Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Coming Clone Wars

By Michael Scaperlanda

In response to my Why Embryonic Stem Cell research? post, Ryan Anderson responded:

I don’t think you’re off base on the cloning at all.  If anything, it’s worse than you fear.

 

He then quoted from his essay published two days ago entitled "Perpetuating a Needless Stem-Cell War:

 

[I]nduced pluripotent stem cells are patient specific. As anyone familiar with organ transplants knows, immune rejection is a major hurdle to any form of regenerative medicine. Induced pluripotent stem cells clear this hurdle because they can be created using the patient's own skin cells; thus they will have his exact DNA sequence and will not be prone to immune rejection. For embryonic stem cells to do the equivalent, they would have to be created from an embryo produced by human cloning. Clearly, then, Bush's critics were being disingenuous when they claimed to want only the IVF "spares"--embryos that "were going to die anyway." While those might have been the first cells needed for basic research, any therapeutic uses would require patient-specific cells, attainable only by cloning. That would open up ethical debates over human cloning and killing--and debates about the ethics and safety of encouraging (or paying) women to subject themselves to hormonal stimulation to produce eggs for use in the cloning process. Using induced pluripotent stem cells avoids all of these problems.

 

It is, therefore, critically important to note what Obama did not say this morning. He promised that he would make sure that "our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction." He went on to add that "it is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society." This is certainly correct. But in pledging only to prevent reproductive cloning, Obama intentionally left the door open for research cloning. The cloning procedure involved, of course, is exactly the same in reproductive and research cloning; the only difference is that in research cloning the developing human is killed before being allowed to be born. Given what we know about the necessity of cloning for the medicinal use of embryonic stem cells, Obama's implicit support for research cloning and killing is unconscionable.

 

Here is an article entitled "Cloning Doubletalk" written a couple of years ago.  HT:  Denise Hunnell

D.C. School Choice Program Killed

By Greg Sisk

In the spending bill that President Obama will sign today, the D.C. voucher program will be effectively killed, as Democratic leaders in the House had desired.  A proposed amendment in the Senate to strip this measure from the bill was defeated on a vote of 39-58 (you can check here to see how your Senators voted on school choice for the disadvantaged in Washington, D.C.).  This is not an auspicious beginning for educational reform and opportunity in the new administration.

Greg Sisk

Why Embryonic Stem Cell research?

By Michael Scaperlanda

I have wondered why funding for embryonic stem cell research is such a high priority for some, given its lack of positive results, the positive results of alternatives, and the serious ethical questions involved.   Yesterday, Lisa linked to Denise Hunnell's blog post discussing Pres. Obama's order regarding funding for embryonic stem cell research.  This is Denise's theory:

Embryonic Stem Cell Research is promoted by those who support abortion. If one affords any dignity to the human embryo in the laboratory, then the morality of abortion can be called into question. Therefore, it is in the interest of preserving the perception of abortion as a moral right that human embryos are afforded no special status in the laboratory.

And, I would agree with her, but I am not sure she takes it far enough.  Despite headlines that said that Pres. Obama closes the door on cloning, I suspect that part of the end game is cloning. (To be clear, I am not saying that the President was being dishonest - I don't know what he really thinks about cloning).  Several years ago, I was in the car listening to the Diane Rehm show.  Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB was one of the guests and the other guest was someone high up in the Juvenile Diabetes Association - (is this now the JDRF?).  Doerflinger made the statement that even if the government funded embryonic stem cell research, there were not enough stem cell lines available to do the research and that cloning (which he opposed) would become necessary.  I thought that even if the JDRF spokesperson agreed with Doerflinger and would acknowledge agreement in the JDRF board room, he would deny it publicly .  Much to my surprise, he agreed publicly with Doerflinger.  The conversation remains vivid in my mind because I was shocked to hear a spokesperson for this organization, which relies I would guess on public support and good will, could without fear of retribution openly advocate cloning - or what they would call "theraputic closing."  JDRF's website says that they oppose a permanent ban on human therapeutic cloning."

Is Denise Hunnell off base here?  Am I?  Why? 

Another Minnesota First -- State-sponsored Murabaha Financing

By Elizabeth Schiltz

I'm teaching my favorite subject -- usury -- in my consumer law class right now, so this local news item struck me as particularly timely.   Minnesota's state housing agency has apparently become the very first state agency to offer a form of financing that allows Muslims, who are forbidden from charging or paying interest, to buy homes.  It sure sounds a lot like the old time-price doctrine to me.  As explained in the article:

Here's how the mortgage, known as Murabaha financing or "cost plus sale," works:

The state buys a home and resells it to the buyer at a higher price. The down payment and monthly installments are agreed to up front at current mortgage rates.

The deal is identical to a thirty-year fixed-rate loan, except there's no additional interest, because the higher up front price factors in payments that would have been made over the life of a traditional mortgage.

 

Guess it's not a "scientifically worthy" line of inquiry?

By Elizabeth Schiltz

An MOJ reader and blogger in her own right brought to my attention the fact that Obama's Executive Order on stem cell research also revoked a Bush executive order directing funding for research for alternatives  to embryonic stem cells.  Here's her blog post with more details, including a statement from the Catholic Medical Association on Obama's Executive Order.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Utaaaahhhh!

By Rick Garnett

Our LDS friends had it right.  Utah "is the place."

Connecticut bill tabled (for now)

By Rick Garnett

What Rick Hills (correctly, I think) called "the Connecticut legislature's preposterously unconstitutional attack on Catholicism" appears to have been tabled, for now.  And just in time, because the state's legislators were about to receive a sternly worded letter, written by Prof. Douglas Laycock and signed by a dozen law-and-religion scholars, setting them straight.  The letter is available, after the jump.

Continue reading

Strike One for Obama

By Michael Scaperlanda

On the America blog, Michael Sean Winters writes: 

[T]he justifications for the decision coming from the administration are so obnoxious or pathetic or both that this decision can properly be labeled Strike One against Obama.

*    *    *

Those of us who have supported the President, who were non-plussed by the reversal of the Mexico City policy on the grounds that gag rules are difficult to defend in a liberal polity, and have been ambivalent about the nomination of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, must here draw a line. The President’s decision on stem cells, and the hubristic way it is being defended by his staff, is deeply disturbing. I do not expect to agree with anyone one hundred percent of the time, so I do not feel inclined to abandon my overall support for the administration. But, it is Strike One.

For the full post, click here.

The coming evangelical collapse

By Michael Scaperlanda

Michael Spencer's comment, with the above title, appeared today on the Christian Science Monitor website.  Here is the opening:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

If you are interested, keep reading here.

Saletan on "ideology" in the stem cell debate

By Rob Vischer

Will Saletan, who often takes conservatives to task for their stance on sanctity-of-life issues, has some stinging words for those who are euphoric in the wake of President Obama's announcement on funding for embryonic stem-cell research:

Think about what's being dismissed here as "politics" and "ideology." You don't have to equate embryos with full-grown human beings—I don't—to appreciate the danger of exploiting them. Embryos are the beginnings of people. They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject. How long can we grow this subject before dismembering it to get useful cells? How far should we strip-mine humanity in order to save it?

And then there's this:

Several months ago, opponents of embryo-destructive research gathered in Washington to celebrate Eric Cohen's book In the Shadow of Progress, which explores the moral costs of biotechnology. They asked me what I thought of the book. I told them that the book was beautiful and important because it represented the losing side of history. It spoke for values threatened with extinction by the coming triumph of utilitarianism.  They didn't like hearing that. Nobody wants to be a loser. Losing is hard.

But winning is hard, too. In politics, to be a good winner, you have to pick up the banner of your fallen enemy. You have to recognize what he stood for, absorb his truths, and carry them forward. Otherwise, those truths will be lost, and so will you. The stem-cell fight wasn't a fight between ideology and science. It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won. The question now is what to do with our 5-day-olds, our 5-week-olds, and our increasingly useful parts.

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