All hail the sacred cell
More reckless irresponsible callous pro-disease intervention from Catholic clerics and MPs.
The Government is braced for further criticism today when the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor signals that Catholic MPs should vote against the legislation…“There are some aspects, not all, of this Bill for which I believe there ought to be a free vote because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience.”
Catholics and others will want to vote ‘according to their conscience’ to reject medical research on frivolous willful sanctimonious trivial grounds. ‘According to their conscience’ means pretending to think a pre-embryonic cell is the exact equivalent of a developed human being – and they seem to be proud of this, rather than hotly ashamed, which is what they should be.
Former cabinet minister Stephen Byers:
On some of these issues, like whether we should allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, I remain undecided. There is a strong case that can be made on both sides of the argument: On the one hand the desire to be able to tackle diseases like MS and Alzheimers, on the other hand respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human life.
The second one is not a strong case – it’s an absurdity. You might as well talk about respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human eyelashes, or dandruff, or spit. Does Stephen Byers stage a funeral when his dentist pulls one of his teeth? Does he collect the stuff the dental hygienist scrapes off his teeth and keep it in a little shrine? Dignity and sacredness bullshit – suffering is important, artificial pseudo-reverence for human cells is just self-flattery.
[T]he health minister Ben Bradshaw hit back at the bishops…Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions he said: “If it was about the things the cardinal referred to, creating babies for spare parts or raiding dead people’s tissue then there would be justification for a free vote. But it’s not about those things. He (Cardinal O’Brien) was wrong in fact, and I think rather intemperate and emotive in the way that he criticised this legislation. This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The Government has taken a view that this is a good thing. The Government is absolutely right to try to push this through to the potential benefit of many people in this country.”
Suffering. Well you see suffering is not what they care about – what they care about is sacredness.
Thanks Ophelia. This is something that needs to be said, and needs to be said loudly.
My wife died of MS. She suffered for years, the most brutal and debilitating suffering you can imagine. It was relentless and unending, year after year. And along with it went a continuous loss of bodily function. She decided, in the end, to hasten her dying with Dignitas, in Zurich. Thank goodness for Ludwig Minelli!
The Cardinal not only opposes measures that might relieve the suffering of people like my wife, because of an imagined sacred particle that cannot feel, cannot understand, cannot know, and cannot suffer, but also opposes measures (as does our beloved Archbishop of Canterbury, who opposed the assisted dying measure brought before the House of Lords in 2006, as did the whole Church of England on its website — as infamous a measure as any that Hitler connived at, in my view), that would allow people in the extremity of suffering to bring it with more dignity and less suffering to an end.
A pox on both their houses!
Oh dear, oh dear.
Old Cormac Murphy O’ConMan has certainly plastered himself all over the news today, each piece ending with a wonderful little section where he says something along the lines of “At the end of the day, I’m not interfering…”
Aye, right! (“Yer arse in parsley”, and similar expressions)
And that same nebulous appeal to “liberty of conscience”…arrrghhhh.
Still, if he hadn’t demanded the right of his invisible friend to tell mps what to think – I thought most folk voted for a candidate because a particular party already told them what to think, anyway..? How sorry I am for the poor mindless drones, having to serve two masters? :-) – then maybe this rather pleasing backlash wouldn’t have happened:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7310709.stm
“MPs urged to support embryo bill
Leading charities have written to every MP urging them to support the controversial embryo research bill, the BBC has learned.
Cancer Research and the British Heart Foundation are among more than 200 charities in favour of the creation of human-animal hybrids for research.”
The British Heart Foundation on the Highway to Hell – whouldathunkit??
:-)
Exactly, Eric – that’s why this kind of thing is so disgusting.
I poxed the Archbish and the rest of them plenty over the assisted dying measure, too. Bastards.
Eric I sympathise I went through that stuff with my late mother,its the only time I have ever prayed, I prayed God(if he or she existed )would spare her any further suffering,I would have at least liked the option of asisted death.
“Pro-disease”
Brilliant. You deserve some sort of medal for that phrase.
“Anti-evidence based medicine” was good too a while back.
Policy-based evidence-making, it’s all the rage….
If anyone feels like breaking their heart, and ramping up the anger against this stuff, then read this blog from beginning to end:
http://brainhell.blogspot.com/
I had to look Jerry yikes! this should be required reading for m.p.s next time right to die or stem cell bills come up.
The Cardinal did make the point that these supposed miracle cures, obtainable from such research, have remained only promises (or perhaps fantasies) and none has ever actually materialised.
In this I suspect he is right. Such arguments are just a smokescreen to cover the real reason why people want to carry out such research, which is, essentially, “because we can”.
As for the point about eyelashes, dandruff, and spit, well not quite the same thing, is it?
G. Tingey,
Pray tell, what is the relevance of M Theresa’s nationality?
Something appears to be hanging out there, please tuck in your prejudices before posting.