Dumb Things Said By Someone With A PhD

In a possible recurring feature, here is the dumbest thing I've ever heard someone with a PhD say:

"Senator, I just think that it's bad policy, frankly, to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails that you're trying to make work."

-Dr. Condoleezza Rice, PhD. Professor of Political Science

Boy, is that a great philosophy to have. Makes me wonder if she wears a seatbelt. I mean, why waste time to "speculate" what might happen if your getting from Point A to Point B "plan fails" and you get in an accident? Good thing that nothing beyond your control could ever transpire that would cause that to happen.

I don't know, maybe she takes the bus...

Morality Play

All right. Anyone else sick of being moralized to by people who don't even seem to know what the deuce they're talking about? I was driving home from work last Thursday, listening to NPR, when I heard the following statement from U.S. Congressman Mike Pence (Republican, 6th District of Indiana):

"You see, I believe that live begins at conception and that a human embryo is human life. And I believe that it's morally wrong to create human life to destroy it for research, but I believe it's also morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of Americans who believe that life begins at conception and use it to fund research that they find morally offensive."

To put this quote in context, what Mr. Pence is referring to is his opposition to a new bill, passed by the House of Representatives, which promotes government research into stem cells. Now, normally, I would not disagree with someone's moral belief system, if they were morally opposed to something that was actually going to be done. In fact, I would even agree with Pence that creating "human life to destroy it for research," would be wrong. But that's not what this new bill proposes at all. You see, the bill the House passed does nothing to "create human life to destroy it for research", but rather it proposes to use only embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization clinics that would be discarded anyway. So, right there, Pence is either uninformed about the bill's actual purpose, or he's being willfully disingenuous. I'll let you decide that one, but either way, his argument is more than a little misleading.

But since Mr. Pence brought up the subject of morality, let's take a closer look into this whole issue. Where exactly do these left over embryos from in-vitro fertilization clinics come from? Well here are some excerpts from an MSNBC article by Arthur Caplan, Ph.D. to explain it a little further:

"When couples seek treatment for infertility, they often wind up using in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. This is a procedure in which embryos are created outside the body in a laboratory dish and are then implanted back into the woman's body where, ideally, they grow to full term.

It works like this: The woman takes fertility drugs that cause her to produce far more eggs than the one she normally would release during her monthly cycle. These eggs are then surgically removed from her ovaries and fertilized in a dish with either her husband's or a donor's sperm. Often many embryos are created through this process. But since multiple-pregnancies –quadruplets, quintuplets, septuplets and the like – produce premature and often unhealthy babies, doctors will only put two or three embryos back into the woman's body to try and help her become pregnant. The clinic chooses to implant the embryos that look the healthiest and asks the couple if they want to freeze the rest. The couple also has the option of having the remaining embryos destroyed, donated to other couples, or donated for embryonic stem-cell research.

Most experts think there are as many as 400,000 embryos frozen in storage in the United States."

So, with 400,000 embryos floating around the U.S., the question becomes which is more moral: Let these embryos deteriorate or be destroyed; Or use them for scientific research which could lead to medical advances and potentially save lives? Or to put it another way, is it wrong to destroy an embryo in the name of science, but okay to destroy it the name of storage space? Because if you're opposing this bill, that's precisely what you're saying.

Keeping in mind that I would still like to respect Representative Pence's moral view, I would have one final comparison to put forward. It's more of riddle actually, first posited, I believe by Dr. Mark Noble, a Professor of Genetics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. The riddle goes like this: Suppose there is a fire at a fertility clinic. In one room is a freezer with 100 embryos. In another room is a baby. Now, suppose you have only enough time to enter ONE room. Do you save the baby, or the freezer?

Now, I don't know how Representative Pence would answer that riddle, and it's probably unfair to speculate. But let's just say that Mr. Pence, mulled all of this over and still came down against stem cell research on the grounds that it destroys human embryos. That's fair, because even though I disagree with him, it's still his moral belief. And you never know, maybe he has some other plan which he thinks will save those 400,000 embryos from being destroyed either by science or for storage. But what if he actually did some research, or I don't know, used the internet like me and found out that, maybe, just maybe, embryos don't even need to be destroyed to do stem cell research. What if, in fact he went here and read this:

"Scientists unveil a new technique they claim could break the political deadlock over human embryonic stem cells. Researchers with the company Advanced Cell Technology say it's possible to remove a cell from an embryo without harming the embryo and then grow the cell in a lab dish. That single cell can be used to derive embryonic stem cells."

It's pretty sad that when I seem to do more research for my blog than someone voting on a bill. I mean, if Pence actually knew this, it would kind of throw his whole argument out the window, right? Because with no human embryos being either "created" or "destroyed" for stem cell research, what is there left to believe that's "morally wrong?"

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't also say something about Pence's statement that he believes "it's also morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of Americans... and use it to fund research that they find morally offensive." First, of all it may be morally offensive to millions of taxpayers, but according to recent polling by ABC News, 63 percent of Americans support stem-cell research. Second, how many millions of taxpayers find the death penalty morally offensive? Or the war in Iraq? Because I haven't read or heard you say anything against taking "the taxpayer dollars of millions of Americans" for those policies Mr. Pence. After all, if you're going to get on your high horse and defend the morality of "millions of Americans" maybe you should go all the way, or do you only do that when you're personally opposed to something?

Do us all a favor, give it rest. Or at the very least, next time, do your homework. Because, on behalf of "millions of Americans" who pay our "taxpayer dollars" for your salary and "fund research" that you should be doing as part of your job, I find it "morally offensive" that we are apparently wasting our money.