Ben Cardin's Stem Cell Hypocrisy
He's Only In It To Destroy Embryos
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2006 — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
So, Democrats think they have found a winning political issue with public funding of embryonic stem cell research. The issue seems to present a classic battle of science versus religion, and Democrats always know which side of that fight they want. And in fact, polls regularly show that many voters, weighing the benefits of improved healthcare against the loss of microscopic embryos, take the side of encouraging such research. As a result, pro-life Republican opponents of the research are often reduced to windy explanations of the distinctions between types of stem cells and between the government banning such research (which it has not tried to do) and simply refusing to fund it with taxpayer dollars.
But as was true with the Terri Schiavo case, I remain skeptical that public support for the liberal/Democratic position is as warm, deep, or unconflicted as it sometimes seems. Again and again, we face hard questions about when and where life begins, who gets to decide who is and is not a human being worthy of the law's protection, what rights we have to end our own lives, and what rights we have to place the utility of living and speaking adults above the claims of the very old, the very sick, and the unborn. Sure, these questions are painful ones - even those of us who find it easy to see the taking of a human life in abortion sometimes weary of doing battle on behalf of microscopic embryos who are unlikely ever to find a home in a mother's womb. But just as pro-lifers can be ambivalent on these issues, so are those who come out on the other side. To be an enthusiastic supporter of stem cell research that destroys embryos, or of pulling the plug on a living human adult whose quality of life has deteriorated almost to nothing, you have to have blithe, cold-blooded confidence that there is no moral issue at all in these questions. And I just don't think most Americans are in that place.
As we have seen from Claire McCaskill's effort to make the Missouri Senate race a single-issue referendum on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Democratic campaign consultants clearly believe that the public shares their lack of moral ambiguity. And other Democrats are flogging this issue as well, now including Maryland Senate candidate Ben Cardin, who is running an ad with Canadian actor Michael J. Fox, exhorting Americans to spend their tax dollars on such research. (Apparently, Fox isn't satisfied with public funding by his own home country; but even the Canadians have guidelines that betray their own sense that this is an issue fraught with moral peril, as well as dissenters from the governing status quo).
As Michael Steele's campaign has pointed out, however, the problem with Cardin's unbridled enthusiasm for throwing taxpayer money at stem cell research that destroys embryos is that Cardin voted against legislation designed to fund stem cell research that doesn't destroy embryos. That's a position so extreme even Maryland's two liberal Democratic Senators, Barbara Mikulski and the retiring Paul Sarbanes, didn't take it.
Apparently, Cardin isn't in it for the benefits of the research - just for the political benefits he thinks he can get by demanding the destruction of embryos. What a great humanitarian Ben Cardin is.
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Ben Cardin's Stem Cell Hypocrisy 10 Comments (0 topical, 10 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Everything I've read says he became an American citizen in 2000 and swore an oath of allegiance -- can you point to anything that confirms he's maintained both?
http://www.cic.gc.ca/EnGlish/citizen/dualci_e.html
Unless he filed an application with a Canadian court to renounce his Canadian citizenship -- an unlikely turn of events, as that would have created limitations he need not otherwise abide -- then he would retain his Canadian citizenship.
Aussies and Canadians do this all the time. I presume Brits would, too, but I have to concede I know no British citizens who became American citizens, as opposed to permanent aliens.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
Us old timers remember a bunch that changed around 1776.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
To be an enthusiastic supporter ... of pulling the plug on a living human adult whose quality of life has deteriorated almost to nothing, you have to have blithe, cold-blooded confidence that there is no moral issue at all in these questions. And I just don't think most Americans are in that place. I don't think that is the correct read on these issues.
There is a difference between defining a group as those that think there is no moral issue present versus those that think the federal government has no place making the decisions for them or even overriding the decision of the family/spouse of the person involved. Most Americans were, I believe, in that place.
"Apparently, Cardin isn't in it for the benefits of the research - just for the political benefits he thinks he can get by demanding the destruction of embryos. What a great humanitarian Ben Cardin is."
This last quote could show well in a well done campaign spot as the final bit of verbiage.
It's not at all clear that the "alternative methods" don't destroy embryos. One such method involves taking one cell from an eight-cell embryo and using it to derive stem cells. That cell is killed. The problem is that we have no idea whether or not that cell could itself go on to become a human infant, were it implanted. In some species it can; in others it can't; the only way to find out whether or not it can in humans would be to do experiments that would be rejected by any review board as unethical.
The other involves taking someone's DNA, switching off a gene that's needed for normal development after a certain point, and then using that DNA, via cloning, to create what most of us would think of as an embryo. Then you let the "embryo" develop the same way you would if you were trying to get stem cells from a normal embryo, and then harvesting those stem cells and killing it.
At the point at which it's killed, the silenced gene has not had any effects, so this "embryo" is just like a normal embryo. The guy who proposed this says: but it doesn't count as human life, since it wouldn't develop normally. Personally, I fail to see anything at all to be said for this criterion of what counts as "a human life" in the relevant sense of the word. (For one thing, there are actual infants who, because of some fatal genetic defect, are not going to develop normally either -- e.g. kids with Tay-Sachs. Can we now kill them too, on the grounds that the fact that they won't develop normally means that they're not a "real" human life?)
Because I don't buy this hokey idea that an embryo that's not capable of normal development doesn't count, I see this "method" as, basically, engineering an embryo so that it has a fatal disease, and then saying that because it's going to die anyways, it doesn't matter if we kill it.
If I were against abortion on the grounds that it's wrong to take a human life at the embryonic stage, I don't think I'd be the least bit inclined to view either technique as acceptable. I suppose in the first case, one might say that because we don't know whether the cell could develop into an infant were it implanted, we don't know whether or not we're taking a human life, but if I were against abortion on the grounds that it's wrong to kill embryos, I think I would say: until we do know that, we should err on the side of caution; and if we can't do the experiments needed to establish whether or not a single human blastomere can develop into an infant, then so be it: this method is wrong.
It would be just as wrong to experiment on them by removing cells when you don't know for certain what the effects would be.
The genetic engineering approach is just horrible. Heck, using the same logic, we could come up with a way to engineer genetic timebombs in people that would self destruct at 18 years of age so we can havest their organs. Hey, we didn't kill them! The timebomb we implanted in them killed them! What a loophole.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
Mr. Fox has been an American citizen since 2000.