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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (23667)	7/11/2006 3:35:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541556

That's neither here nor there. I was looking for arguments against destroying in vitro embryos. Since the Church has a lot of different threads running through its positions, that makes it hard to isolate the variable of interest to me, which made their materials useless for my purpose. I'm not dismissing the Church or Catholics. Only the materials that are not suitable for my analysis. It might not fit your analysis, but then it might show that your analysis is incomplete. Your making statements about opponents of fetal stem cell research in general, that don't fit in with one of the biggest opponents. The fact that that opponent might have other motivations in addition to concern for embryos doesn't really erase the glaring hole in your argument. Well it doesn't make a hole in your argument if you narrowly focus your argument on a specific well defined group, but you really haven't been doing that. You (and Kinsley before you) have been casting a pretty wide net with the argument. Perhaps allowing for a few exceptions but at least implying and perhaps outright stating that they where not significant. Why would anyone oppose stem cell research other than the destruction of embryos? I suppose I could come up with reasons, but I don't see the point. I never asserted that there was other reasons for opposition. I imagine the Catholic church might have some, but their big and obvious reason is the destruction of embryos. The net I referred to was not "are they concerned about the destruction of embryos", but rather something more like "are they concerned about the destruction of embryos in fetal stem cell research but not concerned about the destruction of embryos related to IVF. In any case the issue isn't really about opposing stem cell research as much as it was about opposing federal funding for fetal stem cell research which is not the same thing, and doesn't requite a very absolutist position about the rights of the embryo.

To: Lane3 who wrote (23667)	7/11/2006 5:17:11 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541556

Why would anyone oppose stem cell research other than the destruction of embryos? I don't recall hearing any other reason. Other reasons I've heard or could conceive of (no pun <g>); - dislike of scientists 'playing god' - dislike of scientists generally - slippery slope to eugenics, selection of specific genetic material etc etc - belief that it's misdirection of resources when we should be focussing on (XYZ) which would benefit the masses of poor rather than a few western rich - religious convictions (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses) I'm not saying they're great reasons (I think it's probably pretty clear where I stand on abortion, and on the benefits of scientific research)... but reasons they are. And IMO the first two may have more to do with the opposition than many opponents would prefer to admit, even to themselves.