Watching PBS has become rather interesting in recent years… More and more I see how many of their old standbys such as the series Nova are becoming more and more propaganda outlets for the “Death-o-crats” or the Right to Die movement.
Tonight’s show (which I caught about halfway through) was a news magazine that featured different stories told by different reporters. The first segment I watched was about human stem cell cloning—and how wonderful it is.
We’re introduced to a young girl who has juvenile diabetes and must test her blood sugar levels about every two to three hours. It is hard to watch how brave this junior high girl is when it comes to poking herself in the finger and drawing blood and giving herself insulin shots. There’s no denying that it is a tough life and one fraught with many dangers, from going completely blind someday to complete kidney and heart failure. It would be nice if a cure could be found to save her—and the millions of children like her—from this horrible fate.
Enter the stem cell cloning scientist… He has all the answers. One day we will have the ability to help diabetics make insulin he declares. The answer lies in embryonic stem cells extracted from blastocysts, or that small clump of cells that forms after a human egg is fertilized (or made to think it’s been fertilized). By destroying the outer layers of the blastocyst, the stem cells can be extracted and grown in a Petri dish, encouraged to become whatever cells we want them to become.
The reporter telling the story blithely reports that the same clump of cells can also be implanted in a woman’s uterus and grow into a baby. Imagine that!
So, this is where the dividing line falls… Do you believe that blastocysts have rights? Are blastocysts “human”? Do “potential babies” have the same right as already grown human beings?
You can guess where the PBS reporter’s sympathies lie. It’s tough not to agree with her when shown pictures of sick children who need to take insulin daily or need bone marrow transfusions. Of course no photos of discarded babies were shown to give the story any balance. The only thing shown was the evil Congress and the president who voted to ban human cloning altogether.
Bad, bad Congress! Don’t you want little girls with diabetes to live healthy lives?
The next segment on the show was fascinating on its own merits, and it really struck me as odd. How was it odd? Well, it was all about a “resurrection” of sorts… It seems that the North American tree frog can literally “freeze” itself into a block of ice so it can hibernate through the winter and “resurrect” itself in the spring in time for the mating season.
What a wonderful gift these little brown amphibians display! They can stop their breathing, their heart from beating and their body from eliminating wastes for months while the world is frozen. Their bodies make some kind of sugary “anti-freeze” solution so their organs shrink and are encased in a protective coating while they freeze solid. The little things in hibernation look just like hard, brown rocks. What a miracle they are!
What do frozen frogs, which rise from the dead each spring, teach us simple human beings about the rights of blastocysts? If anything, the tree frog teaches us that we should trust God—He knows how to take care of us. He can take care of us during the “frost” of life, and He can take care of us even if we have to test our blood sugar numerous times a day.
How can we pronounce anything He has created—frogs, blastocysts, little girls—not precious and worthy of life?
How can we destroy any of them?
1 comment:
It is very a pity to me, that I can help nothing to you. I hope, to you here will help. Do not despair.
Post a Comment