The Slippery Slope on Steroids -- Part One of Two

This entry is being composed as the British Parliament is considering lowering the supposed "upper" limit on abortions from 24 weeks to something nearer 20 weeks.

There would appear to be close to zero chance of success.

The British media and the medical establishment have cultivated an environment which states flatly that the only reason to lower the upper threshold is if a significantly larger percentage of premature babies today can survive when born at 24 weeks (and earlier) than did in 1990, the last time Great Britain re-examined its abortion law. And that not only has there been no significant improvement--a conclusion which is, at a minimum, in dispute--it is only "religious fundamentalists" who carry the banner and do so in the face of the need to honor "women's autonomy."

Whenever we talk about how in the tank our own media establishment is, we should remind ourselves that when compared to the relentlessly, hysterically pro-abortion British press, they are practically sister publications to National Right to Life News.

Meanwhile, the disinformation campaign easily carried the day on Monday behind that most effective battering ram: the promise of curing wretched disease. Want to cure Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, maybe cancer. spinal-cord injuries and muscle damage? Well, get out of the way and allow mass production of chimeras--animal/human hybrids--on which to experiment.

There was this surreal discussion yesterday over what the Times of London called "admixed" versus "true hybrids." (The difference reflects whether the creation is closer to being half animal and half-human, or almost entirely human.) Amendments allowing both easily passed.

It's important to understand, as bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has noted, that there is no attempt in the United Kingdom either to outlaw human embryonic stem cell research or human cloning using human eggs. Researchers simply want to use the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to write a blank check to do anything.

What makes this part of the debate so relevant for us is how anti-life forces in the United Kingdom have used the same deceptive tactics we've seen here as they move further and further into what Cardinal Keith O'Brien described as a "monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life."

Writing in the British publication The Tablet, neuroscientist Neil Scolding brilliantly explicates "the determined efforts of some of the bill's more politically motivated protagonists is a confusion of the issues and a classic sleight of hand - in two separate ways."

The first, he writes, "is tacitly to allow the exciting advances in adult stem-cell treatments to illustrate the far more speculative therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells; to use the former to justify the latter."

Scolding tells us about a huge supplement in last Saturday's edition of the Times that "relentlessly trumpeting stem-cell therapies and research with heart-warming stories of stem-cell cures and exciting reports of scientific progress."

Guess what? "[Q]uietly submerged was the fact that every one of the stories concerning patients was about adult stem cells; and every report concerning embryonic stem cells was an experimental or animal study, or one speculating on their possible future potential. Not a single patient has been treated, even in trials, with embryonic stem cells: it would be too dangerous."

The "second sleight of hand," Scolding writes, is to turn the debate "into a referendum on all embryonic stem-cell research"--insisting that there is ""no alternative." But as we have often written about in this space "clinical scientists around the world have been extraordinarily excited by the emergence in the last year of a new technique for producing so-called "inducible pluripotent stem cells" (IPSCs)."

As you recall, IPSCs are virtually identical to embryonic stem cells but do not require killing human embryos. The process is amazingly simple. Adult cells--often skin cells--have their biological clocks turned back ("de-differentiated"), a far less complicated technique than, for example, human cloning.

There is an inverse relationship between success using adult stem cells sources and the hype for embryonic stem cells sources. The more promising the results from the ethically unobjectionable adult stem sources the more over-the-top is the "promise" of stem cells sources stepped in controversy.

You can read Scolding's fascinating essay at http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/11453/

Tomorrow we will talk about the efforts in Parliament today to reduce the upper limit on most abortions.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part Two