4.11.2005

Stem-cell research = Holocaust?
Oh my goodness. This guy, a Republican state senator in Washington State, says that research using embryonic stem cells is equivalent to the Holocaust or African genocide. Sen. Alex Deccio, R-Yakima, says that victims of such state-sponsored atrocities were embryos too, once: "Public policy said those people should be destroyed. We are talking about the same thing. ... Human life begins with an embryo and that's what we are talking about here."

Actually, stem cell research can save lives. Genocide and the Holocaust were exclusively about hate and destruction.

Deccio's hyperbolic rhetoric offers yet more evidence to bolster the argument made yesterday by John Danforth, an 18-year Republican senator, a minister, and most recently UN ambassador, that the Republican Party has become "the political arm of conservative Christians." He writes:
It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.

No comments: