The most controversial idea is to place human DNA within the female gamete of an animal, such as a cow, having removed the animal’s DNA, and create human-animal hybrid embryos for the sake of stem-cell experimentation. The reason this is considered necessary is to increase the number of embryos available for research, as human embryos are apparently in short supply for stem cell research. It is argued that it is important for medical research to find cures for various genetic diseases, although such claims ignore the fact that the ends cannot be used to justify the means. It totally ignores the evidence that human stem cells can be just as effective in research of this nature, and considers the ethical disgust felt by many as simply a ‘yuk’ factor that will be overcome when the process is underway. Leading science institutions such as the Royal Society, and well-known secularists such as Lord Robert Winston, Polly Toynbee and David Aaronovitch support the measures.
Those opposed include the Catholic leader in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who said the Bill was a ‘monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life,’[5] and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright who commented that ‘This secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people...’ Both Winston and Aaronovitch have accused the leading clerics of ‘lying’ for objecting to this Bill in their Easter messages.
It also reveals that the philosophy of secular humanism in fact suffers from a fatal paradox. The more humanists seek to remove limits to scientific research, so as for instance to experiment on human-animal hybrids, the less human 'humanism' becomes.
Read the full text here.
Embryology Bill and the Moral Failure of Secular Humanism
2 comments:
Enjoyed reading your Blog very much - it's topical and relevant and a great help to a non-scientific[although interested in] person like me.
The tragedy is that as scientists demand to throw over moral values they regard as outdated taboos, with the excuse that the end justifies the means, hundeds of millions of men, women, girls and boys akive today in poor countries and even in Europe and America suffer today from diseases we can alrady treat easily, cheaply and with no ethical dilemmas. Money is being spent on pointless and imoral research.
If people were really concerned with the relief of suffering, they would work and give for better availability of treatments such as cataract surgery which can cheaply restore sight to many blind people, and is not available to many of the world's poor.
Human/animal embryo experiments are most unlikely to develop treatments for genetic diseases, but if they do it will be very risky and probably too expensive to be afforded. Do people remember a few years back when parts of aborted foetuses were injected into the brains of Parkinson's disease? It didn't work, nor was it ever likely to.
Since we all have to leave this world sooner or later, three score and ten or perhaps four score as the psalm says, we would do better to ' number our days and get a heart of wisdom' i.e. think more about our eternal destiny and get right with God, the Great Maker of all things.
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