Oh great another god toting IDer trying to tell the rest of us that his morals are right and ours are wrong. When is humanity going to be free of these insane people.

Joe. Please state where you are coming from, you are affiliated with:

Pontifical Academy for Life
The Australian Family Association
Endeavour Forum Inc
Family Council of Victoria
National Civic Council

The Second World Congress of Families

Australian speakers included Dr Joe Santamaria, Kevin Andrews MP and Mrs Babette Francis.
The Congress resolutions included:
Taking innocent human life through abortion and euthanasia is wrong; respect for human life demands that we choose the life-protecting options of adoption and palliative care. The destruction of embryonic human beings, lethal human embryo experimentation and abortifacients also involve the wrongful takings of human life ...

Your St Vincent's Bioethics Centre is a Catholic Pro-Life Lobby Group
“By the end of the 1970s, modern reproductive technology posed grave ethical problems for the Church, which went far beyond the issues espoused by the pro-life movement. The establishment of the St Vincent's Bioethics Centre resulted from discussions between the Sisters of Charity, some members of the senior medical staff and the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne. Such discussions included Father Harman who strongly advocated the formation of a Catholic Bioethics Centre as a counterforce to the prevailing utilitarian philosophy being promoted by the high profile Monash University Bioethics Centre.”
Of course you are following your PRO-FAMILY LOBBY GUIDE http://www.fcv.org.au/profamguide.htm?randid=0927627635
Your views are not based on any scientific facts, except those quoted by the Endeavour Forum which was set up to counter feminism, defend the unborn and the traditional family.

Please acknowledge you pro-life evangelist status before attempting to justify your rantings in psuedo-science. I realise that the FCV has identified the internet as a good lobbying tool but please spare us.

Ok so answer me a question if you can.... I've been watching the news, watching thousands of poultry in Turkey, being put in bags and being buried alive, to suffer a cruel and miserable death and nobody says boo.

Most women have the potential to create around 400 little human organsims in their lifetimes. They are nothing more then a bunch of dividing cells. As Darwin noted, not all can survive, that is part of natural law.

So tell me why I should be more concerned with the fate of the dividing cells, then I should be about the fate of the poultry, who are clearly suffering from enormous human cruelty.

The Pope is an unelected foreign dictator. He has a vast network of agents working in most parts of the world. These are the priests and similar. At least they are open, we know who they are and what they claim to stand for.

But more sinisterly, he also has a possibly vaster network of secret agents and double agents. These are the politicians, bureaucrats, advisors and lobbyists who would claim to hold allegiance to the country of their citizenship, but instead work and scheme tirelessly in the service of their master. This is political skullduggery.

And it's a form of treason, isn't it?

What do we want! Rights for Embryo's! When do we want them? Now!

Stupid, stupid stuff..perhaps we should let the embryos vote? Why don't we ask them what they think about stem cell research etc.. oh thats right, they can't think, don't have any self awareness, aren't actually people at all.

'the virtue of justice would extend to the human (embryo), to a more fundamental right for it to exist and to grow and not to be treated as a material commodity for the good of others'

- Like the poor who slave in sweat shops, who carry guns in civil wars at 10 years old, to suffer in poverty, and die with no joy, no happiness in this material world.

'From dust to dust , ashes to ashes'

As we are ALL made from the same dust , a virtue of justice ought to extend to the earth and the air we breath.!

Joe Santamaria is a practising Catholic and a member of the Family Council of Victoria and a former National President of the Australian Family Association.

With his medical background he should be well aware that stem cells produced in lab conditions are not a viable human being.

He should also be well aware that research into stem cells holds a great deal of benefit and knowledge.

If he really cared about the well being of living creatures he would do well to express concern as Yabby suggested and protest at the appalling and inhumane killing of chickens in Turkey - just for starters.

What is it about foetal cells that appear to some to hold more validity than adult women, abused children or the mistreatment of animals?

This article should have remained where it belonged - on the Catholic Weekly.

This is another example of a particular religion attempting to rule us all.

Surely Dr Santamaria (good to see that name still active in questions of the common good) and his arguments should not be judged on the grounds of his faith. Why is it that abortionists and IVF clinics are not criticised when they speak from their vested intrests but a humble Catholic doctor is?

Regarding the arguments put forward, I believe he is quite clear in his criticism of the report and its lack of attention to questions of morality, and I commend him on this.

DF, you forget of course that nobody is forcing Catholics to have an abortion or partake in IVF. So Catholics are free to live by their moral standards, yet some want to force others to live by them too.

If we examine the Catholic argument, http://www.catholic.com/library/Birth_Control.asp

what it somes down to is the biblical dogma of Onan and the holy sperms. Those of us who think that this and other Catholic preaching is a heap of nonsense, leading to more problems of unsustainability for humanity, why should we live according to Catholic dogma?

The days of religious tyranny are over by the way.

DFXK

You stated "Regarding the arguments put forward, I believe he is quite clear in his criticism of the report and its lack of attention to questions of morality".

Its his judgement of what is moral that makes him condemn the report. He should declare his interest and he is FAR from a Humble Doctor he is a leader of the pro-life movement in this country.

Dear Posters,

Dr Santamaria didn't hide his colours and it wouldn't matter for most of you how tall a mast he had! Scientists rarely display their commercial and academic qualifiers overtly. Thank heavens for google & ASIC registers...meanwhile the critics bias is supposed to sail by unchallenged in the territorial waters of the sea of humanism.

Placing aside the overt criticism of Catholism - you would think Elizabeth I was the current monarch! - and setting aside ethics / mores, the issue at hand is whether this is good science and good value for the millions of dollars of public money being directed to speculative embryonic research and away from other research.

Despite the science, we are really dealing with a combination of spin/PR skills, and elements of stockmarket speculation. Dr Florey would have little chance of discovery in such an environment.

Whichever way you cut it, this is a fundamentally dishonest article.

Dr Santamaria, in the best traditions of media spin, conflates opinion with wishful thinking, and then baldly passes it off as logical argument.

He shamelessly takes Prof. Jeeves eminently sensible warning against scientific hubris, "any attempt to elevate science to the level of an ethical system, which must be believed or accepted, immediately opens itself to abuse", to be de facto proof that such abuse exists.

Then he slips in a personal opinion, that "[i]n the fields of reproductive technology and biotechnology generally, the underlying ethical position of scientists around the world is based on utilitarianism", without feeling any need to substantiate or illustrate. Merely conducting experiments on embryos is evidence enough of their lack of ethics, in Dr Santamaria's world.

Followed up with a dismissive "there is no scientific evidence that embryonic stem cells can achieve such an outcome (recovery from crippling handicaps)".

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? All these evil scientists pursuing an impossible dream - why on earth do they bother? This is pure propaganda, and cannot possibly hope to sway an uncommitted observer such as myself.

As if to underline the point, Mr Santamaria continues "It is highly doubtful if embryonic stem cells (ESCs) can ever be used in clinical medicine ...[a]ll its claims for the treatment of any disease process are purely speculative. It is highly doubtful if such cloning can be done without a large bank of donor human ova which would then complicate the substantial problem of tissue rejection. There is no doubt that the treatment of a patient will be at a prohibitive cost. It is known that cell lines established from such embryonic stem cells tend to undergo genetic drift or changes as successive populations are generated from the original cloned cell. It is known that such cells are prone to serious tumour formation.... These are ethical issues"

No, they are matters of sciantific debate. Ethical issues have to do with right-to-life vs right-to-choose. Deliberately mixing the scientific and ethical simply exposes the spin factor.

Pericles,

THERE are runs are on the board for adult stem cell therapies, generally from local (small) teams. The other side is yet to score, despite the backing & budget of a 'World Series.'

Despite either sides bias, I return to the objective question:

Is this good science and good value? This will be difficult as no one is independently assessing either the science or the economics.

cheers!

Reality Check
Can you justify your statement

“THERE are runs are on the board for adult stem cell therapies, generally from local (small) teams. The other side is yet to score, despite the backing & budget of a 'World Series.'”

There are currently several limitations to using adult stem cells. Although many different kinds of multipotent stem cells have been identified, adult stem cells that could give rise to all cell and tissue types have not yet been found. Adult stem cells are often present in only minute quantities and can therefore be difficult to isolate and purify. There is also evidence that they may not have the same capacity to multiply as embryonic stem cells do. Finally, adult stem cells may contain more DNA abnormalities—caused by sunlight, toxins, and errors in making more DNA copies during the course of a lifetime. These potential weaknesses might limit the usefulness of adult stem cells.
Scientists have only been able to do experiments with human embryonic stem cells (hESC) since 1998, when a group led by Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin developed a technique to isolate and grow the cells. Moreover, federal funds to support hESC research have only been available since August 9, 2001, when President Bush announced his decision on federal funding for hESC research. Because many academic researchers rely on federal funds to support their laboratories, they are just beginning to learn how to grow and use the cells. Thus, although hESC are thought to offer potential cures and therapies for many devastating diseases, research using them is still in its early stages.
http://stemcells.nih.gov/StemCells/Templates/StemCellContentPage.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2finfo%2ffaqs%2easp&NRNODEGUID=%7bA604DCCE-2E5F-4395-8954-FCE1C05BECED%7d&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest#nihfund
Please spare us your regurgitated pro-life propaganda and look at the facts. Adult stem cells have been used for over 40 years, hESC have only been studied for less than five. I would prefer the views of the US National Institutes of Health than those of an obvious if closet pro-life propaganda merchant.

I hear stem cells from umbilical cords have been found damn useful, even more efficient than from embryos. Anybody got info on that?

Dear Steve,

Returning to the question you cannot answer - Is this good science and good value? - I will accept that my knowledge is incomplete and ask a supplementary question - for how long should we allow fruitless research? Or, for how long should we accept treatments that have a marginal success rate?

These questions can be argued in terms of economics or the intrinsic value of a human life. As someone on dialysis for 15 years with a 0.3 medical quality of life index, economically I should be disposed of, however, my contribution to society - in my eyes or others - may significantly challenge that rating.

Anyway, given the way society is going, the economic (and pragmatic) may well triumph over the traditional view to save/preserve life irrespective of costs.
Your "closet pro-life propaganda merchant."