Sunday, July 30, 2006

housekeeping

Hi all, no I haven't forgotten about you, my computer's been down. The modem got fried during a thunderstorm, so I'm sending it off to Apple today to be fixed...I should have it back in about a week. But until then, blogging will be light, if not non-existent. If you want some insights, though, check out my Yahoo! blog or Bucket of parts (http://bucketofparts.blogspot.com).

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Stem cell veto

Again, hurrah for the stem cell veto! Regular readers of this blog know that I've covered this material before, but I will (briefly) say it again: the fact that science can do something does not mean that it should do something. I would not, when I had CF, have taken anything from ESCR. I'm not going to take the life of someone else to save my own. Where does the self-preservation instinct end? When G.W. vetoed the bill he was surrounded by "snowflake" babies and their families. These are babies who would have been the "clumps of cells", left frozen in fertility clinics, if they had not been adopted and brought to birth by their parents. They are the fulfilment of their embryonic lives. They're real people . All of us were once clumps of cells, as the proponents can so blithely put it. But now we're bigger. :)

Some today have argued that the true pro-life position is the position for ESCR becaues it helps all the 'poor, suffering,' (insert soggy euphemism here) in the U.S. Um, ESCR hasn't done anything yet, for anyone. Adult stem cells, on the other hand, have. I'm all about stem cell research...but let's use adults, not babies who have no say, please. We don't have a right to kill them. It's not our call. Let direct scientific dollars to places that we know real theraupetic potential lies, like ASCR. It's a good first veto for G.W. (now if only he could extent this newfound power to other places...hmmm...)