Darwinists Unhappy About Trump Fetal-Tissue Ban
Darwinism cheapens human life. Here’s a huge societal debate about the consequences.
The Trump administration has launched a “sweeping review” of fetal tissue use, reports Nature. It cancelled a contract between the government and a fetal tissue lab, and will review all forthcoming requests by scientists to engage in fetal tissue research.
Pro-life leaders are exhilarated. It’s about time, they think, three years after the Center for Medical Progress shocked the public with undercover videos of Planned Parenthood showing blatant disregard for human life and for U.S. law, treating baby body parts like junk for sale. In David Daleiden’s speech at the Values Voter Summit 2018, he shares some of the videos and describes California’s attacks on CMP, where a pro-abortion judge is still refusing to allow many more hours of video to be released for viewing by the public (WND). The videos showed that Planned Parenthood’s top officials had even approved the manipulation of abortion procedures so that ‘scientists’ could get the choice cuts undamaged. Nature is unhappy – not with Planned Parenthood, but with the Trump administration! The article begins with straightforward journalistic reporting, but ends with its customary anti-conservative subtext.
The US government has cancelled its US$15,900 contract with a company that supplies fetal tissue to researchers at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA, is reviewing “all research involving fetal tissue” and “all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue”, it said on 24 September.
After complaining that the federal government did not make it clear “why” they were doing this (as if that needed any explanation), reporter Sara Reardon worried about all the science that will suffer.
Larry Goldstein, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, says that it’s hard to know why the FDA decided to cancel the contract. “I think the question is whether there’s an attempt to politicize this or whether we can keep to straight scientific and medical merit,” he says. “We support reasonable, non-politically motivated regulation.” But he is concerned that a ban or heavy restrictions on federally funded experiments with fetal-tissue could harm research, particularly on fetal development, organ regeneration and determining whether tissue created from stem cells recapitulates the real thing. Studies of fetal tissue “really can’t be replaced with animal research”, he says.
Hard to know why? Politicizing? Reasonable? These statements in light of the CMP videos sound horrifyingly callous, blind and hypocritical. Reardon ends with pragmatic arguments. Why not use fetal tissue? she asks. It’s destined for the trash can anyway.
Goldstein adds that the fetal tissue used in research is material that would otherwise be discarded. “Scientists are simply asking, if you’re going to throw the tissue away anyway, can you at least donate it to important medical research?” Renate Myles, a spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health, an agency that sits within the HHS, says that it does not have any standing contracts with any providers of human fetal tissue. “We agree that it is important that research involving human fetal tissue should be consistent with the statutes and regulation governing such research, and reminded NIH-funded institutions that awards are conditioned upon compliance of all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations,” she says.
Under Goldstein’s argument, scientists should have access to anything that “would otherwise be discarded.” Would that include all people who die? Some people will their bodies to science, but others want their relatives to give them an honorable burial. Would Nature‘s rule include all victims of capital punishment? How about those put in prison without the possibility of parole? Would it include the brain dead? What qualifies as research, anyway?
Reardon also sidesteps the slippery-slope argument that such practices could lead to human cloning and human-animal chimeras (see Evolution News update by Wesley J. Smith).
J. Beverly Greene
Defenders of fetal-tissue research argue for life-saving treatments that would cease if it were abandoned, but why should that be the only criterion? One life was already sacrificed for ‘science’—the baby. What if researchers found other ways to justify use of fetal tissue, to promote “mental health” or convenience for the living? (Notice that convenience is already some women’s justification for abortion.) What if fetal tissue could be made into baby bottles or toys for those children lucky enough to be born? Why not make it into baby food? Horrifying thoughts, but where does pragmatism end, if human life is not exceptional and worthy of exceptional respect?
Goldstein, Reardon, and the editors of Nature completely overlook the fact that fetal tissue research creates a market for abortion. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers can use “research” as a talking point to reluctant mothers to ensure them they are killing their baby for a good cause. CMP’s videos showed clearly that the sale of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood devalued human life by fostering a callous attitude by abortion providers and their buyers, the “researchers.” Calvaria (baby heads) became a commodity, which according to one Planned Parenthood official, could help her buy a Lamborghini. Can you imagine the horrors that could arise from this strictly pragmatic argument? Scientists could stand below a suicide victim on a bridge, calling, “Jump! I can use your body for research!” Dictators who commit genocide could justify mass murder by sending all their victims to science labs. All for a good cause. It’s tissue that otherwise would be discarded anyway, right? That’s how the Nazi scientists reasoned. Would Nature want to create new markets for genocide?
Some discarded human tissue can be ethically donated to science, because no human soul is involved. Cancer patients give their biopsies to labs to help find cures. People donate organs, like kidneys, sometimes while still living. Women will grow long hair, cut it, and donate it to make wigs for cancer patients. No bioethicist has a moral objection to harvesting adult stem cells, or making induced stem cells from skin. We all lose tissue every day in the form of skin cells that flake off. These tissues all have the full DNA code. A “fetus” (unborn human), though, is on the developmental path to become a human being, and if left on the natural program, would become a full human being with all the rights and privileges that come with that status. A “fetus” will go all the way to birth unless another person decides to kill it. Additionally, the natural human behavior for parents is to nourish and cherish their children. Survivors of botched abortions have shown how valuable their lives are as unique individuals deserving the right to live.
As we have shown repeatedly, Big Science encourages unrestricted abortion and other leftist causes because its Darwinian worldview devalues human life (6 Feb 2017, 4 Feb 2018). To an evolutionist, we humans arose by chance, and have no accountability to a Creator. Life is just material substance. Nobody cares that we got here, and nobody cares when we die. We can set our own moral standards. Tell them, “OK, then we might as well cut up your body for science right now.” Can you imagine the righteous indignation in response? If they complain they should have a choice in the matter, remind them that aborted babies had no choice in the matter. The more they complain it would be immoral, the more they dig themselves deeper in the quicksand on which they stand. Faced with the consequences of their worldview, the pro-abortion scientists would not be able to stop their inner conscience from falsifying their belief that they are “just lumps of tissue.”