From Christian Telegraph:
General Electric has announced that it will use embryonic stem cells provided by Geron Corporation for the purpose of testing toxic effects of drug treatments, reports Alex Bush, LifeSiteNews.com.
GE issued a statement, attempting to preempt criticism over the decision, saying, “We acknowledge the considerable debate and take very seriously the ethical and societal issues associated with research using stem cells derived from embryonic or fetal tissue.”
“We conduct our research in an ethically and scientifically responsible manner,” the statement said.
However, embryonic stem cells have been the center of heated controversy since harvesting the cells requires the destruction of embryonic human beings.
But Geron Corporation indicates that in this case it believes that the ends justify the means.
“Up to three quarters of toxicity problems are not detected until preclinical or later stages of drug development and this significantly increases the cost of developing new drugs,” Geron Corporation said in a press release, “Earlier detection of toxicity problems could reduce both overall drug development costs and potentially harmful patient exposure in clinical trials.”
Konstantin Fielder, General Manager of Cell Technologies at GE Healthcare said that stem cells harvested from human embryos could even replace lab rats as the primary scientific testing method.
“Once you have human cells and you can get them in a standardized way, like you get right now your lab rats in a standardized way, you can actually do those experiments on those cells,” he said.
I wonder if this prospect makes animal rights activists happy, or if their kindness to animals extends to embryonic human beings. At any rate, get your mind around this.
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So where does this end? Now it is stem cells from embryos. Will it be little humans next? I’m sure that you can learn more from experimenting on a fetus than from just a stem cell. And what about the unwanted newborns? They were going to be aborted anyway so why not use them for testing? Hey…if we let the newborn grow a bit, we could learn even more…
This is not just a slippery slope, it is a cliff.
“We acknowledge the considerable debate and take very seriously the ethical and societal issues associated with research using stem cells derived from embryonic or fetal tissue.”
“We conduct our research in an ethically and scientifically responsible manner,” the statement said.
The stupidity of these statements is nearly unfathomable to me. It is like saying, “I know robbery and murder are questionable practices, but rather than investigate the real issues and act with real ethics, let’s just promise to commit them nicely.”
My thoughts.
http://bit.ly/N7KMG
Things are moving (downward) so fast, that it is hard to get my head around anything these days.
This is perfectly reasonable. We wouldn’t want my male enhancement drug to accidentally shrivel me now, would we?
/ sarcasm
Oh, so this is why GE keeps running those heavenly ads every 15-20 minutes on primetime TV here. I get it now.
How does one go about effectively opposing the hegemony of GE?
Comment #3: Chas Lehmann, ditto.
Lab Rats have PETA. Who do we have?
When I saw this earlier today, I cringed for the lack of compassion for the unborn. Now we kill them to harvest their cells to do drug and cosmetic tests on them. What has happened to the mighty GE? They have become purveyors of death to the unborn.