Bill Clinton: 'It Depends on What the Definition of 'Pro-life' Is'

The claim that cloning, and the stem cells it might produce, is on the verge of bringing a cure to your sick father with Alzheimer's or your debilitated mother with Parkinson's is a scandal. It is a cruel deception perpetrated by cynical scientists and ignorant politicians. Its purpose is clear: to exploit the desperation of the sick to garner political support for ethically problematic biotechnology.
--Charles Krauthammer


Bill Clinton was in town Friday to stump for what he calls the “pro-life” position--or at least that misunderstood segment of the pro-life cause that wants to kill embryos to feed the biotech jackpot of embryonic stem-cell research. (“Clinton backs stem cell bill”).

Says Clinton about Proposal 2:

“This is the pro-life position, this is the pro-health position, this is the pro-science position and this is definitely the pro-Michigan position,” Clinton told more than 500 supporters at a fundraiser for MichiganCure, the group backing Proposal 2, which Michigan voters will consider on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The star of the fundraiser was Laura Jackson, 19, who has been paralyzed from the neck down for five years due to a cheerleading accident that broke her neck. She and her family claim “she has seen major improvements after a treatment based on stem cells she received in China.”

Borrowing a page from the Gospel According to John Edwards, Clinton promised the crowd that "Stem cell research will tell us how to give Laura a chance to walk again. And then we'll all be her cheerleaders."

Unfortunately, Ms. Jackson and her family have been claiming the controversial treatment led to improvements since at least December 2004, when her story was reported in The Guardian. ('I Don't Know How It Works'). In December 2004 they reported she could breathe off her ventilator for 15 minutes. A year later, they claimed she could breathe off her ventilator for 30 minutes. She is still confined to her wheelchair, four years after her "treatment."

Regardless, Ms. Jackson is not the beneficiary of embryonic stem cells of the type addressed in Proposal 2. Proposal 2 (for now) is limited to the use of frozen embryos that were not being used for implantation, and were to be discarded anyway. Laura, if she benefited at all, was "treated" with cells taken from the noses of aborted fetuses, fetuses at least 16 weeks along. The inventor of this technique, (which he practices in China almost exclusively on American patients with spinal cord injuries and money), is Dr. Hongyun Huang. As with all magic, he admits he doesn't know how it all works. ('I Don't Know How It Works').

The cells, harvested from the olfactory bulbs inside the noses of foetuses, seem to have unusual properties, which may include the ability to stimulate change in the nervous system. Ideally, says Huang, the foetuses should be 16 weeks old to achieve the best results. He says the mothers all give their consent for the embryos to be used in this way and do not receive payment. The Guardian asked to be shown where they come from, but was told this information was too sensitive.

The Guardian was unable to confirm whether or not the embryos give their consent along with their mothers, although Huang confirmed that the embryos definitely don't receive payment. Nor could the Guardian confirm reports that Huang came up with the idea for the whole thing while playing "got your nose" with his sole non-aborted three-year-old niece.

And I can tell you I'm personally creeped out, and apparently so is the Guardian writer, Jonathon Watts, with the whole Chinese "never-mind-where-we-get-all-the-aborted-fetuses" thing.

But lest anyone think I'm being unduly dismissive of Huang--even anti-science about it--you need to know that

None of [Huang's] claims has been proven to western scientific standards, but Huang's willingness to think the unthinkable in order to cure the incurable is inspiring hope; so much hope that patients are putting aside ethical qualms, paying tens of thousands of dollars and flying to Beijing to act as his guinea pigs.

And,

Complicating the debate is Huang's lack of statistical data and and his refusal to carry out the double-blind trials considered necessary in western circles to rule out the placebo effect. The Chinese neurosurgeon says such tests are unethical because they involve cutting someone open and only pretending to treat them. "This would not be legal in China," he says. "Even if it was, I wouldn't do it. Double-blind trials only harm the patient."

And they say we're anti-science.

Lastly, I should point out that Laura's father, Daryl, whom the Guardian quotes, obviously in error, as saying he doesn't "agree with abortion," is nowhere as staunchly "pro-life" as, say, Bill Clinton.

In 2004 Laura's father said:

"We need 100 more Dr Huangs. And we need more cells. It's a different government over here. They have to trim the population. There are 15 to 20 million abortions in China a year. If everyone who was aborted could save a life, there would be no sick people left in the world."

Other than that, he's personally opposed to abortion. I have no doubt that Daryl Jackson's badly distorted views are the result of the tragedy he has witnessed in his daughter's life. But distorted they are, as even Guardian reporter Jonathon Watts noticed. Watt's can't help commenting on this statement of Daryl's:

"I don't agree with abortion, but it will happen anyway. In the US, we do abortions but don't use the cells. In China, they don't just take life and destroy it - they give something back. It's like lemonade out of lemons. You take something bad and you make it good." Such reasoning requires a moral somersault, but it is one that can be done easily in China. That is enough to generate hope.

Hope of some sort, anyhow. But not, apparently, cures. Laura Jackson appeared at the fundraiser Friday night still paralyzed from the neck down, still in her wheelchair, four years after being Huang's guinea pig.

There is no doubt that Proposal 2 is going to lead to an increased demand for "more cells," more fetuses, more "lemons" to make lemonade, more sources of the magical organs of human beings to feed this ghastly science. There is no doubt that this industry will eventually start demanding both cloning, and then more aborted fetuses, whether for their noses, or some other part of their murdered corpses.

Billionaire Price-Fixing Mall King Throws Down on Penniless Embryos

The Detroit News’s Laura Berman is all atwitter about the wealthiest backer of Proposal 2, Michigan billionaire, ex-con, and co-inventor of the shopping mall, Al Taubman. ("Visionary sets sights on stem cell research").

Taubman is dropping $22 million on his very own Taubman Institute for Medical Research to show his support for stem cell research. He’s invited Bill Clinton to come to a fundraiser at his very own Taubman Air Terminal at Oakland International Airport. (Maybe some day your fertilized eggs will be destroyed for science in his very own Taubman Giant Embryo-Powered Cure-a-Tron).

Berman positively gushes over Taubman:

“He is, always has been, a man with an eye for the way the world is going -- and that eye has made him a billionaire. ‘When I look at a chair,’ he says, nodding at the Josef Hoffman chair in his study, another museum-quality piece, ‘I see not only how to make it different, but better.’"

That’s what makes him an expert at both science and ethics. (Oh, and Taubman says this of his nine months in the big house for price-fixing at Sotheby’s: "a complete waste." At least corrections officials could have given him a plate of embryos so he could cure Crone’s Disease.)

Berman dishes up the usual cogent breakdown of the issues surrounding Proposal 2. On the one hand, scientists and other proven smart people like Taubman see this as a no-brainer. Not only will embryonic stem cell research cure all disease, period, it will be the re-making of Michigan’s struggling economy by creating jobs.

But then how does she explain the other hand? Not by mentioning anywhere that embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of living human embryos. She wouldn’t want to draw attention to the grave ethical issue involved in destroying one human being to satisfy some other human being’s “right” to a cure.

The closest she comes is to say the MiCause, the main opposition organization, “is being funded by the Michigan Catholic Conference and Michigan Right-to-Life, both groups who contend that life begins at conception and oppose allowing scientists to develop new stem cell lines.” Oh, my. In this day and age people are still carping on how “life begins at conception”? Where’d they ever come up with that silly notion?

I’m sure most of you parents all remember something like this scene in your own lives:

HUSBAND: Hi, honey, I’m home. How was your day?

WIFE: I went to see Dr. Jones today. He says I’m pregnant. Eight weeks along.

HUSBAND: Really? I have no idea what that means.

WIFE: He says there’s still no scientific consensus on what it means.

HUSBAND: Oh.

WIFE: He says there’s something in there, but science still can’t say what. He says some of the more primitive religions consider it a baby, but, you know….we've never put any stock in that.

HUSBAND: Dang. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. So what’s for dinner?

And as for what Berman calls the opposition to “allowing scientists to develop new stem cell lines,” I’m at least loosely affiliated with both Michigan Catholic Conference and Michigan Right-to-Life, (that is, I’m a Catholic and an RTL supporter), to assure one and all that that’s flatly untrue. We don’t object to new stem cell lines in the least, provided they aren’t created by destroying human embryos. You know, for people who pride themselves on nuance, this should be an easy distinction to make.

Those of us morally opposed to lethal embryonic research are probably more conscious than others about the developments in adult stem cell therapies, see for example

“Adult Stem Cells: 72, Embryonic Stem Cells: 0”;
“Diabetics cured in stem-cell treatment advance”;
“Real-World Successes of Adult Stem Cell Treatment”,

all of which we support without reservation. But the media avoids reporting on these because they contradict their themes of the urgency of harvesting embryos, and the anti-scientific mentality of people who oppose cloning.

Berman also accuses our side of lying about where Prop 2 might lead:

“[P]ublicly, they're attacking the ballot issue by suggesting it will raise taxes (the proposal has no such provision) and open the door to cloning. (Cloning is banned by law in Michigan.)”

True, the proposal doesn’t raise taxes, and cloning is banned--for now. If the ballot proposal did contain a tax hike—here in Jenny Granholm’s and Andy Dillon’s "blown-away" Michigan--it would go down in flames like the Hindenburg--only with hotter flames. Better leave that tax increase for later! And as for there being a ban on cloning in Michigan, state legislators have already been at work for several years to pass bills legalizing cloning, so it’s not as if that ban can't disappear some day.

And because constitutional amendments naturally lead to an altered legal landscape, what’s wrong with pointing out where Prop 2 will lead, especially if it’s based on the experience of other states? For instance, the California amendment prohibits buying and selling human eggs, and now their scientists are demanding a lifting of the prohibition, crying that the shortage of eggs is keeping them from the promised breakthroughs:

"You need to have enough eggs to make this thing work, and when you have enough eggs it does work," said Dr. Sam Wood, chief executive of La Jolla-based Stemagen Corp.

"If these guidelines weren't in place, we'd already have many (stem cell) lines and be much closer to a treatment for devastating illnesses for which these are so well suited," Wood said. (“Scientists: Egg shortage hurts stem cell research”).

So both the taxing situation and the cloning situation could easily change, and Prop 2 makes that more likely, not less.

Not to mention that if Proposal 2 passes, it will be almost impossible to pass legislation thereafter to limit cloning or any other abuse; that’s because Prop 2 contains a provision making it unlawful to pass any laws that in any way hinder any possible benefit that might result from embryonic stem cell research. Maybe the amendment does have that defect, says the pro-Prop 2 Detroit News editorial board helpfully. But if the necessity for regulations ever did arise, “a process is in place to revise the state Constitution.” Wow, as easy as that?

Berman finds absolutely compelling Visionary Taubman's opinion on the necessity of lethal embryonic research:

“He's convinced that he's involved in a historic moment, equivalent to the discovery of antibiotics, one that will cure disease and forever change the way medicine is practiced.

"’Before antibiotics, the doctors could treat you with aspirin, and that was it. Antibiotics changed the world. Now, embryonic stem cell research is going to do the same thing.’ says Taubman.”

Right. Embryonic stem cells. Antibiotics. Same thing. Now that’s nuance.

Here’s a quick quiz. Everyone who’s ever been cured or known someone cured with antibiotics raise your hand. Now, everyone who’s ever been cured or known someone cured, or even seen an actual report or heard of anyone, anywhere, who’s ever been cured of anything as a result of embryonic stem cell therapy, raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone?

(Extra credit: on average, how many humans die in the manufacturing of antibiotics?)

As even the New York Times (no champion of embryos to say the least) said only last year, “For all the hopes invested in it over the last decade, embryonic stem cell research has moved slowly, with no cures or major therapeutic discoveries in sight.”

Invested over the last decade. Remember, a decade is so long Obama, Biden, & Pelosi swear that's too long to make drilling our own oil worthwhile. And not only have there been no cures, but none are in sight. That’s even farther off than the sinking of Manhattan from global warming. At least Al Gore can see that.

“But that’s an unfair criticism,” some will object, “because in time we will find those cures. It’s only a matter of more time and money and acquiring and grinding up enough embryos until at last we cure MS, diabetes, or whatever is wrong with our [insert family member’s name here.] And provided we can keep you religious nuts from stopping us! In fact, you call yourself a Christian? Yet how dare you condemn poor [insert family member’s name here] to a lifetime of [insert family member’s worst symptoms here]?!”

A year ago, the reports of scientists discovering a way to turn human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells was being praised as an advance that would moot the ethical controversy over destroying embryos.

Those of us who’ve been following the abortion issue were thrilled at this advance, but knew better than to think it would make the demand for lethal embryonic research drop off. Not a chance. And here’s why. The mad rush for embryonic stem cell research has nothing to do with finding a cure for Michael J. Fox. It's got nothing to do with getting your grandma back from the nursing home to her quaint Craftsman bungalow. The whole purpose is to clear the way for human cloning, and, like abortion, they’re determined to protect cloning from all legal restrictions once it’s here.

Does Taubman know any of this, or care? I doubt it. Does it matter? After all, he's a guy who can look at a chair and make it better. Why couldn't he make Michigan better? Here’s Berman on Taubman's heroic gamble:

“Restless, ambitious, intellectually curious still, Taubman is betting that he can help Michigan understand that this research will create jobs and cure disease. ‘It will cure diabetes, heart disease, ALS,’ he says. ‘I believe in it.’ . . . .

‘I'm betting on it,’ he says, and laughs. ‘It's a big bet.’"

Well, ha, ha, ha. Yes, it’s a big bet. Except the biggest bets are the ones where the odds are longer that you’ll bet wrong. And unlike his business gambles, if Taubman loses he doesn’t just file personal bankruptcy and start over. If he’s wrong, Michigan’s humanity loses. He’s betting for all of us, and the ante is a doorway to a Michigan industry where “scientists” dispatch human lives from 9 to 5.

The last time a civilized nation threw the dice on that, snake eyes came up. It made Dr. Mengele laugh, too.