Pro-life daily vid: Pro-lifer responds to ALS ice bucket challenge
by Kelli
Pro-lifer Reilly Ball (pictured right) responded to the popular ALS ice bucket challenge on her blog, explaining her pro-life perspective both there and on her YouTube page:
As it turns out, The ALS Association is performing embryonic stem cell research, which is funded by a a single donor. Adult stem cell research can be beneficial to progressive science technology but still lets the human live. This is great and has been shown to help fight ALS and other neurological diseases. Embryonic stem cell research harvests the baby’s stem cells in such a way that the baby cannot live. This is the intentional act of killing an innocent human child which is a form of abortion. The biggest irony of the whole situation is that embryonic stem cell research has shown zero effect in fighting ALS or other neurological diseases!
So what does this have to do with me dumping a bucket of ice water over my head?
The message of the video is to educate my friends of two points: first, ALS awareness and fundraising and second, supporting the ALS Association isn’t an ethical or beneficial option. Abortion is never a necessary evil. Why should we support the killing of millions of lives to hopefully find the cure for thousands?
I think the problem with the ALS Association lies in the fact that they would allow that kind of study to be done. When you’re donating to an organization, you’re donating to their ideas, motives, and worldview. Even though the ALSA works hard at fighting ALS, they are going about it in the wrong way by accepting embryonic stem cell research regardless of who ends up funding it….
So by all means, go ahead and dump freezing water on your head. I did it! Just remember why you’re doing it and know where your money is going.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/9n0SuUjhL88[/youtube]
Reilly was one of Created Equal’s interns and justice riders this summer!
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
[HT: Jill; photo via blogspot.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
She’s cute.
Stem cell research is just in its infancy, and nobody knows where it will end up. Embryonic stem cells have the advantage of being pluripotent, i.e. they can become all sorts of tissue, rather than being differentiated and specialized in function. They also can live for more than a year in the laboratory, proliferating away, while most non-embryonic stem cells cannot.
It’s also easier to get a good many stem cells from embryos, while for adult cells they are few and far between.
I can see the objection to IVF from a blanket “pro-life” position, but with IVF the embryos are left over, anyway.
I don’t think the genie is going back in the bottle on this whole deal.
It is so frustrating to see people regurgitating the same old pro-embryonic stem cell research talking points. If you want to know the truth about ethical, successful stem cell research, please check out http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.org.
Good to know, I only give to local organizations or to Pro Life ones. I stopped giving to St. Jude Research Hospital because Marlo Thomas was on the board and even did advertising for them. While the work they do is good, they’re not getting my money because Marlo Thomas identifies as pro Choice. Her father, Danny Thomas was pro life and I did give then.
http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.org.
This is a very biased site, whose *stated mission* is to promote adult stem cells.
You can find the real truth at National Institutes of Health, the University of Minnesota, etc.
Adult stem cells are simply not the same as embryonic ones, and research on both types is continuing. Both types have a ton of potential.
Doug, ESCR is on the way out, personalized lines like those from iPSC are on the way in. That’s why we hear so little about ESCR these days, why the money, celebrities, and headlines aren’t in it anymore.
What a noxious way of thinking about ethics, I don’t mean to offend but to shock you here, with the idea that once something inherently wrong is “out of the bottle,” we might as well just do it anyway. I don’t understand how, even if you disagree with us, that you can’t see the pro-life objection to human embryonic stem cell research. Those embryos are alive, they are no more “leftover” than abandoned children. Experimenting on people without their consent is wrong, especially since it requires their death. While you may discriminate between a human being and a “person” based on a human being’s age, development, or “wantedness,” pro-life people have the logically simple belief that every innocent human being has the right to life. Even if someone may die in the near future, it’s no justification for treating them like property. After all, none of us are making it out of here alive!
Chris, many times in history, things could have been “discarded” or “de-emphasized” before they led to real breakthroughs.
I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, but should stem cells – of either type – be involved in a cure that would save one of us or one of our loved ones, then I imagine that the objections will melt right away, most of the time.
There is no “inherently wrong.” That is an incorrect pretense on your part. In the end you may be right that adult stem cells are what gives us the most medical help, but for now the whole deal is just getting started, the surface barely even scratched.
As far as “leftover embryos,” few people want an unlimited number of kids. Once IVF is successful, for many couples, that’s it, they don’t want any more, and many times they agree for the remaining embryos to be used in research. Granted that you think it’s no good.
As far as human experimentation is concerned, no matter the benefits to humankind, it is impermissible to perform human experimentation without the freely-given consent of the person being experimented upon.
This was the conclusion at the Nuremberg Trials Against Humanity and the Peace of the World: “The purpose of medicine is the curing of the patient, not the advancement of medicine.” In other words, during the process of treating a patient, breakthroughs may be found in treatment, but no person who has not given consent to experimental treatments may be so experimented upon. As embryonic persons may not give consent they may not be experimented upon.
Beyond that, fertilized embryos aren’t even patients. Treating the innocent preborn as if they have no reason to exist other than to die so others may possibly live is a grave moral error, just as Nazi human experiments were.
After the Nuremberg Trials, the whole world said, “Never again!”
The problem with embryonic stem cells, aside from the obvious ethical quandary, is that their once-touted “elasticity” has turned out to be instability. Adult stem cells are much stabler, and, really, you do not need a one-size-fits-all stem cell that can become any cell in the human body, because there are different TYPES of adult stem cells, and, what one cannot do, another one can.
BMMG, this is truly at odds with what the National Institutes for Health says.
Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies.
The difficulty in getting our hands on adult stem cells aside, I do agree that some “type-casting” will often be okay for the adult stem cells, presuming the right type can be gotten for the task at hand. There is also the benefit of less tendency for the cells to be rejected, coming from the same donor.
Adult stem cells are found in bone marrow and umbilical cord blood, among other places. They have proved useful enough that they have already been used to treat human patients against dozens of diseases — including ALS.
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Doug,
I find it extremely insensitive of you to say that “with IVF, the embryos are left over anyway”. Embryos are human lives, created in the image of God with value and purpose. There are many who see their value and are adopting them–my son-in-law and daughter are one such couple who are doing just that. Reilly’s concern is a very valid one. She understands the value of human life even at the earliest stages of development.
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