Oops!
During the twelfth century there are records of the
Christian church forbidding the practice of medicine. People who attempted to comfort the sick and
the dying were often proclaimed witches or heretics and tortured and
killed. Though opiates were available
they were forbidden for the relief of pain for the seriously injured. It was felt that pain was God given and to
interfere with it was heresy. Priest
often administered treatment by touching the infirmed with the bone of a saint,
and with prayer.
This was the teaching drawn from a book that was written by
a primitive desert people who considered a wheelbarrow cutting edge technology.
In 1998 biologist James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin
When our President George W. Bush, supported by the
fundamentalist ignorant still clinging to two thousand year old religious
dogma, restricted the use of human embryonic stem cells the genetic advancement
in the treatment of human infirmity screeched to a stop.
In the years since, numerous biologists have attempted to
create compatible stem cells by regressing adult human cells back to an
embryonic stage. In every case when
these regressed cells were tested they were attacked by the human immune system
and destroyed.
The misconception promulgated by the religious right has
been that stem cells would be procured from aborted fetuses and that women
would become pregnant in order at sell their fertilized eggs for money; again,
stirring up the female phobia of the Republican base. In actuality the cells would have been
produced in a Petri Dish that would never have advanced to a fetus.
The fetus obsession and scientific ignorance of the
Republican base has retarded our medical research and condemned the suffering
and dying to new decades without relief.
But after all, suffering is God’s design, and all
advancements of science must be held suspect – or denied if it doesn’t mesh
with the teachings of the Primitive Age Tome that should rule all our lives.
the Ol'Buzzard
All hail the stone throwers, for they too will inherit the globe they destroy.
ReplyDeleteThere is no shortage of human embryos, I understand. IVF will produces several embryos of which only one or at most three are implanted. the remainder are simply frozen. Someone with more information can correct me, please.
ReplyDeleteFurther to your first paragraph, because the Muslims were so clean, the medieval church assumed that cleanliness was of the Devil and discouraged washing (this theme shows up in Michener's Hawaii). The ability of religion to reach new depths of ignorance simply amazes me.
ReplyDeleteOl Buzzard,
ReplyDeleteBush set stem cell research back eight years likely based upon words that evangelist Pat Robertson put in his ear. For a president to deny the American people the benefit of science based upon his religious beliefs is just beyond the pale.
Yet, it happened. Look at the advances we have made in stem cell research under Obama - Get a Republican in the White House at that stops immediately!
November 6th - VOTE.
Sarge
if we made religion illegal think of all the good things we could accomplish.
ReplyDeleteThat's a sad but true description of an ugly tendency.
ReplyDeleteI just read that Oklahoma has passed a law stating that a fertilized egg is a person. Makes me want to leave Oklahoma out of disgust.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great posting I have read. I like your article.
ReplyDelete