The Des Moines Register Editorial Board came out today with a disastrous editorial on legislation to legalize human cloning for research in Iowa.
The title of the editorial asserts the "Stem-cell bill is NOT about human cloning" even though the editorial notes that "therapeutic cloning would be allowed" and an embryo is destroyed when its "human embryonic stem cells" (my emphasis) are extracted. It's amazing how scientists hope to get human embryonic stem cells out of embryos which are created through a cloning process that somehow isn't human cloning, isn't it?
The line that takes the cake though, is
There are some lawmakers who believe destroying a clump of cells smaller than the period at the end of this sentence is analogous to taking a human life. We have no argument to0 persuade the people who believe that.
They have no arguments to disprove that human embryos are living human beings. Exactly. Why not? Because it's true, perhaps? Because embryology clearly shows that human embryos are human beings at the earliest stage of development? At least the editorial staff of the Des Moines Register can acknowledge they are entirely bereft of anything resembling an argument. What's amazing is their arrogance to continue to assert their completely untenable and unargued for position.
They continue,
We can only remind Iowans that what we're talking about here are microscopic masses of cells. Destroying them isn't the same as destroying a human life. Holding back this research, though, could prevent saving and improving lives.
They can only point out that human embryos are small and then assert that somehow because human embryos are small they are not human life.
The Des Moines Register is also one of the many papers which inaccurately labeled President Bush's policy on embryonic stem cells as a ban.
How many years will it be before the editorial staffs of newspapers eventually realize that the bevy of miraculous cures from cloning isn't coming. How long before the public actually starts to completely write this kind of propaganda off? 5 years? 10 years?
Richard Doerflinger sums it up when he writes,
Not a bad deal, really: Promote "hope and opportunity" while affecting a general support for "progress"; ignore the falsehoods, failures, and frauds that plague this agenda; and keep promising pie in the sky, by and by, until it's too late for the voters to do anything about it. Not too nice for those patients who needed cures, of course.
