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Today’s News & Views As many of you may know, pro-life stalwart Dr. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, has come under intense criticism in some quarters for a recent radio broadcast in which he unabashedly criticized embryonic stem cell research. Most of what I have read that takes him to task either misses the point Dr. Dobson was making altogether or, ironically, reinforces his point: that such research is "Nazi-esque." On his August 3 nationally syndicated "Focus on the Family" broadcast, Dr. Dobson spoke, as he always does, passionately about the sanctity of human life and the extraordinary dangers of utilitarian thinking. Well into the program he talked about the claims that stem cells extracted from human embryos might help in remedying various diseases and spinal cord injuries. Then Dr. Dobson said this: "But I have to ask this question: In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind. "You know, if you take a utilitarian approach, that if something results in good, then it is good. But that's obviously not true. We condemn what the Nazis did because there are some things that we always could do but we haven't done, because science always has to be guided by ethics and by morality. And you remove ethics and morality, and you get what happened in Nazi Germany." Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman immediately fired off a letter. Besides demanding an apology, his letter made two interrelated points. First, "There is no legitimate comparison between stem-cell research, which seeks to find a cure for disease and to counter human suffering, and the perversion of science and morality represented by the actions of Nazi doctors who deliberately tortured their victims in medical experiments' on human beings, including young children and the disabled. While reasonable, decent people may legitimately differ in their views of embryonic cell research, it is a gross distortion -- and an offensive misuse of the Holocaust - to compare stem-cell research to the hideous barbarities of Nazi pseudo-science." Second, "Your suggestion that the Nazi experiments could have resulted in 'discoveries … that benefited mankind' is especially odious to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who lost relatives and loved ones as a result of those horrific experiments." Let's take the second contention first. The implication is that Dr. Dobson suggested (approvingly) that the incredible brutal, viciously inhuman, almost beyond words treatment of Jewish prisoners in the death camps was (what? okay?) because there might have been discoveries made that "benefited mankind." But as the quote from the broadcast reproduced above makes unmistakably clear, this is a monstrous distortion of Dr. Dobson's comments. He unequivocally condemned what took place--as he has countless times in the past. But his right-on-the-money point was that if all that matters are utilitarian considerations--if the lives tortured and taken in the experiments do not matter one iota--then, as did the Nazi scientists, you can talk yourself into believing it's okay, indeed noble. Dr. Dobson and his guests repeatedly talked about one part of the mantra used then and which is being recycled again now to justify lethally extracting stem cells: the victim is "going to die anyway." (See below.) This gross misrepresentation reminds you of what we talked about Tuesday and will revisit today: the NARAL ad which completely distorted and wholly mischaracterized the views of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts contained in a 1993 amicus brief sent to the Supreme Court back when Roberts worked as a deputy solicitor general in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. So this criticism is just out to sea. How about Foxman's (and others) criticism that, "There is no legitimate comparison between stem-cell research, which seeks to find a cure for disease and to counter human suffering, and the perversion of science and morality represented by the actions of Nazi doctors who deliberately tortured their victims in medical experiments' on human beings, including young children and the disabled." It is quite true that human embryos are not "tortured" when their stem cells are harvested. Obviously, that was not what Dr. Dobson meant--or said. So what did Dr. Dobson mean when it said there was a "Nazi-esque aura" to experimentation on human embryos? As he explained on a follow-up broadcast August 5, "What I said is on Wednesday is that experimentation on human [embryos]... has a Nazi-esque aura to it. I've said that many times. ... But it does. It will lead inevitably, later, to cloning, and, I think ultimately, to the harvesting of body parts, what's called fetal farming. ...You just don't do that. You don't experiment on human beings....That's why I linked it to what the Nazis did." Focus on the Family Action Senior Bioethics Analyst Carrie Gordon Earll said that comparing the Nazi human experiments conducted during World War II to today's embryonic stem-cell research is "historically and ethically accurate and appropriate." "If any apologies are due, it's the advocates of destructive research using embryonic humans who should be apologizing to their fellow members of the human family," she explained. "It is never morally or ethically acceptable to intentionally destroy one human in the hopes of saving another — regardless of the age and location of the human to be sacrificed for research." Ironically, bioethicist Arthur Caplan had just written an editorial for the July 22 issue of Science magazine titled, "Misusing the Nazi Analogy." Surely, we can all agree that there should not be a "cavalier use" of the Nazi analogy. But in dismissing the "deeply flawed" analogy to embryonic stem cell research, Caplan writes the following: "Concentration camp prisoners were used in lethal experiments because they were seen as doomed to die anyway, were seen as racial inferiors, and, given the conditions of total war that prevailed, they were considered completely expendable in the service of the national security of the Third Reich." Two quick points. First, if I was bent on misunderstanding and misrepresenting Dr. Caplan, I'd pretend to believe that he had just offered a three-part justification for lethally experimenting on helpless prisoners. Obviously, that's not true. But, second, we are told over and over and over that so-called "spare embryos" are "going to die anyway." In addition, while it is true that these new humans are not defined as "racially" inferior, can anyone miss that we are being told that their lives have ZERO moral significance? That their importance resides exclusively in dying to [theoretically] "help" others? Make no mistake, culling stem cells from "left over" embryos is but a momentary way station to cloning human embryos and/or "fetal farming"--permitting cloned humans to be grown through a certain stage of fetal development, even to birth, to obtain tissues for transplantation. Such proposals are already making their way into legislative hoppers. The only proviso (for now!) is that the cloned human is not kept alive past the "newborn" stage.
Christianity
Today made an important distinction in its report. Dr. Dobson, it wrote
today, "is not making an ad hominem attack. He's not directly comparing
stem-cell researchers to Josef Mengele. He's drawing a historical lesson." You can reach me, Dave Andrusko, at dandrusko@nrlc.org. |
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