Archive for the ‘Braaiins’ Category
Frankenstein’s Chimera
This GOVERMENT WANTS TO CREATE MONSTERS AND POSSIBLY EAT YOUR CHILDREN Bill really is causing a ruckus isn’t it? As usual, the church hasn’t bothered to check the facts (or is better advantaged by actively misleading people), the constant use of dishonest and emotive language is sadly predicable. Calling the procedure ‘monstrous’, comparing it to creating Frankenstein’s monster and claiming that if this bill passes “extension of abortion laws, legalised raiding of a dead person’s tissue, legalised creation of babies whose sole purpose is to provide spare parts” will shortly follow should be called mindless fear-mongering. The fact for some reason the opinions of people who use texts written by people who thought the sun orbited the earth and then apply them to the cutting edge of modern medicine are given free access to the press and, bizarrely, some say over public matters should be something we’re more concerned with than these experiments.
Besides being unimaginative, the connotations of monsters and immoral Mad Science™ inherent in bringing up Frankenstein are clear. Archbishop Cramner lightly questions the Cardinal for using language like ‘Monstrous’, he then goes on a diatribe about the evils of creating chimera-like monsters, mixes of humans and animals. If Cramner had read the BBC article, let alone done some more in-depth research, he’d know that chimeras are not a possibility here. Essentially all these scientists are doing is taking an animal egg, scooping out the genetic material, sticking some human DNA and letting it grow a little, then stopping that and harvesting the cells it’s produced to research fixes for serious conditions. We are talking about small balls of cells that lack neurones, lack alone anything resembling a brain. There’s no chimera here, even if it were to develop it’s not going to come out with paws or a trunk, there is no non-human DNA present (ignoring the fact that most human DNA is animal DNA anyway). In fact there is no evidence these embryos are even capable of developing (which is one reason why implantation is forbidden). But those facts are inconvenient, these are immoral and monstrous scientists and politicians who have turned away from God and abusing the power they stole from him to create a mockery of life. Science Is Bad.
Something Cramner said caught my eye:
