Stem Cells of Aborted Babies at a Resort Near You

Anyone who is staunchly opposed to Embryonic Stem Cell research--me, for one--has seen the future and this is what we saw: babies aborted by economically desperate mothers willing to sell their bodies and babies for money and the "tissue" used for nefarious reasons. The elusive fountain of youth would be a nefarious reason.

My problem with the whole stem cell research thing is that the issue as presented by the press is misleading. I'm NOT against stem cell research. Every person on the planet makes stem cells--a ton of it is stored in an adults fat. Bone marrow transplants are huge stem cell transplants. Kids with sickle cell anemia, adults with leukemia and people with other illnesses already benefit from adult stem cell technology.

Umbilical chord blood has been found to be rich in stem cells. Most moms I know would willingly give their child's umbilical chord to science if it make saving someone's life. Breast milk is rich in stem cells. (Which is another good reason to breastfeed--it indicates to me that the baby's development continues outside the uterus and the breast milk stem cells help the baby do that. In fact, if you have a scratch or your child bumps himself put some breast milk on it--narry a scar. Which I can attest to since my son burnt his hand. The first thing I did was put some breast milk on the injury which was mostly first and second degree burns, with a bit of a third degree burn. No scar.)

No one has to die to use bone marrow or umbilical chord blood (from full-term babies) or fat or breast milk. It is all very ethical.

Not so with embryonic stem cells. In addition, while everyone believes embryonic stem cells hold the future of health, they have shown little promise scientifically. That's why ESC researchers seek government funding. They can't get private funding. So, ESC researchers want your money and my money for ethically questionable research.

Here are the arguments:

1. These babies are dead anyway
2. At least it puts abortions to good use
3. Otherwise they are just "discarded tissue"
4. Lives could be saved
5. Isn't it worth a multi-cellular organism, or four month old fetus, or even one person as someone so eloquently put it on a comment in this blog worth the potential (because no lives have been saved yet) to save millions of lives?

Here is the slippery slope:

1. Already, fetuses (who knows the ages, they are from unregulated ex-communist republics not known for their strict ethical standards) are being sold to resorts
   
2. The treatments are not "life saving" they are cosmetic
3. The "world" doesn't benefit, only the rich, spiritually challenged and ethically empty benefit
4. The "treatments" are unproven and unregulated
5. There is zero science to back up the methods

The only positive I see? At least the rich are making themselves into human guinnea pigs. The poor and needy are being spared being used on the experimentation--unless you don't count the mothers and aborted babies, of course. Where are all the ethicists? Is nothing unethical? No, really, without God, nothing is off-limits. Like the comment poster said, he'd okay the death of his child if it would "save the world". And you think peoople don't fancy playing God.

Here's just one example from the article A Barbaric Kind of Beauty:

Destination: Dominican Republic

Medra Clinic

The treatment: Foetal stem-cell injections from £15,000. Malibu psychiatrist William Rader, 67, previously owned a string of private clinics in LA dedicated to treating eating disorders. He recently founded Medra to offer stem-cell treatments to wealthy clients who wanted to combine a holiday on the exotic La Romana beach resort in the Dominican Republic with their stem-cell therapy.

He has arranged for hundreds of patients to be injected with cells taken from six to 12-week-old aborted foetuses since the clinic opened its doors. Initial consultations are done at Rader's LA surgery at Malibu beach. Arrangements are then made for patients to fly out to the luxury resort in the Dominican Republic to have the treatment administered. The promise: According to Medra's website, the foetal stem cell 'detects and then attempts to repair any damage or deficit discovered in the body, as well as releasing growth factors, which stimulate the body's own repair mechanisms.

'Stem-cell therapy is the future. It's just unfortunate that there is so much opposition to it in the West,' Rader says.

And President Bush is portrayed as some kind of unscientific, religious boob for vetoing the troublesome stem cell bill. What a crock! I wish he would wield that pen more often--mostly to kill the out of control spending. But at least nixing this bill was a start.

Unethical, amoral scientists have little compunction about these things. Most of the researchers are doctors with no problem with abortions on demand, any time anyway. They view using the tissue as a logical step (this follows as most are mechanistic reductionists). At least the abortion wouldn't waste precious tissue. The funny thing is that women who abort their babies still aren't likely to be overly thrilled by their fetus becoming someone's facial. Of course, with a little financial incentive.....

An uneducated public is openminded--of course they are for life-saving technology (who isn't?), of course they would be happy if Christopher Reeve was still alive or Michael J. Fox didn't suffer every day with tremors. People are kind and generous. They imagine the need themselves for some miracle cure.

An uneducated public doesn't know what they would be signing on for with Embryonic Stem Cell research. They don't know the differences between stem cell sources, for one. And activists and researchers count on this fact. They want the average person to remain ignorant. Because most people would outlaw abortion-on-demand if given the chance. Most people don't like the idea of using abortion as a birth control method. They certainly wouldn't approve of dead babies being used for arich person's wrinkle.