Francis Collins is an evangelical, and Obama’s pick to head the NIH. Some have commented on Obama’s “inclusiveness” in giving the position to an evangelical Christian who is quite public about his faith, including in his book, The Language of God.
But a closer reading of Obama’s embryonic research policy, new NIH guidelines, and Francis Collins’ equivocations about the moral status of embryos leads to a lot of unanswered questions about the relationship between Collins’ faith and his public persona as scientist and future NIH head.
Read the link, and then ask yourself if Obama has not simply chosen a Christian who won’t rock the boat, yet again.
July 26th, 2009 2:38 pm
Shack, I’m still not sure what’s so bad about embryonic stem cell research? From what I understand, it involves using human tissue to experiment on. Is that so bad?
July 26th, 2009 2:53 pm
Not just “human tissue.” Human embryos, very young human beings. Read up on it. I don’t want to recap it all here. This is a good place to start: http://tinyurl.com/lbsesv
Then go to a browser and type in these search terms:
embryonic stem cell research Christian moral ethical
You’ll get plenty of hits to start exploring.
Starting questions: Is an embryo a human being? And if it’s not, then what IS it?
But read the link above, then do some other research on it. See what you think.
July 26th, 2009 5:07 pm
Darryl,
I am no scientist so I won’t go there. I can only say that once fertilized the egg becomes human. The embryo is an individual a person. It is just younger then at birth. Should we grow 10 year olds to harvest their parts to make someone else’s life more comfortable? That 10 year old at his/her youngest was an embryo. I mean even Dr. Shack was an embryo once!:-) As the good Doctor intimated, research the subject and will open your eyes.