For What It's Worth

My second political post in as many days.

I'm a new junkie and have been glued to the TV/Internet each election night for the past ten years. I always found that the time from the when the polls closed to the time the results were being announced to be very frustrating. Now, I don't have to stay up to watch the election results come in, I just have to look at my computer at work. I'm fifteen hours in the future, which means that when the polls close, it will be 10:00 AM Wednesday.

Make sure to vote! Especially if you are in Missouri. Not only is there an important Senate race between two very different candidates, but there is also a very important constitutional amendment on the ballot. I've been disenfranchised because my county election authority didn't get my ballot to me in time. So, I'll do my best to sway my readers. If the election is decided by my missing vote, then I'm coming after you Wendy Noren!

Although I didn't vote for him in 2002, Jim Talent has shown himself to be able to work with both parties and is a good junior senator. I do have to speak my mind about the stem cell initiative. You can read the full-text or the "fair" ballot language. The amendment has two main aims:

1. It is a nominal ban on human cloning


2. It establishes a constitutional protection for the cloning of human embryos for the purpose of being destroyed for stem cell research.

So, while the law bans human cloning for the purpose of taking that embryo of implanting it in a uterus and growing to full-term, it does allow that same embryo to be cloned for the sole purpose of being destroyed to harvest the stem-cells.

There are many reasons I am completely opposed to this initiative.

1. Life begins at conception and not some arbitrary time decided by humans.


2. Even if you don' believe that life begins at conception, you should still object to embryonic stem cell research. Since it is impossible to know for certain--scientifically speaking--when a human life begins, why not err on the side of life? Why take the chance that we are killing human life? Just as our capital punishment system--in theory--is set up to let a "hundred guilty men free than to kill one innocent" shouldn't that be our philosophy at the beginning of life? Shouldn't we allow a hundred lumps of cells that may not be human live rather than end one human life?


3. Combining the stem cell initiative with a "ban" on cloning tricks people about the true purpose of this amendment.


4. While this campaign appears to be a grass-roots coalition of patients, doctors, and concerned citizens, it is actually funded by a large bio-medical corporation. Financially, 97% of their support comes from a billionaire couple that stands to make a huge profit if this amendment becomes a reality.


5. Destroying embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells is unnecessary. Since the President Bush banned federal funding of new stem-cell lines, science has been pushed to look for other sources. They have found stem cells useful for research available in umbilical cord blood and adult fat cells. They have also discovered techniques of taking a few stem cells from embryos without destroying the embryo.


6. This initiative will take advantage of low income women. Research firms will need many eggs to do their research, which means a great expansion of the current egg donation system. Egg donation is a potentially risky procedure. Current egg donation is done primarily to help infertile couples to have babies--to create life. the new system will create an opposite situation.

I welcome your comments on this issue and encourage you to do more research. Again, this is not a political blog, and I don't intend to turn it into one. There will however be special cases from time to time.

External Links:
http://www.nocloning.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell