...icas/4668320.stm

 

Just as a brief moderator note, the board software has a little bit of a quirk here in that if you strip the "http://" from the front of a URL *after* the board has already "shortened" the URL (as above), then the URL is basically ruined because of the elipses used to shorten it (the "..." part). (I'm guessing that's what happened there.)

 

If you can find the original article again I can append it to your original post for you.

[Pangloss]

i wish i could, i live in Australia btw

 

Just out of idle curiosity, why do you care then? I mean, it's my tax money, not yours, right?

[ecoli]

They voted him in to run the country and that includes making moral judgement calls. A huge proportion of the decisions that he must make are moral ones - if you forbid him from making such decisions then there is no point having a President in the first place!

 

I do disagree with the decision' date=' but I think it is his right to make it. If you disagree, vote him out next time.[/quote']

 

Agreed... I hate the fact that somebody elses morals determine what happens to my life. But that's one of the failings of a democracy. I have bend to the morals of the majority. (Which is why the idea of allowing the south to seceed is appearing more atractive by the day)

[Sisyphus]

It's not so much that I disagree with his position. I don't even understand what he's talking about. What's wrong with cloning? I get the feeling he's catering to the crowd which is automatically against it because it sounds all "mad scientist" like, largely as the result of a pop culture which doesn't understand it but is often willing to use it as a lame plot device. See "The Island," etc.

 

We should just call it something else instead of cloning, like non-simultaneous identical twins.

[bascule]

Here's the correct URL.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4668320.stm

 

I think it's ridiculous to ban "animal human hybrids". This includes, among other things, creating mice with a small percentage of human neurons for the purposes of Alzheimer's research. What's the moral dilemma with that?

 

The real moral dilemma lies in using mice for biomedical experimentation in the first place, but in that case, I lean towards the side of performing biomedical research and thus improving public health.

[padren]

I do think its fair that there are some limits.

 

If a family took specific chemicals while pregnant so their child would grow up to be a megafreak, in order to make money off him at the circus, we'd have a moral problem with that.

 

With cloning, it would be important to know there isn't any increased risk of defects and such, otherwise you'll be messing with that child's life and health for your own personal interests, which is no better than the circus thing.

 

 

The limits on stem cell research are quite stupid imo.

 

Also, he's only been blowing the crap out of "evil doers" and as he said on national TV once, "they have no soul."

 

That was pretty creepy actually.

[silkworm]

I hate it how everyone takes cloning and attaches the plot of some work of fiction to it. I don't care about the "ethics" of this, and furthermore who is the president to decide what science should and shouldn't be allowed to do? Nature is not a democracy.

 

I see cloning like this. Say you're into bikes. And you go awhile categorizing bikes like "That's a little girls bike, that's a mountain bike, etc." Sure you get to recognizing bikes, and you can tell what kind of bike is what kind of bike and you recognize some parts like the handlebars, the seat, and the chain. But then you actually build a bike, and that provides a whole new level of understanding.

 

We have a responsibility to proceed with human cloning. Not because we're trying to make the world's greatest football team or create a master race, but to receive the insight about ourselves that it is very likely to provide. There are no moral issues involved with human cloning because we have a responsibility to do so. The moral issue comes when you start producing them for economic value, but that has more to do with slavery and greed than anything to do with science.

 

if you forbid him from making such decisions then there is no point having a President in the first place!

 

I agree, let's not have one. I have trouble recognizing this one's authority in the first place.

 

Or win elections and ban it. If you want to win, play the game better.

 

It's too bad that life is a game to you. The opportunity for human advancement far overrules such adolescent behavior.

 

Just out of idle curiosity, why do you care then? I mean, it's my tax money, not yours, right?

 

We're America. To continue to be so we have to keep going.

 

Agreed... I hate the fact that somebody elses morals determine what happens to my life. But that's one of the failings of a democracy. I have bend to the morals of the majority. (Which is why the idea of allowing the south to seceed is appearing more atractive by the day)

 

What's sickening is in a similar phenomenon in a Physics classroom I was democratically voted wrong that hydrogen does not have a neutron. No, we were not talking about deuterium. That wasn't a moral issue, but democracies seem to go with whatever sounds good.

 

It's not so much that I disagree with his position. I don't even understand what he's talking about. What's wrong with cloning? I get the feeling he's catering to the crowd which is automatically against it because it sounds all "mad scientist" like' date=' largely as the result of a pop culture which doesn't understand it but is often willing to use it as a lame plot device. See "The Island," etc.

 

We should just call it something else instead of cloning, like non-simultaneous identical twins.[/quote']

 

Agreed. Actually, we'd probably get further if we called it "being ignorant and lazy and telling everyone else what to do" or "not earning the right to an opinion," or "killing ourselves with stupidity." Most people I know who would likely vote for this administration have that fantasy of not accepting medical treatment at a time near death because the lord is telling them it's time for them to go. Like you see in the movies scenes like that. Those scenes have always creeped me out, but there are many people I know they are popular with, valuing these people's "faith" when I see it as suicide. Basically participating in these moral stances boils down to mass suicide and they're taking us with them. Lucky us to share the world with these people.

[john5746]

I hate it how everyone takes cloning and attaches the plot of some work of fiction to it. I don't care about the "ethics" of this, and furthermore who is the president to decide what science should and shouldn't be allowed to do? Nature is not a democracy.

 

Huh? Science is just a tool. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. Ethics is important. I don't see excessive dogma in his reasoning. I could see Einstein using creator in the same way.

 

I disagree with him on stem cells and cloning, but I do see the need for some ethical framework for the scientific community. I think many scientists would agree.

[qed]

do you think the scientific community would be able to manage this kind of human research properly? like cloning, gene manipulation and culturing of human embryos?

Even without being influenced by nonscientific politics, science would fail due its form of organization. There is too much competition and this work would be too important for scientific reputation.

If there wouldnt be a restricted access to "objects" only for a few scientists (as it is currently in germany with repect to stem cells), everybody in the biomedical field would have to work on it in order to get high impact publications.

And if we would start working on developmental aspects, experiments would be extended to later stages and so on. In order to study human brain development, we need a brain that develops. One step requires and legitimizes the next one.

Where is the border? I do not believe in the sense of responsibility among scientists in general. There would be fake and bad taste.

 

embryonic stem cell research has not proven to be that powerfull. Our understanding of the cell is, especially development and differentiation, is really poor. There are no basic questions in biology that require human embryos in order to achieve a major breakthrough. I mean basical not medical. Economic interests and pressure drives medical research forward and with human embryos that would be the real bad taste, probably without significant progress when compared to todays standards.

[pcs]

It's too bad that life is a game to you.

 

Or maybe it's great and you should give it a shot sometime.

 

The opportunity for human advancement far overrules such adolescent behavior.

 

Or maybe adolescence is characterize by self-aggrandizing appeals to lofty yet woefully nebulous ideals backed by little in the way of means, ability or the genuine inclination to act on them. In the end, it's a whole lotta talk until you start winning elections.

[bascule]

I do think its fair that there are some limits.

 

Some limits are fine, but growing human tissues inside of animals for the purposes of biomedical research should not be banned, especially due to religious objections.

[Pangloss]

I added the fixed URL to the first post (that's the only change I made). Thanks.

[Sashatheman]

agree science has to involve ethics aswell. But i think this is the way to judge if something done in he name of science is ethical or not; We have to weight the pros and cons, and decide on that. Having said that , i dont believe a con of further reseach into the field, involves using religion and how it values life.

[gcol]

Back to the OP, which political decisions are not influenced by pressure groups? In the present example, the group is easily identified. Does anyone think that Judaism has not influenced American foreign policy. All politicians chasing votes bow to pressure groups. Cloning in general is an open Pandora's box. The possibilities for unscrupulous commercial exploitation are rather horrifying to contemplate. It is inherently no more or less immoral than pornography or arms manufacture. As an emerging industry, if it can be controlled and regulated, and most importantly taxed, then a capitalist administration is bound to consider it a good thing.

[pcs]

agree science has to involve ethics aswell. But i think this is the way to judge if something done in he name of science is ethical or not; We have to weight the pros and cons, and decide on that. Having said that , i dont believe a con of further reseach into the field, involves using religion and how it values life.

 

And the President does. That's where winning elections comes into play.

[Aardvark]

The possibilities for unscrupulous commercial exploitation are rather horrifying to contemplate. It is inherently no more or less immoral than pornography or arms manufacture.

 

I'm not sure about that. Cloning could potentially have deeper moral consequences than pornography. Cloning raises questions about identity and family structure and relationships. Those are deep areas.

 

As an emerging industry, if it can be controlled and regulated, and most importantly taxed[/i'], then a capitalist administration is bound to consider it a good thing.

 

Even wicked old capitalists have more measures of the public good than just money, that is a bit over simplisitic.

[gcol]

I'm not sure about that. Cloning could potentially have deeper moral consequences than pornography. Cloning raises questions about identity and family structure and relationships. Those are deep areas..

I would have to agree that cloning could have worse consequences, because they are conjecture.

 

quote:

"Even wicked old capitalists have more measures of the public good than just money, that is a bit over simplisitic"

 

Dont know about that. Capitalism is money and trade. Public opinion reigns in its worse excesses. Sometimes I will be thankful for that opinion, even if it comes from sources I normally dont agree with. It can be your enemies who inadvertently dig you out of the muck.

[Sisyphus]

Nobody has really said why the supposed moral consequences of cloning would be so terrible. I'd be interested to hear why those who consider it inherently immoral do so. My theory is still that it's just the "mad scientist syndrome," where pop culture has been exploiting it for so long in inaccurate forms that people have a kneejerk reaction that it must somehow be unnatural and immoral. I suspect that other nations will pursue this research ahead of us, and the U.S. will fall behind in biotech, which could well be the most important science of the next century. In a few decades people will be used to the idea, and wonder why the hell everybody was so against it now.

 

BTW, I agree that biotech can have potentially dangerous and ethically questionable consequences. But a blanket ban on fairly arbitrary criteria is quite silly, IMO, even if it were possible to hold back science indefinitely, which it isn't. It seems like either Bush hasn't had anybody qualified explain the issues to him, or he has, and he's just pandering to his base at the expense of long-term national interest.