DailySusan Humor Blog

From a Former Embryo

Memo To: The Former Embryos in the Nebraska Legislature

From: Former Embryo Susan Darst Williams

Re: LB 602 Involving the Current Embryos in Peril in Scientific Research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center

Greetings:

Thursday you heard a speech by Former Embryo Irving Weissman, now a grown-up scientist at Stanford University. He was brought in by N.U. officials, apparently, to urge you to vote against LB 602. That way, the Med Center could continue to slice, dice, chop and puree little bitty unborn babies for their medical research projects. The Med Center, using our tax dollars, also would continue down the path of what’s being called “the commodification of human flesh” – profiting on human body parts, in other words. But that’s the kind of stuff Former Embryo Weissman apparently thinks is good. He warned that Nebraska would lose a lot of fantastic medical researchers if embryonic stem-cell research were halted.

A few cautions: depravity, even with a top hat on, is still depravity. We’re all former embryos; remember that. And in this case, please consider the source. This Christmas break, a Stanford freshman from Nebraska sat at my kitchen counter and sobbed because she had been so excited to go to Stanford . . . but it was so depraved, ultra-radical and horribly negative, she felt forced to transfer. She was being downgraded for her conservative approach to her subjects, her dorm official was a homosexual who constantly and loudly had what we used to call “sleepovers,” her roommate was brilliant but so messed up she wouldn’t speak to other humans but they wouldn’t let her get a new roommate . . . it was an ordeal for this outstanding and perfectly normal young scholar from Nebraska. You hear this more and more. It looks as though Stanford has fallen off the deep end in the name of being “cutting edge.” If you’ve ever been on that campus and inside its fabulous chapel, you’d know it was founded on good principles and now has fallen away. Just think about it.

Also think about this: another university that most people would say is equal to Stanford in academic stature, Georgetown University, has apparently recognized depravity at last, and has stopped the use of aborted fetal cell lines in its medical research.

Why? Because it’s unethical, of course . . . just like embryonic stem-cell research is, especially since there have been so many exciting developments with highly-ethical and A-OK adult stem-cell research.

According to the pro-life group, Children of God for Life, aborted fetal cell lines MRC-5, WI-38, IMR-90 and HEK (human embryonic kidney) were being used at Georgetown University's Medical Research Center. The group contacted Cardinal Theodore McCarrick at the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., and now reports that all objectionable cell lines have been removed from Georgetown’s tissue culture bank inventory.

Hmmm. If THOSE former embryos can do it, why can’t we?

For more on bioethics, see the Children of God for Life website, www.cogforlife.org

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Prayer request: Lord, I ask you to bring babies into the sight of our legislators in the coming days as they consider this issue. Let them see them morning, noon and night. Let them have a chance to hold a baby and goo-goo to a baby. Let them feel that incomparably soft skin. Let the beauty and innocence of those babies awaken their hearts to the truth, that embryonic human beings ought not to be killed for medical research and that there are lots of good alternatives out there, including adult stem cells. Use your favorite thing – young life – to work this miracle in Nebraska, Father. (Matthew 6:25c: Is not life more than meat?)