Garbage-picking for stem cells

By a vote of 63 to 37, the Senate passed a bill to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research on Tuesday. President Bush has promised to use his veto power for the first time in 5 ½ years on this bill, which the current vote can’t override.

The public opinion on stem cell research has changed over the last few years, as their overwhelming medical potential has become radiantly clear, and as even conservatives have followed Nancy Reagan’s move and pledged support. Bush steadfastly remains by his initial impression on stem cell research, however confident in his view because “murder is wrong”.

Among the bill’s opponents, Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas made a spectacle on Monday when he used a 7-year-old girl’s explanation of stem cell research to make his point. How comforting that the Christian right has such a wide range of authorities to quote on the issue. Senator Brownback’s source, a girl named Hannah, came from an “adopted” frozen embryo, which the Senator no doubt thought illustrated what the bill puts at stake very well. He explained it this way:

“This is not just a group of a few cells. This is not a hair follicle. This is not a fingernail. You know, this is Hannah. And if nurtured, grows to be just this beautiful child, and we got a lot of them, of frozen embryos. And I hope people will consider put putting them up for adoption, because there’s a lot

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Expletive, Ethics, and Emetics

The president of the United States uttered an unfortunate word during a (semi)private conversation with the prime minister of Britain, while a microphone was on that shouldn't have been (we assume) and for the whole day or so afterward every news report I heard about the content of that conversation…

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Al Gore has his job cut out for him.

Like so many other complex issues, Americans don’t seem to understand global warming. In a Gallup poll conducted in March, respondents ranked their level of concern regarding several environmental issues. When asked to rank their level of concern over global warming, 36% of Americans claimed that it worried them “a…

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Why Do They Hate Us?

Ever since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there has been a fairly constant refrain heard in the United States.  Americans, who once thought their country invulnerable, their culture beyond reproach and their global image impeccable, are asking, “Why do they hate us?”  Human emotion being what it is, there is no single or simple answer to that question.  They hate us for a number of reasons, some illogical, but some very understandable.  And, while hatred is never productive, never defensible, its causes should never be ignored because its consequences can be catastrophic.

One of the things I hear Americans say they hate about us is our freedom.  I would have to agree.  There are those in the rest of the world who are as offended by our freedoms as are we by their despotism.  They hate the fact that we have freedom of religion, that we have freedom of speech, that our women are becoming increasingly free to determine their own destinies.  They believe that all these freedoms are an offense against all that is decent and holy. 

I believe they are wrong.  It is because of our freedom that I am able to write what I write, however controversial, however offensive to some.  It is because of our freedom that my family moved to the United States in 1960. We left South Africa when the white government there was stripping the people, both white and black, of their freedom to speak out against injustice, to live wherever and …

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Reflections on Hotel Rwanda

I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda.  I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop.  We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it:  we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of the story.  He and I know all about Africa.  Personally, I am too broken-hearted about what is happening there to watch it played out on a 42-inch plasma TV screen.

It’s not just happening in Rwanda.  We only hear about Ruanda more often now because this particular story has given that region a voice. 

The stories are endless, one more chilling than the next.  In South Africa, gangs of black youths who suspect an individual of not being “one of them” inflict horrible death.  And they do not reserve the torture for adults.  Children are not immune.  One favorite form of execution involves soaking a tire in gasoline, placing the tire around the neck of the bound victim, and setting it alight.  I repeat, this is done to children as well as adults.  It is done to blacks by blacks, and the rationale behind the brutality is obscure.  Sometimes it is tribal – amaZulu against any black not Zulu – sometimes there is a loosely formulated political agenda.  Sometimes it is simply a case of bloodlust.

This is no urban myth.  We have witnessed something like it personally.  On our last trip to South Africa …

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