"...each of us has a unique beginning, the moment of conception...As
soon as the twenty-three
chromosomes carried by the sperm encounter the twenty-three chromosomes
carried by the ovum, the whole information necessary and sufficient to
spell out all the characteristics of the new being is gathered...When
this
information carried by the sperm and by the ovum has encountered each
other,
then a new human being is defined which has never occurred before and
will
never occur again...[the zygote, and the cells produced in the
succeeding
divisions] is not just simply a non-descript cell, or a "population" or
loose "collection" of cells, but a very specialized individual, i.e.,
someone
who will build himself according to his own rule. "
Again, in 1990 Louisiana Legislature's House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice June 7, 1990, he testified:
"But each of us has a very precise starting moment, which is the time at which the whole necessary and sufficient genetic information is gathered inside one cell, the fertilised egg, and this moment is the moment of fertilisation. There is not the slightest doubt about it….we can freeze early human embryos…But the human beings which have been frozen are not dead; if we give them back a normal temperature, they will continue again. They will regain their own autonomy and begin again to be themselves. So we know that we have interrupted the dynamic, the movement; but we have not destroyed the information, life can start again…even in an embryo a week old, with those new techniques, we can say already "It's a man" or "she's a woman". It passes our imagination as a geneticist that lawyers knowing suddenly that this embryo a week old is a guy, a boy, or she is a girl, would not recognise at the same time that she is a human person. We can have a barcode [DNA] which is absolutely specific to each of us…This genetic message is in life, and the expression of this genetic message is life. Then to be even shorter, I would say that beyond any discussion, if the message is a human message, the being is a human being."
Quote on experiments on embryos, again by Geneticist Jerome Lejeune:
"To accept the fact that after fertilisation has taken place, a new
human being comes into being, is no longer a matter of taste or of
opinion.
The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a
metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence...Why we
should
not experiment on human beings is very simple: from all the genetic
laws
that we have tried to summarise, we are entirely convinced that every
embryo
is, by itself, a human being...I am a doctor. I have sworn the
Hippocratic
Oath which means that we are at the service of our patients, that we
will
never procure something which can kill an embryo... People would not
have
faith in a doctor who is trying to heal and sometimes to kill with the
other hand." Evidence to Senate Select Committee on Human Embryo
Experimentation.
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee (S-158) Subcommittee on Separation of
Powers,
97th Congress, 1st Session, 1981
In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, physician Fritz
Baumgartner writes:
"Every single human life, born and unborn, is a precious, fantastic
miracle, infinitely more so than what the combined physical structures
of the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon once were. It's time for
America -- and medicine in particular -- to grow up and face the truth.
Violating the dignity of human life -- legal or not -- remains a crime
against humanity. Shame on us in medicine for lacking the moral
certitude
to speak the truth, despite knowing the truth."
Reading: "Hippocrates and the dignity of human life," American Journal
of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 6/02.
ABORTION
"It's interesting to note that everyone who is in favour of
abortion, has already been born." Ronald
Reagan
[Therefore the life they are denying rights to is not their own.]
Feminist icon Germaine Greer recently stated
that never bearing a child has been an enduring
tragedy in her life, due to contraceptive side-effects and the abortion
of her first pregnancy.
"All I knew about babies when I was growing up was
that
they were seriously bad news. Getting pregnant meant the end of all
good
times, morning sickness, bloating, and loss of looks... As I struggled
to
get the education I wanted...I accepted a Grafenburg ring, an early
form
of IUD that my uterus rejected by pushing it like a knife through my
cervix.
Because of the accompanying infection, one fallopian tube had swelled
to
the size of a grapefruit...[After a laparotomy to fix this she believed
herself
sterile. She became pregnant but had a termination.]"the prospect that
I
would be condemned to the life of the impoverished single mother of a
handicapped
child filled me with terror". She went for operations to rebuild her
tubes.
"My 40th birthday came and went...Iwould not terminate my pregnancy
even
if my child was afflicted with Down's syndrome. My gynaecologist was
shocked."[The
pregnancy was a blighted ovum pregnancy] "I still have pregnancy
dreams,
where I'm a huge domed abdomen floating in the warm shallow sea of my
own
childhood, waiting with vast joy and confidence for something that will
never
happen. And my life is full of baby surrogates, animals and birds that
need
nursing."
Germaine
Greer, femininst icon, in "Germaine's baby blues" Courier Mail April
15th
2000 Weekend p.1,4
Philip K Dick excerpts from "The Pre-persons" short
story in "The Little Black Box" volume 5 of the collected stories of
Philip
K Dick, London , Gollancz, 1990.
"I know I'm no different, he thought , than two years ago when I was
just a little kid; if I have a soul now like the law says, then I had a
soul then, or else we have no souls - the only real thing is just a
horrible
metallic-painted truck with wire over its windows carrying off kids
their
parents no longer want, parents using an extension of the old abortion
law that let them kill an unwanted child before it came out: because it
had no 'soul' or 'identity', it could be sucked out by a vacuum system
in less than two minutes. A doctor could do a hundred a day, and it was
legal because the unborn child wasn't 'human'. He was a pre-person.
Just
like this truck now; they merely set the date forward as to when the
soul
entered."
"Why is it, he wondered, that the more helpless a creature, the
easier
it was for some people to snuff it? Like a baby in the womb; the
original
abortions, 'pre-partums,' or 'pre-persons' they were called now. How
could
they defend themselves?
Who would speak for them? All those lives, a hundred by each doctor
a day....and all helpless and silent and then just dead...
And so a little thing that wanted to see the light of day is vacuumed
out in less than two minutes. And the doctor goes on to the next
chick."
"This postpartum abortion scheme and the abortion laws before it
where
the unborn child had no legal rights - it was removed like a tumor.
Look
what it's come to. If an unborn child can be killed without due
process,
why not a born one? What I see in common in both cases is their
helplessness;
the organism that is killed had no chance, no ability, to protect
itself."
"So much easier when the other person - I should say pre-person -
is floating and dreaming in the amniotic fluid and knows nothing about
how to nor the need to hit back. Where did the motherly virtues go to?
he asked himself. When mothers especially protected what was
small
and weak and defenceless?"
"The whole mistake of the pro-abortion people from the start, he said
to himself, was the arbitrary line they drew. An embryo is not entitled
to American Constitutional rights and can be killed, legally, by a
doctor.
But a fetus was a "person", with rights, at least for a while; and then
the pro-abortion crowd decided that even a seven month fetus was not
"human"
and could be killed, legally, by a licensed doctor. And, one day, a
newborn
baby - it is a vegetable; it can't focus its eyes, it understands
nothing,
not talks... the pro-abortion lobby argued in court, and won, with
their
contention that a newborn baby was only a fetus expelled by accident or
organic processes from the womb. But, even then, where was the line to
be drawn finally? When the baby smiled its first smile? When it spoke
its
first word or reached for its initial time for a toy it enjoyed? The
legal
line was pushed back and back. And now the most savage and arbitrary
definition
of all: when it could perform 'higher math'."
"The Church had long since - from the start, in fact - maintained that
even the zygote, and the embryo that followed, was as sacred a life
form
as any that walked the earth. They had seen what would come of
arbitrary
definitions of 'Now the soul enters the body," or in modern terms, 'Now
it is a person entitled to the full protection of the law like every
one
else'".
EMBRYO STEM CELL RESEARCH
Quoting Professor Dianne Irving, in a paper completed for The
Linacre Institute in the USA:
" ... what has not been included in the public debates so far, nor
addressed by the NIH, is the fact that in addition to human embryos
being
destroyed as the source of these "stem cells", these "stem cells"
themselves
can naturally become living embryos which could also be cultivated and
then destroyed during experimentation. That is, once separated from the
whole intact human embryo, these separated cells naturally tend to
undergo
"regulation" -- i.e., to "heal" themselves from any injuries, and
they then revert to being new living whole embryos -- human beings
themselves....
These objective scientific facts are also known by IVF researchers and
clinicians, who consider exploiting this natural "healing" tendency in
order to produce more embryos for cultivation, implantation and
research
purposes (emphases added):
'If these cells separate, genetically identical embryos result, the
basis of identical twinning.' (NIH stem cell report, p. A-3)"
"Stem cells that become embryos -Implications for the NIH guidelines
on stem cell research, the NIH stem cell report, informed consent and
patient
safety in clinical trials"
By Dianne Irving, MA Ph.D. 2001
Excerpts from the TV program "Lateline" ABC 14/8/02: Tony Jones'
interview with Professor Trounsen and Dr David Van Gend:
DR. DAVID VAN GEND: The real heart of it was put to us by our own
Senate
after a 2,000-page Hansard inquiry back in 1986.
They said the question that must be answered is this - what is the
respect due to the human embryo? That implied what is the human embryo,
and they defined it as, with all medical consent, a genetically new
human
life, organised as a distinct entity.
They said in conclusion in this vast study in 1986, our own Senate
said, that the respect due to the embryo means there must be
prohibition
of destructive experimentation, and that the correct relationship with
the human embryo is that of guardian, not of property.
Not of property, but of guardian. That is not some religious body
talking.
That is our Senate, in the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill report of
1986, in October. This is the argument, that the question is - what is
the respect due to the human embryo? You will always hear Dr Trounson
and
his friends talk about the embryo being smaller than a full stop. As if
size matters, as if meaning is measured in milligrams or some sort of
concept.
Yet, Paul Davies the physicist will say the universe was once smaller
than
a full stop, but we've got to get the moral dimension to this.
The fundamental issue is that, if the embryo matters there are certain
things we cannot do. We cannot define this littlest member of the human
family as mere meat for the consumption of science.
That is the line we cannot cross….. The point is this, there is no
good way out for these embryos.
There is no good way out in terms of, if we let them die, that's a
disgrace for our having stockpiled them in the first place. That is not
a good way out, but it's a greater evil to say we will now define a
subgroup
of the human family as laboratory material. We will say specifically in
our laws that now a member of the human race, a genetic member of our
family,
will be material for science to consume. Please realise that, although
the hype is about cures for Christopher Reeve and Parkinson's, the
reality
of this bill allows drug testing on embryos, toxicology testing,
research
for IVF technicians to learn their techniques - this is what's listed
in
the explanatory notes. It's nothing to do with embryo therapies."
"It seems only practical to put our resources into the approach that is most likely to be successful in the long run. In light of the serious problems associated with embryonic stem cells and the relatively unfettered promise of adult stem cells, there is no compelling scientific argument for the public support of research on human embryos." "The Basics About Stem Cells" by Maureen L. Condic, Assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, working on the regeneration of adult and embryonic neurons following spinal cord injury. First Things 119 (January 2002): 30-34.
"Embryonic stem cells cannot be used directly. They are likely to be
rejected, and have been shown to be prone to produce tumours.
Transplanting
incompletely differentiated cells runs the serious risk of introducing
cells with abnormal properties into patients. This is of particular
concern
in light of the enormous tumor–forming potential of embryonic stem
cells.
If only one out of a million transplanted cells somehow failed to
receive
the correct signals for differentiation, patients could be given a
small
number of fully undifferentiated embryonic stem cells as part of a
therapeutic
treatment. Even in very small numbers, embryonic stem cells produce
teratomas,
rapid growing and frequently lethal tumors. (Indeed, formation of such
tumors in animals is one of the scientific assays for the
"multipotency"
of embryonic stem cells.) No currently available level of quality
control
would be sufficient to guarantee that we could prevent this very real
and
horrific possibility."
"The Basics About Stem Cells" by Maureen L. Condic First
Things 119 (January 2002): 30-34.
"We have been a consumer society for so long that for us it seems
right
to consume our unborn. This consumption is not, in the first instance,
by the disabled and the sick. Currently the main consumers work in the
biotech industry, who serve to profit both professionally and
financially
on the tissues of these beings who have never been allowed to be
born....People
have an uncanny ability to justify actions incrementally...it is
declared
a waste to let 'spare' embryos and foetal tissue go unused, and
research
using both is promoted." Andrew Cameron, lecturer in ethics
"Consuming
our unborn is indefensible"(Sydney Morning Herald 7/08/02)
"It is a fallacy to distinguish between surplus embryos and specially
created embryos in terms of embryo research - any intelligent
administrator
of an IVF program can, by minor changes in his ordinary clinical way of
going about things, change the number of embryos that are fertilised"
Dr Robert Jansen, evidence to Senate enquiry, "Human Embryo
Experimentation in Australia" 1986, p.32
Dr Jansen in 2002 recanted this statement in evidence to the Senate
Enquiry
"Just because someone is very young or unwanted or going to die soon anyway is no excuse for killing them, let alone cannibalizing them for spare parts while still alive", says Denis Hart, Archbishop of Melbourne.
RESEARCH ON HUMANS
The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki (revised
1975) states: "In research on man, the interests of science and society
should never take precedence over considerations related to the
well-being
of the subject... The doctor can combine medical research with
professional
care, the objective being the acquisition of medical knowledge, only to
the extent that medical research is justified by its diagnostic and
therapeutic
value for the patient."
The Declaration of Geneva of the World Medical Association binds the physician with the words:
"In medical research on human subjects, considerations
related
to the well-being of the human subject should take precedence over the
interests of science and society." (para.5) "Special attention is also
required for those who cannot give or refuse consent for themselves,
for
those who may be subject to giving consent under duress, for those who
will not benefit personally from the research and for those for whom
the
research is combined with care."(para. 8)