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RFM · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject:

Well Adventinian has a valid point: We need leaders to speak out when they see matters going on they believe are immoral. Consider the history of Adolph Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom portrayed themselves as hard nosed pragmatists who might well have been less sucessful if there had been more Reverend Niemollers. Consider George Bush who sees no conflict whatever with his own religious beliefs and a war he unleashed by an organized campaign of falsehood and deception.

The Roman Church and several religious leaders are all wet when it comes to a basic understanding of science. Consider the notion that life begins at conception, which has inflamed so many ardent anti-abortionists and which has also become the established statutory law of several states in the US.

Laying aside the lack of scientific knowledge, the fact is that very few would agree with the proposal that humans could and should be manufactured in an industrial process, not least for the moral issues, but also the legal and economic issues as well. If there is no bar or legal impediment to industrial production of humans, what is to stop some goofy from doing so?

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 928

Scott2006 wrote "It seems as if certain church men are so out of touch with reality - it is scary - they speak as if they have all moral authority to hold back legitimate and ethical investigations into the unknown workings of fatal diseases".

I saw the cardinal on television. Now of course he does believe his church has moral authority, but in fact he was very careful not to claim any exclusive rights to this, he specifically included protestant Christians, Muslims, Jews, and also agnostics and atheists without religious beliefs, amongst those who are concerned about this. Claiming that even folk without religion are concerned struck me as quite a smart move by him, as well as happening to be true.

"Real advances in the quality of life has been achieved through medical investigation. Religious persecution and burning people at the stake for daring to believe that there is more truth to be gained from education and applied learning than various second hand tales and fictitious accounts of the lives of a few men 20 centuries ago is unfortuately an ongoing battle."

That doesn't alter the fact that it isn't just the catholic church which is concerned about the implications of some of the latest developments.

RFM writes "We need leaders to speak out when they see matters going on they believe are immoral".

Every individual has the right and the duty to speak out when they see things going on that are immoral. But as for needing leaders, particularly the leadership of Cardinals and such-like priests, the record of the Roman Catholic Church on NOT speaking out when they see matters going on that are immoral is a DISGRACE. They saw the Nazi holocaust going on, at close quarters, and they said nothing. As for you mentioning Adolf Hitler, he was raised as a Catholic. He never at any time renounced his Catholicism, and he was never at any time excommunicated. It is true that for much of his life he was not a practicing Catholic, but many of his most senior colleagues were. Hitler's closest allies continued to attend mass, and they continued to go to confession. What did their priests do? Tell the top Nazis to say twenty "Hail Marys"? None of the Nazi leadership were ever refused communion, none of them were told it was naughty to exterminate the Jews etc. There is a genuine question about the morality of some research. But the disgraceful record of the Catholic Church can obscure that genuine debate.

RFM · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:56 pm Post subject:

That is all a bit harsh Dave Coull,

After all, the Jewish extermination program was a top secret operation which was kept on a need to know basis. The SD, which was in charge of the program, knew they were commiting crimes, but figured that if they could sue for a compromise peace the rest of the world would not care about it. They were right in the sense that anti-semitism was rife in America, England, France, Italy and Poland just to name a few places at that time.

America refused entry to German Jewish refugees, as did England, with full knowledge of what was going on. There were regular radio programs that extolled the virtues of jew baiting in America from the 1930's on. Within the SS, the inner guard, knowledge of the jewish extermination was only known to the Totenkopf, and not even all of them. Remember that the leaders of July 20, 1944, were almost all Catholic, to a man.

You are certainly right that Pope Pius XXII could have done soemthing more than wring his hands, but look at what happened to Martin Niemoller and he was not the only one. The Nazi government operated a terrorist state and every German citizen knew it. Open your mouth and you simply disappeared. But it is easy to talk of courage in the comfort and safety of one's living room with a full stomach.

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 928

RFM wrote "The Nazi government operated a terrorist state and every German citizen knew it".

Yes, the Nazi state used terror, and yes, most German citizens went along with this, but not all. Some German citizens did resist. For instance, there was an organisation of several hundred German women who were married to Jewish men, and, during the Second World War, this women's organisation held public demonstrations, in Berlin, in defence of their men, many of whom survived to outlive Hitler. These brave German women even managed to get a few Jewish men who had already been taken away returned from the Nazi death camps. Even at its most totalitarian and ruthless, the Nazi state still felt vulnerable enough to pay a little bit of attention to contrary opinion. You just had to be brave enough to express it.

"it is easy to talk of courage in the comfort and safety of one's living room with a full stomach".

I make no claims of courage for myself - but the Catholic Church does. It's claim to high moral authority is based on sacrifice and on the blood of martyrs. The fact that the Catholic church avoided speaking out during the Nazi holocaust makes a nonsense of that claim.

"the Jewish extermination program was a top secret operation"

Even before the program for exterminating the Jews, the Nazis already had a program of "euthanasia" for getting rid of undesirables. The first group to be dealt with were inmates of hospitals for the mentally sub-normal. Thousands of these unfortunates were killed in a programme that would later be extended to homosexuals, gypsies, Jews, political opponents, etc. The Catholic church knew all about the programme for euthanasia of those judged mentally subnormal, and said nothing.

The Pope at that time was a man who had spent many years in Germany and had excellent contacts there. The Catholic church is an extremely hierarchical organisation in which priests are responsible to their bishops, the bishops are responsible to their archbishops, and ultimately all report back to the Vatican. The Catholic Church knew better than any other organisation what was happening under the Nazis. Senior members of the Nazi Party were practicing Catholics and went to confession. Even if the priests didn't pass on the detailed secrets of the confessional, there is no way they didn't pass on the gist of what was happening. The Vatican knew.

Yes, of course there was anti-semitism in the USA and other countries, and Winston Churchill made some extremely anti-semitic and racist comments. But all of that is beside the point so far as what we were talking about here is concerned. There is a genuine concern about where present research could lead, but the Roman Catholic church is not the best organisation to articulate that concern, because it lost its claim to moral authority during WW2.

RFM · Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 1:08 am Post subject:

Perhaps it is doing its best to reclaim it?

Rinty · Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:24 am Post subject:

The Catholic Church in Scotland only get involved in this sport of politics and do so based on lies and scare stories. No-one is manufacturing humans for body parts or making hybrid human/animals. O'Brien wants to spread fear among catholics that shady scientists are playing god, it is in the interests of a leader of a cult based on superstition to portray science as dangerous. If scientists could cure the sick their holy tricks dont seem so convincing.

A Christian, in my opinion, should celebrate the god-given talent and intelligence of the scientists and the steps that might come from research in stem cells.

At the 2003 election the church sent a letter to be read out and distributed at every mass instructing catholics of the danger of parties who might be in favour of secular education and abolishig faith schools. This was at a time when we were bombing Iraq illegally, and the simple version of the letter was dont vote for the SSP or the Greeens, the only two parties who opposed the war in Iraq on principle.

The catholic church has no interest in 'moral' political stances, only in furthering it's own warped agenda.

I have no objection to church leaders or leaders of groups of people speaking out, The result should be answering his ignorance, not concentrating on the issue of whether he should speak or not. But O'Brien speaks with forked tongue and he talks s***e!

There has been a shift to the right in the catholic church since JP1, the current pope and his predessor are very much n the same camp as O'Brien and his predecessor, ignorant bigots.

Aventinian · Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject:

RFM · Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject:

Hi RInty;

Actually microbiological research has been done at at several universities, including Glasgow University, which requires manufacture of hybrid mouse-human embryos for about 30 years now. The reason has to do with the study of genetics and bacteria in an effort to keep ahead of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. While many people may find that sort of research distasteful, the alternative is experimentation on humans, which raises all sorts of ethical, legal and moral questions. This kind of research is done within several layers of oversight and supervision to avoid any notions that some sort of hybrid human is being created or concocted, but if you believe as many Catholics do, that human life begins at conception.....!

The argument about life beginning at conception was intended to head off any attempts to create a hybrid creature for medical experimentation, among others, but unfortunately the faithful have never grasped the fact that it was being done before the Church announced its doctrine. And the scientific community, like the "resurrection men" before them, do not publicize exactly what they do or how they do it. There are clearly unprincipled men of science, who would quite willingly clone a human being, simply in order to say they have done so, witness the Korean scientist who announced that he had created a human embryo until the community examined his data.

There is clearly grave danger in allowing the science community a free hand in what they will develope and for what purposes, simply because science has always aligned itself with large corporations and money. Think for a moment what a drug company could do with its research if it could clone humans for experimentation, then quietly dispose of them the way they do mice and rats. You think it has not occurred to their CEO's?

Rinty · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:47 am Post subject:

In this current debate when O'brien says animal/human hybrids he is talking about human cells (usually from live human skin and not embryos, nurtured in an animal egg, the result is human stem cells,not hybrids.

Catholics do believe that life begins at conception but they are wrong in that and the 'every sperm is sacred' argument is not what O'Brien is doing here, he is creating monster myths to scare the congregation.

Scientists will find themselves compromised by corporations and money at times but no more so than popes or bishops.

The catholic church especially has been a part of outrageous crimes against humanity and not just in ancient times, their support for dictators in Spain and Portugal shows what they are about. If a political party agrees with them on their 'moral' points, then they can kill everybody and anybody they want as long as kids get catholic schooling, homosexuals are deviants and scientists are dangerous, they will turn a blind eye to attrocities.

As I said, at the height of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the catholic hurch here in scotland saw separate schools as the moral priority, not Iraq, darfur, congo, poverty or anything else, vote against the parties that oppose the war because they might close catholic schools!

O'brien shares his 'moral' beliefs with Abu Hamza.

RFM · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject:

I don't think so Rinty.

When Mr. O'Brien says human/animal hybrid embryo, he is clearly talking about such things as the human-mouse hybrid embryo. I don't understand what you mean when you say humans cells are nurtured in an animal egg. Could you please explain.

An embryo is a general term concerning the development ( in vertebrates) of the fertilization of an egg with sperm cells, although the term fetus is generally also used to imply greater development at some point in the process. Up until the 8th day after fertilization, the cells which develop by division are undifferentiated, meaning there is no discernible end point of development when the cells mature. They can be hair cells, bone cells skin cells, etc. After that point however, the cells begin to differentiate and the formation of eyes, nerves, etc. begins. The value of the stem cell or yet undifferentiated cell is that if prompted to develop as nerve cells in a human, the hope is that they will also develop into nerve cells as well in a location of the body where needed. That is where that research is going. An obvious source of embryo stem cells is abortion, or stated somewhat differently, to induce the poor and penniless to become pregnant to sell their embryos to raise money. In Scotland and in England, for instance, in the 19th century, dentists found they could extract decayed or damaged human teeth and replace them with a healthy tooth fairly easily. It was the well to do who sought the transplants and the poor such as chimney sweeps and beggars that sold them to the dentists.

The Catholic Church certainly has much to answer for and most of its leadership have avoided addressing the embarrassing questions. It is true that they have usually taken the position of retaining close ties to goverment and to dictators with the hope of exerting influence, which others have pointed at as moral cowardice. There are exceptions however, such as St. Josemarie Escriva, who continued his work as a priest avoiding conflict with General Franco of Spain, neither supporting nor criticizing, who went on to form an excellent order that devotes itself to its faith and to pride in personal work. That does not detract from the fact that when moral questions need to be asked, attacking the person or group on the basis of their past record, does not answer the moral questions raised.

Aventinian · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:52 pm Post subject:

Rinty · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 6:37 pm Post subject:

I don't think that plenty of catholic clergy ARE arrested are over the war, but there is a difference between the actions of a minority of clergy and the public proclamations of the cardinal, appointed by god to lead the catholics.

The current utterances of O'Brien are not re the old story of human ears on mices acks, it was a reaction to the bill before parliament.

He called the bill "monstrous" and used the words "frankenstein", "deathly" and "grotesque". This was used to pressurise MPs who were not elected as catholics but as representatives of Labour policy.

This bill would allow researchers to use animal eggs as there is a shortage of human eggs for research, they strip the animal egg of its nucleus and place human cells nucleus in the animal egg from which human stem cells, not human/animal hybrids are created. It doesnt allow them to create humans, hybrid monsters or clones!

RFM · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:30 pm Post subject:

If the nucleus grows and continues to divide, and it must or else the insertion of a foreign nucleus kills it, that is called life. Using an animal's ovum, or egg cell, with a human nucleus (which is essentially what a sperm cell does) is the creation of a hybrid embryo that must live on to some point to be of any use medically or scientifically. Like it or not that is the very definition of grotesque.

Since growth would require some degree of DNA matching to make the trick work, and since humans share about 98% of their DNA with certain other animals, what happens if these creations ever survive to the point of birth? Is the creation entitled to the rights and protections accorded to a human being at birth or is it simply a scientific curiosity that can be extingushed at the whim of the experimenter? What if the fertilized egg is re-emplanted in the animal, a dog say, and it escapes from the lab? Should anyone be allowed to kill it on sight? Or should we all close our eyes to the rights of pharmaceutical manufacturers to turn a profit from partially human embryos and trust to their better judgment and discretion?

Haven't we learned from the creation of nuclear fission and where that goes?

Scott2006 · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:12 pm Post subject:

RFM you bring up some interesting points.

I don't believe that 100% control of scientists and scientific experiments by politicians is possible.
Take Smallpox as an example, it has been eradicated except in certain laboratories. It is supposed to be completely destroyed. Does anyone really believe there is no trace of it and all knowledge of how to reconstruct it has been destroyed? There are branches of the Armed Forces around the world that will always have on file the details we are supposed to believe exist only in the past.
No government is fully in control of all its agencies in a democracy - I would rather have as much openness about what is being investigated rather than the alternative where investigations into mammalian life-cycles and diseases go on in countries where a free press and freedom of speech and expression are not entertained.
If the work isn't done by the pharmaceutical companies in the west - it will happen in Minsk or Moscow or Beijing or Seoul.
The Luddites lost, progress goes on even if you name the process sacreligious dabbling in the human reality - cutting edge geneticists will still see progress.
Frankenstein - The Island of Doctor Moreau - Brave New World - countless other novels introduce the novelty of a fresh or different vision of where knowledge might take us - they are not actual reality though.
I would rather be kept informed and have western scientists discover the cures for Alzheimers rather than wait for a new version of the brain-drain where the brightest and best in their fields gravitate to where the new science takes them.
In life there has to be a series of trade-offs - never compromising is admirable in some instances but also self-defeating if not self-deluding.
_________________
Scotland deserves a First rate Parliament for a First rate People
The Scottish Parliamentarians who voted for Treaty of Union in 1706 and signed away Independence had been voted for by less than 2% of the Scottish population

Aventinian · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:51 am Post subject:

RFM · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:58 am Post subject:

Actually Scott, it does not appear to be a matter of control at all. It really comes down to making political choices.

For instance, after the atom bomb was developed and exploded on Japan, a debate began among the science teams headed by Dr. Oppenheimer about the ethical implications of what they had done. Remember that when the first device was detonated at Almagordo, NM, nobody knew what would happen once thermonuclear temperatures were attained in the chain reaction. In theory it was perfectly possible for the detonation to continue without end as long as there was sufficient material to feed the chain reaction. Nobody knew for certain and they understood that they could well be unleashing the end of humankind. It did not happen, of course, but it was justified by the thought that if they did not develop it, Hitler's teams would. After the war was over however, that rationale was no longer true and the scientists realized that they had given the military a weapon that could annihilate whole continents of humanity.
Into this debate came Werner von Braun, a wanted war criminal, now working for the Americans. He, almost single handedly, sold the whole need for continued development of nuclear arms for the military to Congress, and worked himself into a well paying job for the rest of his life.
All of this took place out of public view, indeed the public was not consulted or even informed, because it was all "national security". When private industry wanted to get into the act with electrical generating systems that were nuclear powered, the public began to ask embarassing questions. These were derided as "scare mongering" and "fear tactics", much the same as stem cell development critics are brushed off. After Three Mile Island and Chalk River, however, people began to realize that industry will pursue its own ends to make profits for its investors, regardless of the public interest, and if the public did not want to live with the consequences, they just needed to become proactive and ask the embarrassing questions.

In sum, the problem is public apathy, let "them" worry about it. And control and oversight passes right out of the public's hands.

RFM · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:06 am Post subject:

Forgive me Scott, one last word.

In a democracy, the government is fully in control of all of its agencies. It is called the purse strings. All agencies of government need money and have to compete to get it.

Scott2006 · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:22 am Post subject:

RFM i'd like to have a way to believe that the political class in the UK or those interested enough to try have their voice heard, (based on only 1% of the population even being political party members) can hold enough sway with the leaders, but as has been seen in a parliament impervious to street demonstrations of over 1 million people protesting against a war and being ignored. The UK gives a party with less than a third of the electorate too much power and patronage and only calls them to account once every four or five years mostly - everyone but the choosen 330 or so individual party-whipped MPs are largely powerless if the MPs stick together.

The unknown consequences with the first test of the nuclear weapon where a thunder storm could have perhaps set it off prematurely potentially killing all the scientists in the area - chosen for the 16th of July at 5.30am to give Truman the result while he was preparing later that day to have face to face talks with Stalin. Our reality could have been so different.
In any exchange of nuclear weapons fired nowadays - the whole of West Central Scotland would be obliterated. We can't get rid of nuclear weapons and we can't use them - the spectre of evil dictators a few parts away from making a bomb will seemingly always be a factor in world affairs.
Once invented - can never really be reduced to nothing.
Or saying nothing more can be invented or tested in a risky area - the most that is achieved is a partial halt in investigating. If it is critically peer-reviewed, a way is found around anything if it is deemed important enough.

In a democracy, as you so rightly say, a government, (should be) fully in control of all its agencies. In the US Homeland Security and certain other agencies have had spectacular rises in money given to them. The senators and congressmen aren't fully in control of them. The Vice-President is in charge of classifying secrets nowadays in the Bush Whitehouse.
You could look at the past,namely the situation where J Edgar Hoover kept tabs on all the politicians ensuring years of uninterupted power - he knew too much to be shifted.
Vested interests and promoters of one cause or another keep politicians in line - the gravy train will stop McCain from balancing the budget he seems to think he can manage within 8 years.
_________________
Scotland deserves a First rate Parliament for a First rate People
The Scottish Parliamentarians who voted for Treaty of Union in 1706 and signed away Independence had been voted for by less than 2% of the Scottish population