X-Message-Number: 19116
From:
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 19:12:22 EDT
Subject: Small Pox & the Roman Catholic Church (& More)
CryoNet:
Not to be picking on the Roman Catholic Church as they seem to have enough to
deal with these days (and also since they seem to have an acceptable attitude
towards all forms of life extension / extenuation), but I found the following
somewhere on the Internet recently and thought I would pass it on -- I guess
nobody always gets it right the first time around.
Speaking of, for some reason, I neglected to record the author's name or the
URL where I came across it. Yep, kind of slack, but what can I say?
"For the Faculty of Theology, inoculation was an attempt by human beings to
play, indeed, to be God, to interfere with the divine order, to refuse to
submit to the providential order of things. Inoculation was an act of hubris,
a wanton and insolent human intrusion onto God's domain, and if we crossed
that line, how would we ever find our way back to our rightful place in the
natural order? In the end, King Louis XV died of smallpox, the Court
panicked, and the royal council hastily decreed its legalization across
France. The Papacy, however, in its temporal authority over the Papal States,
maintained a ban on inoculation until well into the 19th century."
_________________
New Subject:
Three or four billion years since primordial soup is sometimes difficult to
fathom. Just for fun, here is a graphic that helps put things in
perspective. Actually, considering that the recorded history of man only
extends a few thousand years back, in our short time period, we have come
quite a way. Take notice of the simple black line below the category
"Epochs" consisting of only one line of computer screen pixels -- that's us.
Go ahead and arrow all the way down to the bottom -- "it's quite a trip" as
Dr. Leary might say -- or was it his brother, Really, that said that? (Yeah,
I use to get Mad Magazine pretty regularly).
http://www.naturalsciences.org/funstuff/paleo/timeline.html
_________________
On the Petition ("therapeutic cloning" / "research cloning")
I posted the following on a real estate appraisers' forum today and thought I
will put it here too (below the "double line" below in this post). By the
way, another error of mine from the original posting is that it appears that
human cloning is currently NOT specifically unlawful in the States (while it
will be soon). On my list of people to alert about the petition was a
medical doctor or two (which is how I was corrected on the human cloning law
issue -- I believe I must have misinterpreted something that I had originally
read regarding the petition).
I got some return email on the subject. Not all were against the passage of
this bill. I have included this section in this post to provide a little
insight as to the thinking of part of the established medical community. The
concern was for potential grand standing, reckless behavior on the part of
some researchers, and also about the temptation to implant a cloned human egg
for maturation once they are readily available for research. The concerns
included an all out race -- caution and ethics thrown to the wind -- with all
the spoils going to the winner / victor (necessarily of the least moral
restraint) to include onerous patients, super egos, and massive fortune and
fame, etc. Some of these concerns may be legitimate. In my opinion, it
would be nice for some of these issues to be better addressed, however, the
collective costs implicit to the proposed legislation "as is" are simply too
high. The alternative bill (alluded to below) under consideration is likely
much better (while I have not read it).
Dr. West of ACT was specifically mentioned (yes, I understand he may be a
"progressive thinker" in many respects) as was Kentucky's Dr. Panayiotis
Zavos. Wrote one MD: "These are the types to worry about." The following
article was included in a return email (which I have truncated here -- but
you can get the idea) and also the URL to follow it:
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Kentucky doctor said he expected to have made a woman
pregnant with a cloned embryo by the end of the year as House members sought
to nudge the Senate toward action on a cloning ban.
``This is no time for half measures,'' Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., said of a
Senate bill that would ban reproductive cloning but allow cloning for
research. ``We must pass an effective ban.''
The Senate has delayed until June its debate on whether to ban all cloning or
allow the research exception. Aides estimate about 18 senators remain
undecided. The House passed a bill banning all cloning last year.
``It will be nearly impossibly to prevent attempts at reproductive cloning
once cloned human embryos are available in laboratories across this nation,''
Weldon said..."
http://www.zavos.org/drz.htm
____________________________________
____________________________________
Here is today's post to another online forum:
Posted: Sat May 18, 2002 1:12 pm
----------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for those who signed the petition.
It was presented to Congress this week on the 15th.
(Thanks also to those who considered signing it.)
It is now closed but can be viewed in its entirety with all signatures at the
following URL. In the end, there were only 900 signers. Some of these were
certainly "power hitters" including at least one Nobel laureate, and numerous
scientists, medical researchers, authors and publishers across the country,
as well as a scattering of concerned individuals like us -- (i.e., voters)
which were probably equally important in many ways.
http://www.franklinsociety.org/projects/scnt-petition.html
A mistake in my original post above was that the Senate had already passed
the bill. No, it was in fact the House that had. It is now in the Senate's
court. It appears that this effort and others have alerted our
representatives of what is really at stake with this bad bill. Another,
better proposed bill exists, and now the Senate will hold hearings next month
with an apparent, significantly expanded scope.
This was the intent, so:
Mission Accomplished.
Regards,
David C. Johnson
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