Finally a Veto for all the wrong reasons?!?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jul 18 2006, 01:09 PM) [snapback]288303[/snapback]</div>

Write your Congressman, not the people on this forum then. There are 535 members of Congress that can override a veto.

Let them do their jobs according to their conscience; GWB did his.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 18 2006, 04:24 PM) [snapback]288314[/snapback]</div>

I sort of agree with you, wstander, except that it's been pointed out before that when we go ahead and fight our fights here, the lurkers are listening and learning. When we take the time to post real facts and logic out these debates, it's for their benefit as much as our 'enjoyment' of the banter.

That said, you're right. This could be a cut and dried pass, with or without a presidential veto. Something like 70% of the country supports this research, and I'd lay bets that many of the remaining 30% don't actually have the facts because they've been fed some straw man about fetus farms or abortion drives. So why don't we have an easy 2/3 majority? It's because our congressmen aren't representing us, and we can only blame them until November. Don't like the way things are? Do something about it. Get the facts. Write your congressmen. Get off your duff this fall and vote.

 

what people are failing to see here is the difference between morals and ethics

nowadays religious morals (what the politicians are hyping as "moral values") are being substituted for ethics... i think largely in part to politics' failure to acknowledge the field of ethics to begin with...

and wildkow, i again find myself shocked to be in agreement with you :lol: and i'm glad that organ transplantation has made a difference in your life!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 18 2006, 04:24 PM) [snapback]288314[/snapback]</div>

I often do write (or call- I live in a small state and one of our Senators lives in my town) my Congressional representatives. However, since my state's Senators have already strongly stated their support of stem cell research I did not think it was necessary in this case.
And is it not the point of a forum (particularly FHOP) that people should express their opinions?

 

OK, I want to make sure I understand what happened today.

We passed a bill lifting restrictions on federal funding availability for embryonic stem cell research outside the current pool. This only passed 63/37, and a similar bill (how similar) was passed in the House 238/194. Bush has vowed to veto this, so there will be a reattempt in the House tomorrow, and I assume they will schedule a Senate reattempt. It's not looking likely.

Another bill was passed that instructs the federal government to fund ways to extract embryonic stem cells from embryos without destroying them. Everyone in the Senate voted for this, even though it reaffirms the Dickey amendment, which appears to make the first bill moot or confusing. I'd appreciate further info on how this has been re-worded so as not to contradict what 63 of them voted for on the same day.

Another bill was passed that bans 'fetal farming' - embryos cannot be created and fetuses may not be grown for research purposes. Everyone voted for this, though the concept has never been proposed.


So current embryonic stem cell research is limited by the 2001 guidelines allowing federal funding of research only for existing lines. Funding will be made available for research on extracting stem cells from embryos without destroying them. So they're going to put money into learning how to not destroy the surplus fertility clinic and abortion embryos during the extraction process, and then they're going to.... do what with the embryos? Re-freeze them? Discard them anyway?



EDIT: Found the house roll call for their version of the bill. Still looking for the Senate roll call. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll204.xml

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(San Diego Steve @ Jul 18 2006, 01:37 PM) [snapback]288249[/snapback]</div>

I'd like to save both.

Killing the ones in the picture below to save the embryo above is not moral, so we should attempt to treat their cancer without killing them...



Or, were you suggesting that the small embryo size child must die so that the child with cancer can die also, just after having been injected with the dead embryo first?

Who put you in charge of deciding that the embryo is ok to murder for whatever purpose that you see fit. In this case, you want to kill it to try to cure a different human of a terminal disease. That doesn't make the killing right.

I just realized that there are people dieing waiting for heart, liver and kidney transplants. If we can get congress to vote to make your organs available by friday next week, do you want Bush to sign that bill, or would you prefer the veto?

"Everyone else is doing it" is not a valid excuse for the US to do it. Since everyone else is doing it, where are all the cures and treatments from it? Yeah, that's right, all the cures and treatments are from the adult stem cell science.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 07:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

So, being able to survive outside the womb is the definition of when a person is a life? You have high degrees and a lot of learning and experience. Please tell me: Is my 20 week old baby in my wifes womb a human life? Are you telling me that it is not? Do you think it looks like a baby when you see it on the monitor? Would it survive outside the womb/incubator?

I am willing to stake all I have on this being a human person at 20 weeks. I am sure this human life would not survive outside the womb, thus it needs protection. My wife is providing that protection right now.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 07:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

China has excess babies in the orphanage. Your logic applies that we should start parting them out. You're a doctor, where do we begin?

I do not agree with doctors and couples creating these excess embryos in the first place. I don't think they should be destroyed and I do believe it is the responsibility of the people who created these babies to raise them in the womb and grow them into adults.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 07:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

This contradicts your statement above where these things were created in order that the parents could be implanted with these "Non viable beings" so that they could have a child. Which is it?? Do these things have viability to become a baby or don't they?



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 07:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

Yes, the tax payers had a choice between a man who would push for this research to be funded, and a man who would veto the bill. The taxpayers chose wisely.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 08:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

Nice post. Some people will still believe that embryos are the same as fetuses - they are not, but you simply can't convince them. Hell, they may walk around thinking the earth is flat, that the Sun revolves around the earth, and that global warming doesn't exist. If we had anything other than a roll-over-and-play-dead Congress, the veto that's likely to happen would be overridden just as quickly.

 

Daron, you're putting up caricatures of the actual issue again. Noone is suggesting we part out 'surplus children' for organ donation, and you're insulting the scientific community by comparing that to embryonic research.

I think that when organ donation became a hot button issue (man, we have got to seem awfully repetitive to whatever supreme being is paying attention) the medical community used the idea of 'brain-death' to draw the line. It's commonplace now to keep a body artificially alive to allow transplant teams to arrive and prepare, and the practice has saved thousands of lives and improved many, many more. Just like donors, these embryos have no brainwaves. That's because there is no brain. There is no heart. There are no lungs. There is no fetus. The embryos being considered for this research have NO potential for a future, only destruction sooner or inviability later. Your stance is not pro-life, it's wasteful and delays potentially life-saving research.

 

i don't know if i'd define human life as self-sustaining outside the womb. we know the lungs are the last organs to really develop (with good reason, they're not needed until after birth) and without properly functioning lungs obviously the fetus will die outside the womb, even late in the gestational period.

however, on the other end- saying that the product of one sperm and one egg is a human life, to say that a *single cell* is a human life, well i think that's an overstatement.

noone's saying let's kill babies, let's mass produce them or line the women up at the abortion clinics. we're saying this tissue is otherwise going to be wasted. thrown out. it's going to happen anyway and we are doing nothing to cause the embryos to be in their current situation. why not do something good with it rather than just toss it?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Jul 19 2006, 09:19 AM) [snapback]288612[/snapback]</div>

Ha, didn't notice you'd said something that is easy to answer. The bill that Bush is set to veto includes restrictions that limit the embryos that would be allowed to be used. The embryos that we are all fighting about do not have any chance of becoming a baby. If they did, researchers wouldn't be allowed to use them.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jul 18 2006, 01:09 PM) [snapback]288303[/snapback]</div>

Micheal: Even more the point. Embryos are even less humanlike than the posted picture of a fetus. I'm not quite sure where the distinction of an embryo to a fetus is, but it's irrelevant.

My brother and his wife had a very difficult time getting pregnant, finally resorting to artificial insemination. After rounds of fertility treatments, she was able to get pregnant, with few embryos left over. My brother offered up them for stem cell research and the clinic informed him that they could not be used for that and had to be destroyed. He wasn't even looking for any of the $$$ back, just figured at least it would go to some good use. What a waste of both the cells themselves and the exhorbitant cost of the insemination.

I agree, stem cell research has the potential of being an incredible breakthrough in medical science, and restricting it is just assinine. In CA, we passed a stem cell research bill which has been tied up in the courts for 2 years or so now, but in the mean time it's being funded by private initiatives.

Steve

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Jul 19 2006, 02:58 AM) [snapback]288582[/snapback]</div>

Sorry, you can't save both. The world doesn't work that way. With current technology, you have to make a choice. We have to choose to destroy a mass of cells and potentially find life saving cures or condemn live people to death. Throughout history medical advances have been found by having to sacrifice the lives of a few for a medical breakthrough for millions. Do you effect the lives of those around them, or destroy a mass of cells that the current "owner" (i.e. the women who's embryo it is) doesn't want.

First, remember that this is an embryo that will be destroyed anyway. It wont meet a dignified death. It will be thrown in the dumpster. Of no use to anybody at all. What this bill is suggesting is finding a use for something that would otherwise be tossed into a trash heap in the same place as used condoms.

As for your comment on transplants, there are plenty of LIVE people who donate organs. Kidney transplants to compatible recipients are common (generally compatible is a family member, but not always). Partial liver transplants are done too. And furthermore, the embryo has no heart, liver or kidney. It's cells. No relationship to human other than it happens to have the same number of chromosomes in it's cells.

Hmmm... why are so many treatments being found based off of adult stem cell research? Could it be that only the adult lines are being used right now due to the moral uproar from people like you? Or perhaps that they are simply easier to harvest? And what cures have been found to date? The simple fact is the scientists involved in stem cell research believe that embryonic cells show the most hope. What do they have to gain by that statement if adult cells were indeed more promising?

Morality is not as black and white as you would like to believe. First, it's not dictated by the bible, a great work of fiction. Only you can dictate your morality. If you don't want embryonic stem cell research, we'll be happy to take your name and number, and should you require a cure derived from this research we'll be happy to withhold it from you and your family members based on moral convictions.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 18 2006, 11:43 AM) [snapback]288253[/snapback]</div>

I've written plenty... to congressman/people and Mr. Bush. Fact is I'm not a republican (not that anybody would have guessed that and not part of the religous right. I make too much for Democrats to care and way too little for Republicans to care.

I look at the issue not from morals, but from the human standpoint. A good friend of my parents lost thier 21 year old daughter years ago to Aplasic Anemia. The girl was engaged to be married and was just finishing up college when she got sick. We did everything, including myself taking an experimental drug to raise my white blood cell count to make a directed Lucopheresis (sp?) donation - I am a rare blood type that she happened to need. I put my own life at some level of risk to try to save hers. She died a few days later, and never got my donation. I was devastated, and her parents have never emotionally recovered.

I think stem cell research has the most potential for these types of diseases. If her bone marrow could have been somehow regenerated instead of having to go through the pain and risk of a bone marrow transplant she may be alive today. Instead, she leaves behind a family who has to live with the pain of her passing, and who's last memories of her are of suffering.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jul 18 2006, 03:00 PM) [snapback]288366[/snapback]</div>

Oh, true. I was only trying to remind folks that it is within Congress' power to override a veto. Too often we treat the presidency as a near monarchy, which it is not. Congress giveth and Congress taketh away, is an old saw that still applies. The Senate vote fell only 4 votes shy of 67 (over 2/3) on this issue.

And, to date, though I asked several times, no one has stated whether this particular bill contains any so-called 'poison-pill' riders that caused some to reject the bill.

Anyone know?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Jul 19 2006, 05:44 AM) [snapback]288600[/snapback]</div>

Uhh, hasn't some waste material already become president? Ah, if there was only a dress available back then. Perhaps a few more destroyed embryo's 50+ years ago and we'd have a real energy policy and the rest of the world wouldn't be about to implode.

Very nicely written. However, I think the arguments that some people will use against you will be that the scientific definition of life is irelevant to gods definition of life. I personally would rather take the scientific viewpoint as you do and try to do what is best for society as a whole.



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Jul 18 2006, 01:57 PM) [snapback]288337[/snapback]</div>

I can't believe I'm agreeing with Wildkow too. Shall wonders never cease??

I have to ask if it's not too personal what organ transplant you had? AND, do you believe that stem cell research may sometime have the ability to have saved your life without requiring the pain and suffering of a transplant (i.e. via some other treatment mechanism)?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 19 2006, 06:47 AM) [snapback]288626[/snapback]</div>

Amen

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 19 2006, 12:24 PM) [snapback]288728[/snapback]</div>

As far as I can tell, it was a clean bill (very unusual these days). The Library of Congress maintains THOMAS, a website devoted to legislative affairs - bills, resolutions, reports, etc. Here's what is said in the summary of H.R. 810:

Also, unfortunately, the House vote was apparently (from a story in the Washington Post today) well short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto. And it takes both the House and Senate to override.

THOMAS