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60 Responses to “Stem cells being harvested from live babies?”

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1. Louise says:

   December 15, 2006 at 10:45 am

   Every time someone on the site uses the term, “liberal,” on many sites such as this one, I know I will be reading some sort of ridiculous lie next. It should be sad to go through life with such simplistic answers to all of your uncomfortable issues: it is the “bad” liberals that cause everything horrible. But you all seem comforted by this view. I can think of another recent society where a one-word scapegoat was handy in this way.

   In any case, things are not simple: history, personal choices, economic situations and systems, religion, personal morality and more — create shades of grey and an atmosphere that make it difficult for moral absolutists to function without scapegoats and “boogey-men.” Life, in the Ukraine has always been cheap. Blaming being pro-choice (we are NOT pro-abortion — why must you be so myopic about that?), liberals and/or stem cell research for atrocities there is, well, is just plain silly.

   In any case, it is silly for us to keep arguing with people who claim to be “logical” and “rational” but who are mostly intellectually and morally simplistic, who see the world without much knowledge of culture and history and who have a view that is black and white.
2. Sister Toldjah says:

   December 15, 2006 at 10:47 am

   As usual, Sev, you nail the argument regarding slippery slopes. I commend you on your patience, as I’ve run short of it these days
3. PCD says:

   December 15, 2006 at 1:19 pm

   Louise, don’t try to force your one-color vision on the rest of us. Don’t condescend, all that does is dismiss you from serious debate, but in condescending, you do not want to debate, but to dictate.

   Yes, there are bad liberals like you in life. I do my best to keep you out of my life.
4. Severian says:

   December 15, 2006 at 1:40 pm

   Well Scott, it’s interesting that, in general, the very same liberals who are dismissing the “slippery slope” arguments here are the ones who are shrieking that things this administration does, like NSA surveillance of foreign calls to the US from suspected terrorists, are the beginning of a slippery slope to total fascism and domination and throwing liberals into interment camps. Y’all make a LOT more noise and use the argument a lot more than conservatives do in my experience.
5. J says:

   December 15, 2006 at 5:36 pm

   Sister Toldjah wrote: there hasn’t been a single incident in the Bush administration where the admin has been accused of ‘locking up liberals in the name of national security.’ Nice try, though.

   There hasn’t been a “single incident” of any embryonic stem cell supporter calling for the death of born children either. Of course, that’s what makes my argument right, and your slippery slope argument WRONG.
6. ibfamous says:

   December 15, 2006 at 5:40 pm

   Where do I start? Sev, how do you base any argument on the actions of a clearly disturbed person? And Scott, your argument is persuasive, however, as far as public funding goes; Edwin Armstrong had been given mathematical proof by the top engineer of the day showing frequency modulation was not viable. Armstrong ignorantly invented FM radio anyway. So, in science, “a small probability of success” has changed the world many times and in this hyper-economic climate not many commercial entities push for these successes, leaving government backed projects as our only hope of any breakthroughs that don’t involve hair growth or relief from erectile dysfunction.

   As for this story about selling babies for stem cells, if true, it just points out the consequences of thwarting reputable research using tissue that is scheduled for destruction anyway.
7. Sister Toldjah says:

   December 15, 2006 at 7:06 pm

   Um, WRONG, J – it’s strongly suspected of happening in the Ukraine, and there’s a lot more evidence to back it up than your uberlame “Bush administration officials may one day lock up liberals in the name of national security” analogy.

   I generally find that people who argue that there is no such thing as a slippery slope or who say or imply that the ‘odds of the slippery slope happening are slim’ are generally people who don’t want to think about the long term consequences of what they advocate. It’s all about NOW with no thought whatsoever for tomorrow. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
8. J says:

   December 17, 2006 at 10:47 am

   You are missing the distinction between embryonic stem cells and bone marrow stem cells. The important point is that it is impossible to get embryonic stem cells from born children, or anything else other than 4-to-8 celled embryos. Accordingly, there is no way to reason that embryonic stem cell research leads to killing of babies. It’s like arguing that because I eat fish I must therefore eat chicken.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cells

   Every single thing I’ve posted in this thread rests on that distinction. The “Bush” thing wasn’t a real argument — it was an attempt to point out, by analogy, that the reasoning that you’re engaging in is specious when based upon a false or unsupported premise. Slippery slope argument isn’t per se wrong, but it is when the original premise is flat-out false.

   I posted a similar set of comments last night, which were deleted, and I haven’t been able to post any comments since–anything I try to post disappears into the ether, leading me to conclude that I’ve been banned.

   As I replied to you in email: Your comments did not show up last night to anyone but you. That is what typically happens when comments fall into the moderation que. You post something, it looks like it shows up but if you refresh the page you won’t see them. So they were deleted in error (as I explained in my update to this post), but they did NOT show up on the blog last night. –ST

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