Human-animal chimeras and scientists deluded by a god complex

The battle in Congress over human-animal chimera experiments highlights the gulf between communists and Democrats and Republicans on the distinctions and boundaries between humans, animals and God.

A Chinese-led research team injected human stem cells into monkey embryos and let the chimeric creature grow for 19 days before killing it. As avowed atheists, Chinese Communists do not believe that God created each of us human beings in His image, with inestimable worth incomparable to the animals He created, each "after their kind."

Scientists' hubris, greed and propaganda = Rx for human suffering

Probably the most common factor in biological, aerospace, civil engineering and other disasters is scientific hubris--a cocky overestimation of scientific understanding and one's own intellectual capacity and a fatal underestimation of the complexity of factors of our world--including our own bodies. 
A scientific journal recently proclaimed that "Researchers have demonstrated they can efficiently IMPROVE the DNA of human embryos." This kind of propaganda that emanates from the scientific community serves to advance their own financial and intellectual interests. 
Mix hubris, greed and propaganda and you have a prescription for human suffering and loss of life. A quick Google turns up instructive disaster examples in Aerospace (e.g., Columbia Shuttle, Concorde, TWA Flight 800), civil engineering (e.g., World Trade Center Collapse, Quebec Bridge) and other areas of science (e.g., Titanic, Nuclear Fuel Rod, Bhopal, Flixborough). 
But with this particular scientific disaster-in-the-making (the phrase "improving the DNA of human embryos" says it all), we're talking about a new and abominable kind of disaster that will potentially span generations.
These particular researchers have already shown that they are not concerned about the sanctity of human life, by destroying human embryos as if they were guinea pigs. 
It's time we stop thinking of scientists and researchers as somehow, unlike every other kind of person on earth, totally objective and trustworthy. We need to end the notion, pervasive among our modern culture that essentially worships science as an alternative religion, that somehow we need to let scientists do whatever they fancy because, well, they're so much smarter than all the rest of us combined. 
We cannot--must not--let a hubristic, well-funded but ethically bankrupt elite run our society. Wake up and speak up about this.

Excerpts from new book that encourages and equips people of faith to engage on controversial issues

Faith Steps

Logion Publishing, Washington, DC - published 2015

How can we remain true to the core teachings of our faith and winsomely engage others on controversial issues like sex, marriage, abortion, religious freedom, human trafficking and end of life issues?

As aggressive activists and ideologues try to eject persons of faith from the public square, we need to know and hold fast to the truth … and help others choose the path that leads to life, liberty and true happiness.

Excerpts

Engaging others: "People make their own choices; we are simply informing their self-interest. In love and compassion, offering evidence and reason, we simply present the clear choices and draw a line to the benefits or harms likely to result from those choices."

Marriage: "By uprooting and replacing the definition of marriage with a subjective notion based on emotional relationship … no rational parameters remain that would exclude further redefinitions of 'marriage' as between multiple partners, related persons, or even persons and non-persons."

Faith freedom: "While we can take comfort in the companionship of such a 'great cloud of witnesses' who have suffered for the faith, we also must fight for religious freedom while we have the freedom to do so."

Abortion: "Abortion advocates commonly contend that health and safety regulations, such as regulations required of other surgical facilities, would shut down their clinics. What does that tell you about the level of safety women encounter in abortion clinics?"

Worldview: "If we are each making up our own truth, each arriving at different conclusions, what do we do when our individually made-up worldviews conflict? One of two things can happen: coexistence or domination."

­­­Euthanasia: "Then, Xandra says, her father-in-law suddenly cried out. He said, 'I don’t want to die!' Xandra frantically looked to the doctor and at the others in the room. 'But no one was reacting.' Franz died from that second injection, whether he really wanted to or not."

Human trafficking: "The big ideas in our White House meeting agenda included developing a strategy to conduct medical research to establish the links between human trafficking and prostitution, AIDS, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases."

Sex ed: "Totally bereft of any reason to convince teens to wait, 'comprehensive' sex education focuses on trying to merely reduce rather than avoid the harm."

Faith & politics: "Christian engagement in government and policy advocacy offers an opportunity to show skeptics that faith can work in the real world–even in the intensely challenging, often battering world of public policy."

Engaging in culture: "We will seek to understand critically where a work of art, music or literature syncs with God's principles and where it diverges."

Endorsements

"Faith Steps is a perfect book for our time. Mr. Imbody offers solutions for how we can--and must--take back the high ground. This book is exceptionally well written by a man of great courage, knowledge and commitment." – Diana Lightfoot, Advisor, Carson for President

"A clear, poignant presentation of how to become a person of faith and have that faith transform your life and culture." – Gene Rudd, MD, Exec. VP, Christian Medical Association

"The chapter on worldview is worth the cost of the book by itself! A must-read for anyone who is serious about living out their faith." –Col. Donald Thompson, MD, Director, Global Health Outreach

Author

Jonathan Imbody (cmawashington@icloud.com) draws on decades of insider experience in Washington, DC in government relations and communications. He directs the 30,000-strong Freedom2Care coalition on freedom of faith, conscience and speech. He is also VP for Govt. Relations for the Christian Medical Association. His commentaries are frequently featured in USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and other national media.

Get it today...

Amazon paperback: http://tinyurl.com/nhanq29

Kindle e-book: http://tinyurl.com/p2q8ywg  

---

 

Visit and "like" the Faith Steps Facebook page

Human cloning: Science as tool or master?

In an oddly titled Washington Post editorial, "Stem cells: Good or evil?" the usually clear and readable Post suddenly prefers sterile, technical language ("something called somatic cell nuclear transfer") over the much more readily understood term, human cloning. The editorial suggests that a new process simply involves "creating stem cells cloned from the normal skin cells of adults," when in fact researchers actually cloned and killed living human embryos like utilitarian lab rats.
Gallup polling shows that 83 percent of Americans oppose human cloning; hence the obfuscation.
Several decades of grant-seeking researchers' scandalous propaganda and hundreds of millions of research dollars thrown at embryo-destructive research have produced zero cures. Yet the Post persists in promoting the hype, asserting that human cloning will at long last produce "extraordinary new treatments." Yes, we've heard it all before--"cures of biblical proportion," paraplegics "leaping out of wheelchairs." Following this yellow brick road unfortunately diverts precious funds away from ethically non-controversial and proven effective non-destructive stem cell research.
The editorial also ignores the exploitation of and health risks posed to egg donors, especially poor women, by the hormonal harvesting procedures required for human cloning. Moreover, if human cloning is technically perfected, no law will prevent rogue scientists from cloning a baby, along with potential horrific physical defects and unspeakable psychological trauma.
Science is a powerful tool that can serve us well within ethical boundaries and critical scrutiny. Without such boundaries and scrutiny, we will become its victims--and in the case of cloned human beings, its slaves.

Media misses human cloning opposition, but reasons abound

The Washington Post headline, "Cloning advance using stem cells from human adult reopens ethical questions," suggested investigative insight into the controversy. Yet somehow the Post failed to find a single opponent of human cloning to quote, only quoting the researchers who stand to profit from the embryo-destroying human cloning experiments.

That's odd, since Gallup polling reveals that fully 83 percent of Americans oppose human cloning, which means the reporter literally could have stepped outside the Post enclave and found myriad opponents on the street to interview.

Opponents include scores of ethically concerned citizens besides "religious groups" as the article suggests. Some of the 83 percent of Americans who oppose human cloning reject it because no human being should be created simply for the use of someone else. Advocates on both left and right oppose human cloning because it would require huge numbers of eggs taken from exploited women through dangerous procedures. My colleague Jennifer Lahl has documented these dangers in the film, Eggsploitation.

Others realize that no researcher's promise and no federal law could ever stop rogue scientists in the US or anywhere in the world from bringing a cloned human embryo to birth. That would risk horrific abnormalities and incur unspeakable psychological harm on the cloned baby created not as an original, but as a copy, not out of a mother and father's love, but out of scientific experimentation.

Several decades of highly paid researchers' hype about embryo-destructive research have produced none of the promised cures, all the while siphoning precious funds from proven effective adult stem cell research and other non-controversial stem cell methods. Instead of parroting the hype of invested researchers, offer readers a critical, even-handed look at this controversy that threatens to undermine the core ethical safeguards of our humanity.

Don't let morally myopic geeks rule the world: FDA to consider baby-cloning technique

If you're not a geneticist and gloss over bioethics news reports that have too many words longer than six letters, join the club. But sometimes it takes liberal arts graduates to rein in mad scientists, because bespectacled geeks focused too long on their microscopes can easily fall prey to moral myopia.
That seems to be the case as some scientists push the ethical envelope in genetics and human cloning. The most recent scientific schemes entail creating test tube babies, by killing two human embryos or by cloning human babies from destroyed embryos. If only this were the stuff of science fiction...but the FDA is actually formally considering these weird and wrong techniques.
Usually only bioethically rogue countries--like China and England--allow such techniques. But now the US FDA Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee has announced it will hold a committee meeting to consider these issues ("oocyte modification in assisted reproduction for the prevention of transmission of mitochondrial disease or treatment of infertility").
If you're still reading after that mouthful, check out this article and also the formal comment below that I submitted to the FDA for the Christian Medical Association:

Food and Drug Administration

Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
1401 Rockville Pike, HFM-71
Rockville, MD 20852
Transmitted via email to Gail.Dapolito@fda.hhs.gov

RE: Public comment submission to the Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee, regarding its consideration of oocyte modification in assisted reproduction for the prevention of transmission of mitochondrial disease or treatment of infertility

The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org) opposes germ line genetic engineering on prudential, ethical and humanitarian grounds:

1.      Mitochondrial transfer poses an unacceptable prudential risk, since our nascent knowledge of genetics remains grossly inadequate to predict unintended genetic consequences passed down to future generations.

2.      Germ line genetic engineering also transgresses the ethical principle of autonomy; no successive generation can provide informed consent for the consequences of the precursor generation's genetic experimentation.

3.      Techniques such as "pronuclear transfer"--a method of cloning from an IVF embryo--involve destroying living, genetically complete human embryos, further violating moral and ethical boundaries.

4.      Procedures involving germ line genetic engineering are not essential, since ethical options remain for women with an identified high risk. Providing a loving home for a child through adoption, for example, far surpasses any perceived value of retaining a measure of genetic relation attained at the risk of tragic genetic consequences.

5.      Opening the door to germ line genetic engineering also opens the door to the dehumanizing, utilitarian quest for perfect children--"designer babies." Rather than treating children as a commodity fulfilling parents' dreams, our humanitarian values and our Constitution require us to treat every human being as inherently valuable and worthy of love, respect and protection.

We urge the Committee to reject oocyte modification in assisted reproduction as unacceptably risky, unethical and inhumane.

Thank you for your consideration of these views.

Action:

Visit this web site for details on how to submit a written comment or make an oral presentation to the committee.

Your comment need not be long; the important thing is to make your life-affirming views known. Don't let morally myopic geeks rule the world.

"Are you my Mother?" - FDA to consider three-parent genetics manipulation and "designer babies"

Public comment sent today to FDA re: "designer babies" hearing on genetic manipulation, Oct. 22-23:

October 15, 2013

Christian Medical Association

PO Box 7500

Bristol, TN 37621

Food and Drug Administration

Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

1401 Rockville Pike, HFM-71

Rockville, MD 20852

Transmitted via email to Gail.Dapolito@fda.hhs.gov

RE: Public comment submission to the Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee, regarding its consideration of oocyte modification in assisted reproduction for the prevention of transmission of mitochondrial disease or treatment of infertility

The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org) opposes germ line genetic engineering on prudential, ethical and humanitarian grounds:

1.     Mitochondrial transfer poses an unacceptable prudential risk, since our nascent knowledge of genetics remains grossly inadequate to predict unintended genetic consequences passed down to future generations.

2.     Germ line genetic engineering also transgresses the ethical principle of autonomy; no successive generation can provide informed consent for the consequences of the precursor generation's genetic experimentation.

3.     Techniques such as "pronuclear transfer"--a method of cloning from an IVF embryo--involve destroying living, genetically complete human embryos, further violating moral and ethical boundaries.

4.     Procedures involving germ line genetic engineering are not essential, since ethical options remain for women with an identified high risk. Providing a loving home for a child through adoption, for example, far surpasses any perceived value of retaining a measure of genetic relation attained at the risk of tragic genetic consequences.

5.     Opening the door to germ line genetic engineering also opens the door to the dehumanizing, utilitarian quest for perfect children--"designer babies." Rather than treating children as a commodity fulfilling parents' dreams, our humanitarian values and our Constitution require us to treat every human being as inherently valuable and worthy of love, respect and protection.

We urge the Committee to reject oocyte modification in assisted reproduction as unacceptably risky, unethical and inhumane.

Thank you for your consideration of these views.

While patients wait for realistic adult stem cell therapy investments, scientists clone and kill human embryos

A USA Today news article, "Human embryos cloned for stem cells," rightfully highlights and wrongfully dismisses concerns that human cloning now conceivably could produce a cloned baby, and the article also misses a key concern related to patients hoping for stem cell therapies.

The human cloning scientists cite technical hurdles to date in an effort to downplay the chilling potential for reproductive cloning--an argument that incredibly underestimates the likelihood of technological improvements. The FDA overestimates its ability to "block US fertility clinics from using the cloning technique"--unrealistically presuming no rogue clinics or scientists.

Besides the profound moral and ethical boundary crossed by deliberately creating and killing living human embryos in the human cloning process, the entire undertaking also thumbs its nose at patients looking for stem cell therapies. Ethical alternative methods for obtaining powerful stem cells--such as induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells derived from our own bodies--have demonstrated far greater potential for cures and have already produced dozens of actual therapies now treating diseases in patients. These non-lethal stem cell methods have provided a platform of consensus on which the scientific, political, medical and faith communities can stand together with patients in the pursuit of healing.

Human cloning undermines this consensus platform for pursuing the quickest, surest route for patient therapies, instead diverting funding and scientific focus to a more sensational and unethical approach. Human cloning for stem cells may raise the celebrity status of scientists, but it carries a heavy ethical cost while delaying real therapies for real patients.

Cloning scientists like sheep have gone astray

A Wall Street Journal news article on embryonic stem cell research, "Experiment Brings Human Cloning One Step Closer" downplays ethical concerns by incredibly asserting, "Never mind the prospect of cloned humans; despite years of experiments, scientists have failed to clone monkeys." A human cloning scientist reinforces this credulous assertion, assuring us that "his lab had tried transplanting entire blastocysts into a monkey's womb, but those experiments hadn't yielded a single successful pregnancy."

A few initial reproductive cloning failures are hardly reassuring: After 277 dead embryos, Scottish researchers finally stunned the world with Dolly the cloned sheep.

Besides the chilling prospect of cloned human babies, human cloning for stem cells also undermines prospects for patient cures. After years of dissension, a consensus has finally emerged that the real promise for patients lies in ethical alternative methods for obtaining powerful stem cells, such as induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells. Unlike highly speculative human cloning, these ethical stem cell methods do not kill human embryos; they enable the vital cooperation and support of the scientific, faith, political and medical communities; and they have already produced dozens of actual therapies to treat diseases in real patients.

Human cloning for stem cells remains unethical, impractical and dangerous

CMA physicians on human cloning study revelation:

Human cloning for stem cells remains unethical, impractical and dangerous

Responding to a just-released article in the journal Cell, the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association, the nation's largest faith-based association of physicians, cited ethical, practical and safety concerns regarding the cloning of human embryos to harvest stem cells.

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens noted, "Just when ethically uncontroversial stem cell techniques offer a platform for consensus on stem cell research and development, a small band of outliers want to revive the notion of cloning and destroying living human beings to harvest stem cells. As it was years ago when first attempted and discredited, human cloning remains unethical, impractical and unsafe.

"Unlike methods such as iPSC (induced pluripotent stem cells) or adult stem cell research that have gained a growing consensus of approval, human cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT) requires the deliberate creation and destruction of living human embryos.

"Practically speaking, iPS cells are much better and more easily created for lab models. Most importantly for the patients our physicians treat, adult stem cells already show proven superior achievement at treating patients.

"So why would we want to turn back the clock by reverting to a technique that stem cell science has already passed by? When neither iPSC nor ASC requires subjecting women to the significant health risk of ovarian hyperstimulation, why would we want to commodify human eggs and women who are described by the study authors as having "premium quality human oocytes"?

"Besides the immediate harm of killing living human embryos, embryo-destroying cloning also has the potential to lay the groundwork for reproductive cloning--bringing a cloned human being to birth."

To schedule an interview, please contact Margie Shealy at (423) 844-1047 or by e-mail: margie.shealy@cmda.org. The Christian Medical Association is equipped with Ku Band Digital Uplink satellite and ISDN lines.

New law prevents patenting human organisms

This good news just in from a pro-life Congressional colleague:

Today, President Obama signed into law the America Invents Act, H.R. 1249 which contains a provision that codifies an existing pro-life policy rider included in the CJS Appropriations bill since FY2004 [See Section 33 of H.R. 1249].  This provision, commonly known as the Weldon amendment, ensures the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) does not issues patents that are directed to or encompassing a human organism.

The provision reads as follows:

SEC. 33. LIMITATION ON ISSUANCE OF PATENTS.

(a) LIMITATION.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no patent may issue on a claim directed to or encompassing a human organism.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Subsection (a) shall apply to any application for patent that is pending on, or filed on or after, the date of the enactment of this Act.

(2) PRIOR APPLICATIONS.—Subsection (a) shall not affect the validity of any patent issued on an application to which paragraph (1) does not apply.

This provision reflects a common-sense understanding that no member of the human species is an "invention," or property to be licensed for financial gain. Patents on human organisms commodify life and allow profiteers to financially gain from the biology and life of another human person.

 

BACKGROUND ON THE WELDON AMENDMENT BANNING PATENTS ON HUMAN ORGANISMS

Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) offered the current policy provision banning the patenting of human organisms during House consideration of the FY04 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill.  The amendment was approved by the House of Representatives on July 23, 2003 by voice vote, without objection from either side of the aisle. The Weldon amendment was then included in the conferenced bill that became law on January 23, 2004 and has consistently remained in the CJS bill since then.

Since 1987, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had an internal policy that human beings at any stage of development are not patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. Section 101.  To ensure the policy was not vulnerable to legal challenge, the Weldon amendment put the weight of Congress behind the USPTO policy. 

The text of the Weldon amendment has been included in the relevant appropriations act since FY04 without challenge, most recently in the FY2010 Omnibus and extended by the FY2011 Omnibus spending bill.  The Weldon amendment was codified into law on September 16, 2011 in H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act.

Before the Weldon amendment, efforts to evade the internal policy at USPTO or have it reversed were underway and some researchers had already said that they wanted to patent and market human embryos with certain genetic profiles as "models" for studying diseases with genetic roots (see N. Munro, "The New Patent Puzzle," National Journal, March 2, 2002 pp. 628-9).

For example, in 2001 the University of Missouri at Columbia requested and received a patent on a method for producing cloned mammals, which failed to exclude humans (see A. Pollack, "Debate on Human Cloning Turns to Patents," The New York Times, May 17, 2002, p. A12).

Thus, because the 1987 USPTO rules were not explicitly stated in law, it became clear that the Weldon amendment was necessary to ensure the courts would not overturn the USPTO’s policy. Codifying the Weldon amendment in H.R. 1249 is consistent with current law and current USPTO policy, ensuring human beings at any state of development are not considered property to be licensed for financial gain.