Conscience Will Guide on Stem Cell Research
Sheldon Archer (letter, Aug. 17) seems to think that those of us who object to embryonic stem cell research on religious grounds would hope this research helps cure us if we become seriously ill. He then accuses us of “hypocrisy,” which is unfair because it’s based on what he guesses we would do, rather than anything we’ve actually done.
Well, I’d like to tell him that his guess is wrong. If, God forbid, I should ever get a life-threatening illness, I will be both praying and seeking medical care, but I will not accept any treatment derived from embryonic stem cell research. I believe that an embryo is a living human being; to take the life of that innocent human in order to benefit my own health, even to save my life, would be unthinkable.
Adam Beneschan
Mission Viejo
Hearts can beat, lungs can breathe, livers can, um, live, and still they can be removed from a body if the person has been declared brain dead. No one has asserted that embryonic stem cells have brain function. Laws regulating embryonic stem cell research should follow the ethics of transplantation. Congress has no business deciding by a show of hands when “life” begins, any more than it should vote on how many angels can dance on a pin.
Joseph Alan Myers
Los Angeles
I cannot remember seeing a greater example of closed-minded ignorance than Michael Ramirez’s editorial cartoon (Commentary, Aug. 18) showing science thumbing its nose at God. Scientists and doctors do God’s work, curing disease, giving hope to the infirm and helping protect our planet’s environment. If Ramirez wants to live in the Dark Ages, where blood-letting and alchemy passed for medicine, he is welcome to. But he shouldn’t be allowed to drag the rest of us back there with him.
Paul Weissman
San Gabriel
President Bush’s announced ban on all further harvesting of stem cells from discarded human embryos shows the kind of thing we can expect a lot more of if the Senate passes Bush’s faith-based initiatives proposal, which would further involve religion in government decision-making. He has listened too much to religious extremists, including many religious leaders. Like the pope who stopped Galileo’s scientific advances in the 1600s, Bush is marching arm in arm with today’s pope in prohibiting further harvests of scientifically invaluable embryonic stem cells--cells that are on their way to the trash anyway. Bush is attempting to replace scientific thinking and discovery with the old ways of blindly following the pronouncements of religious leaders claiming to be divinely inspired.
Robert Porter
Irvine
