Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - A Clear and Present Danger to Human Life

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

Besides abortion, there are several new biotechnologies that threaten innocent human life. Alan describes four of them. Download the mp3...

This January 22nd marks the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that a woman's right to privacy grants her a right to an abortion. Now, since then, since that date back in 1973, nearly 55 million unborn children have been killed legally through this grisly procedure. Now, despite abortion rates slightly declining in the last few years, the threat to innocent human life, though, has not waned at all. In fact, with the advancement of science, we've kind of entered this new era of biotechnology where we're experimenting on humans even more. experimenting on humans even more. And those scientists tell us that these state-of-the-art procedures promise to treat disease and disability, which, by the way, are all very good things. Very few of these scientists are asking the ethical question, we can, but should we? In other words, although we can do some specific scientific experiment, should we? George Daly, who is the dean of Harvard University's medical school, recently declared, he said this, quote, it's time to move forward from experimenting on humans. Now, look, I'm all for advances in our ability to help human people,

I'm sorry, human people, to help humans who are suffering, but not at the expense of endangering, hurting, or killing innocent human beings. And so that's why I'm concerned that abortion is no longer alone in its ability to jeopardize the most vulnerable people in our society. And since Roe v. Wade was passed, now there's new threats that have emerged. And I want to mention just four of them that are sort of on the horizon. Or I should say are already things that we're doing. And some of them are kind of on the horizon, if you will. are already things that we're doing. And some of them are kind of on the horizon, if you will.

So the first one is simply embryonic stem cell research, which is something that's been going on here for a while. Now, just to give you a little bit of background on this, a stem cell is a special type of cell that can transform into any cell type in your body. So in other words, a stem cell can transform into a skin cell or a brain cell or a bone cell. Okay, but notice a stem cell is just a general cell. It has not yet turned into this sort of specialized cell. Now, during human development, our bodies use stem cells to create the various tissues and organs that are required to build our body. Now, embryonic stem cell research is the process of extracting those stem cells in the first week of human development, coaxing them to turn into some desired tissue or some desired cell type, and then implanting that new tissue in a patient's body to treat some sort of

condition or illness. Now, what's important to recognize here is that removing the stem cells at the embryo stage kills the developing human being since he or she requires those cells to create the rest of their body. And so this is why I say embryonic stem cell research is just one example of a technology that is jeopardizing human lives. Okay. Here's a second one. In vitro fertilization.

Now, in vitro fertilization or IVF is simply a reproductive technology that assists couples with conceiving a child. And so the procedure involves taking the woman's eggs and the man's sperm and then manually combining them in a laboratory dish. Now, once the sperm and egg combine to form a human embryo, a new human being has come into existence. And so IVF clinics often create dozens of embryos, only some of which are implanted in the woman's womb and that are nurtured to birth. implanted in the woman's womb and that are nurtured to birth. That means there are usually a whole bunch of unused, quote-unquote, leftover embryos, which are really just a couple's own children, that are often placed in freezers and left there for years.

And these frozen human embryos then are sought after by scientists for research purposes, often to harvest their stem cells, which goes back to the previous category of concern that I have, which is embryonic stem cell research. And so, of course, when you take their stem cells, you end up killing them. Okay. And so this is why in vitro fertilization contributes to, or I should say can contribute to the killing of innocent human beings when they're just left in freezers forever or they are used for scientific research. A third technology that I'm concerned about is cloning. Now, cloning is simply a form of reproduction. In other words, humans can be created through

sexual intercourse, they can be created through in vitro fertilization, and now they can be created through sexual intercourse. They can be created through in vitro fertilization. And now they can be created by cloning. Now, unlike the first two methods, cloning creates a genetic duplicate, like an identical twin, but of a different age, of course. Cloning creates a genetic duplicate of a person. most cases today is to create a human body that is a perfect tissue match to the body of a person with a disease or illness. And that way, a clone can be stripped of their stem cells or other body parts and then have them implanted into the patient's body with a decreased risk of rejection. And this is precisely the problem with cloning. It treats human beings as a means to an end. In other words, clones are not considered equal to other humans. Rather, they are sacrificed as spare parts for another person's benefit. that I'm concerned about is called transhumanism. And this is the biotechnological movement that seeks to enhance the human race. And so by reengineering our bodies, we have the potential for longer lifespans or greater strength, the ability to resist illness or other kinds of augmentations. Now, one of the more troubling aspects of transhumanism is gene editing, which uses a technique called CRISPR, which is an acronym. I forgot what the acronym represents,

but you could easily look it up. And so much like editing a sentence in a word processor, scientists can modify the human genome to, quote unquote, improve individuals. can modify the human genome to, quote-unquote, improve individuals. And although such methods appear to be beneficial, the process involves significant trial and error, resulting in the deaths of human embryos during a whole bunch of failed experiments and attempts to perfect this particular technique. So those are the four types of technologies that I'm saying are a concern that are a threat to human life that are not really even included or thought of typically when people are concerned about abortion. Now, I want to point out, you know, as Christians, we're not just being here anti-science, okay? Nor are we opposed to treating disease and disability,

okay? Because we're made in God's image, you know, like Genesis 127 talks about, we respect human life and we oppose killing innocent human beings or treating them as a means to an end. And besides, we can proceed with beneficial scientific advancements without jeopardizing human life. In other words, we can move forward in a lot of these areas without killing people. For example, stem cells do not have to be harvested from human embryos, which of course kills human life. Rather, scientists can extract stem cells from adults,

from adult bodies, and then use those stem cells from adults to treat various types of conditions. And the stem cells are taken from the person who needs them, right? So if I had a condition, you could take stem cells from my own body, coax them to turn into a certain type of tissue, and then re-implant them into my body. And in fact, we've been treating human beings this way, using their own adult stem cells for decades, literally decades, and the results have been astonishingly successful. And so, I mean, that's just one example, but there's the same sort of careful approach could be taken with any medical technology.

And that's why I believe that we can proceed with beneficial scientific advancements and other sort of biotechnologies without terminating innocent human lives. But we just have to be careful about how we do that. And we can.