Cris, what I meant seems bleeding obvious to me. Unless humanity lives
sustainably and that includes dealing with our ever rising population in the
name of religion, we will indeed be hit by a proverbial train, once ecosystems
start to collapse. All I’ve ever heard in response is “ah but god has a plan”

Well mother nature too has a plan and when the time comes, that is usually
short and swift.

To assume that people who don’t accept you particular line in the sand as
having no innate sense of what is fair, is absolute nonsense as far as I am
concerned. Plenty of secular humanists are very pro stem cell research,
also pro choice. There simply is no such thing as objective morality,
so its down to our subjective opinions, where we draw those lines in the
sand.

If you say that religion has absolutely no input as to where you draw your
particular line in the sand, then you are one of very few people that I know
with such an opinion. I have followed the abortion, ru 486 and similar
debates fairly closely and people could give awfully long winded explanations
for their opinions, but nearly all of the time they turned out to have some
connections with the so called pro life movements, the Catholic or one
of the Fundie churches.

The Vatican are extremely good
lobbyists and have a huge network to do exactly that, in ways that are
not always apparent that its them pushing buttons behind the scenes.

Pointing out the flaws of us using religion as a guide to morality,
rather then our ability to reason, sometimes just points out the
obvious, there is really nothing to divide.

Personally I actually think its quite inhumane of us, to leave people
sitting in wheelchairs for life etc, whilst we flush sperms and ova
down our toilets by the millions and billions, without a second thought.

If wasted sperms and ova could assist in having people walk
again, reduce suffering etc, to me that is the logical, rational and
humane thing to do

Yabby,

I'm past that. I've let it go. Let's move on.

Population strategies were addressed earlier and have nothing to do with this debate so I won't be revisiting that diversion.

The religion argument and related spin has been exposed for what is.

Humanity is at the core of this debate Yabby - not religion.

Regarding your statement **inhumane of us, to leave people sitting in wheelchairs for life**

Yabby, the western world is based on a free market system for all industries. Health is one of those industries.

The principle of a free market system is that money is invested with an expectation of a profitable return ($).

Let's now consider the path of investment dollars for health. In a free market health system research money and investment is determined solely by the size of the potential health market - not by degree of suffering - not be degree of need.

The equation is simple. The larger the market = the larger the potential profit = larger research funds. Subsequently most money is directed into those research projects that are most likely to return the greatest profit.

CURING someone is not a profitable exercise. If it was, chronic disease would have been wiped out long ago.

Fact is, if the wheelchair-bound do not present a tantalizing economic argument for research investment their condition will not top the 'to do' list - so indiscriminately raising the hope of sufferers with unqualified promises of potential embryonic stem cell cures is cruel, inhumane, and should be stopped.

Yabby,
My apologies. The reason I didn’t answer you question is because I didn’t understand what the dilemma was, and I thought subsequent remarks of yours might clarify things. They didn’t.

I can only assume this scenario: I’m being threatened at gunpoint with either flushing the embryo down the toilet or skinning the dog? Well the answer is that I think it perfectly moral to do neither, and to bear the consequences. In no circumstances would I think it moral to for me flush a living human being, no matter how vulnerable and small, down the toilet.

But doesn’t your question beg our whole debate? YOU think it will bring me up short because you think it’s OK to flush away: in fine, you think it’s OK to destroy non-vicious human lives sometimes. But you seem to have overlooked that I don’t and am asking you always (in vain, it seems,) to justify your position.

Here’s another place where you beg the question: you appeal our “democratic” system with its wonderful non-abusive “separation of powers” and “educated” people as the arbiters of who is & who is not to be killed. But if as I and many others argue, the zygote is a human being, worthy of the rights of all others, then this system is profoundly UNdemocatic – over 80,000 humans are being abusively slaughtered every year in this country under our “democratic” laws. (And even then, no-one voted for the current abortion regime. It was unelected judges who opened the gates to this Trojan horse.) In a truly democratic system as we view things, the presumption would be that any voiceless human being would vote to stay alive – as 99% of all voting humans do. Likewise parents would be given extra votes – in proportion to the number of their progeny, so they could adequately give voice to the interests of their children. Our current democratic rules are a sham. It’s a system designed by the powerful for the powerful.

Education? I have 3 graduate degrees and 2 postgraduate diplomas. What’s gone wrong with the system?

Fester,

I’m confused: I thought we’d covered the innate thing already. viz; One could have all sorts of innate capabilities that can only be repaired by external parties. “Innate”, I said, doesn’t mean “I on my own can repair all defects in my systems preventing me exercising my capabilities”. Suppose I find a chick with a broken wing and I repair its wing. It eventually flies away. Are you saying it had no innate capacity to fly? If so, then it seems we’re starting a long way further back than I thought was the case.

Without prejudice to other interpretations, I like the reason for your use of the word “fundamental”. But I argue that this differentiation is only realized when the zygote is formed. Until this stage, each gamete cell is as much identifiable as a cell of the body from which it sprang as any other cell – eg a skin cell. In other words, the differentiation significance is retrospective – from the moment of conception! If a gamete perishes outside of conception, it does so as a member of the body which produced it. No differentiation beyond that of other body cells has occurred.

But once conception occurs, we have a new entity _ a new self-organising individual, distinct in many ways from its parents, distinct in all sorts of ways from the sperm and zygote that contributed to its emergence. As Yabby argues, even if the DNA is the same as a twin’s (or, in a clone, as the sole parent’s), there are all sorts of ways that the individual is distinct and the environs of any individual being is by definition unique.

I certainy agree with Cris that killing a body cell such as a sperm or ovum is a qualitatively different act, morally speaking, to killing a human being qua zygote. Killing the sperm/ovum for the precise reason of preventing a human being coming to be seems close to homicidal and it is, to my mind, definitely morally inexcusable. But not of the same gravity. Indirectly killing it for medical purposes is another matter.

HH, given the options, you did not answer my moral dilemma question, but I
had good reasons to ask it. It is easy for you and I to sit back and navel gaze about
morality and tell others how they should live. But in order to empathise with
others, we have to realise that sometimes the crunch of reality hits, they are placed
in real life situations of choice and simply HAVE to decide between a and b, even
if both go against their moral principles. We then have to search deeper, right down
to our core, to think about how we would react. For me the answer is clear. I could
not put my dog through that kind of incredible suffering, for a being that neither
thinks nor feels nor suffers. Perhaps you would prefer to skin your dog alive, you
have not said. Think about it.

My point about our system is that its better then anyone else has suggested. Ok we
could tamper with it. Like say Switzerland, we could vote on virtually everything.
Our present pollies simply rely on surveys to achieve a similar effect. I gather that
on abortion, about 80% -90% of people accept first trimester abortions.

Cris, you might want to ignore population or religion in this debate, but fact is that
they will stay part of it, like it or not. If the core is humanity, then the future of
humanity is clearly part of it too.

Regarding health investment $, you are correct, a part of the health industry, drug
companies etc are for profit. What you ignore is the huge part that is not. I remind
you that 2 individuals, Gates and Buffett, have just donated tens of billions of $ to
do good. Fact is the richest of people realise that they can’t take it with them and
philanthropy is a huge industry with huge amounts of money involved to benefit
humanity. Govt funds are another source, ie NIS US funding. The Christopher
Reeves Foundation alone funds millions of $ of research each year.

People care, there is hope!

Please dwell on the following statement which is undeniably TRUE:

HUMANS ARE VULNERABLE AT MANY POINTS AND TIMES DURING THEIR LIFETIMES.

HOW IS THIS TRUTH RELATED TO THE DEBATE AND PROPOSED LEGISLATION?

'Conditioning' is an unscrupulous process - the purpose of which is to influence someone to respond in a predictable way - as real estate agents have been known to 'condition' sellers to accept a lower price for their house.

If you've been following this debate, you'll have noticed insidious arguments creeping in. Posts repetitively focussing on the APPEARANCE of early human life, AGE of early human life, and INCAPACITY of early human life to reason. Note, EVERY ONE OF THESE ARGUMENTS can ALSO APPLY to ALL STAGES of HUMAN LIFE, and therefore bear sinister testimony the slippery slope 'conditioning' process has already begun.

Are YOU being gradually 'conditioned' to consider every chink in the human armour as evidence of a life unworthy of living? Are you being influenced to respond in a predictable manner?

Give this time to really sink in. Today, supporters of Embryonic Stem Cell Research say they want to create and kill embryos, but some are already 'conditioning' us to consider other vulnerable (unworthy) humans - those without capacity to reason.

The scope of 'capacity to reason' includes most other vulnerable stages of human life - too innumerable to in a few words here. Just to get you thinking about future consequences, the same arguments could be applied to Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, Autism, Depression PLUS ANY OTHER MEDICAL CONDITION, accident, or adverse health outcome that might transform your body from a 'person with capacity to reason' to a 'person without capacity to reason'.

Just four years ago politicians were against creating embryos for experimentation - but four years of 'conditioning' appears to have dramatically altered this landscape.

Are you fully informed?

Have you fully considered the long-term consequences of this legislation and the future risk for yourself and your families?

BAD THINGS CAN ONLY HAPPEN WHEN GOOD PEOPLE ARE 'CONDITIONED' TO DO NOTHING.