Stem Cell Low, Buy High
Imbroglio over embryos.

Ms. Coulter is also a syndicated columnist
July 26, 2001 8:55 a.m.

've nearly died waiting, but it can finally be said: The feminists were right about one thing. Some portion of pro-life men would be pro-choice if they were capable of getting pregnant. They are the ones who think life begins at conception unless Grandma has Alzheimer's and scientists allege that stem-cell research on human embryos might possibly yield a cure.

It's either a life or it's not a life, and it's not much of an argument to say the embryo is going to die anyway. What kind of principle is that? Prisoners on death row are going to die anyway, the homeless are going to die anyway, prisoners in Nazi death camps were going to die anyway. Why not start disemboweling prisoners for these elusive "cures"?

Meanwhile, every Republican with a doddering, 90-year-old parent seems to be gung ho on experimenting on human embryos, or "blastocysts," as they are affectionately known to the "scientific community." The ungreatest generation is so appalled at idea of having to take care of mom and dad, now they're lashing out at embryos.

Admittedly, the real problem is with the creation of test-tube embryos in the first place. But experimentation is just one more step in desensitizing people to the idea of taking human life.

Stem-cell research on embryos is an even worse excuse for the slaughter of life than abortion. No woman is even being spared an inconvenience this time. We don't have to hear the ghastly arguments of mothers against their own children, the travails of girls being sent away to live with their aunt for a few months, or the stories of women carrying the babies of rapists — as if that's happened more than twice in the last century. This is just harvest and slaughter, harvest and slaughter. Liberals warm to the idea of killing human embryos.

The last great advance for human experimentation in this country was the federal government's acquiescence to the scientific community's demands for money to experiment on aborted fetuses. Denouncing the "Christian right" for opposing the needs of science, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times claimed the experiments were "crucial to potential cures for Parkinson's disease."

Almost exactly a year later, the Times ran a front-page story describing the results of those experiments on Parkinson's patients: Not only was there no positive effect, but about 15 percent of the patients had nightmarish side effects. The unfortunate patients "writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about." In the words of one scientist: "They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend." And the scientists couldn't "turn it off."

So what great advance are we to expect from experimentation on human embryos? They don't know. It's just a theory. But they definitely need to start slaughtering the unborn. Why not have the government give me a lot of money so I can sit around and think. Who knows what I might come up with? I'm clever. It's possible. Give money to Ann or condemn the world to disease and pestilence!

It is simply asserted that scientists need to experiment on human embryos if they are ever going to find a cure for Alzheimer's, cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, and so on. Yeah, maybe. If so, then it's true, but no one has demonstrated that it's true. Liberals are sobbing and groaning that we don't know if SDI will work. We just shot a missile out of the sky; what's their proof?

The Left is so transparent: Nobody ever heard of this incredibly important research on human embryos until ten minutes ago. Yet everyone makes believe he's known about the undiscovered bounty in human embryos forever, and talks about it with real moral indignation. This whole debate is a hoax designed to trick Americans into yielding ground on human experimentation.

Incidentally, whatever happened to all the conjectural cures waiting to be discovered in the rain forest? Somebody found a guava root that tasted good in tea once, and that's the last the rain forest has offered up. The pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. has been combing the rain forest for a decade looking for some useful weed. The results so far? Nothing.

Now it will take forever to chop it down. I have nothing against the rain forest. But I'm confident that, someday, the "scientific community" will decide that we face a choice of chopping it down or risking never finding a cure for cancer.