Liar Liar Pants on Fire!

It always amazes me how the "good, moral, Christian" members of the pro-life movement will lie and cheat to get their point across.

For example: In Sunday's Argus Leader, there's a letter to the editor from Linda Schauer, SD state director of the Concerned Women for America.

I applaud President Bush and Sen. John Thune for supporting research that does not destroy human life through the use of embryonic stem cells.

We continue down a slippery slope when we regard human life as a commodity. It's just wrong to kill some humans to be used as research material to benefit others. Furthermore, it is not prudent to federally fund research that holds little promise of cures when adult stem-cell research has already cured or improved patients representing over 70 ailments.

Unlike treatment with embryonic stem cells, treatments using adult stem cells do not produce cancerous tumors and the serious complication of rejection is eliminated. We need to direct our dollars toward proven success.

Sen. Tim Johnson cites the frozen embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization as "medical waste." Would he consider it ethical to experiment on death-row inmates or would he have approved of the Nazi experiments on humans? Of the 400,000 frozen embryos, only 2.8 percent have been tagged for research by their biological parents. The rest are awaiting implantation by the parents or made available for adoption. More than 100 frozen embryos ("Snowflake" kids) have been adopted.

Government should not fund unethical and unsuccessful research.

Wow. Let's count how many times she broke the "don't lie" commandment.

1.) "Furthermore, it is not prudent to federally fund research that holds little promise of cures when adult stem-cell research has already cured or improved patients representing over 70 ailments."

This number has been drastically inflated to make adult stem cells seem better than embryonic stem cells. Truthfully, the only current treatment that uses adult stem cells is when they take them out of bone marrow when leukemia patients have chemotherapy. That's to prevent the chemo treatments from killing those adult stem calls along with the leukemia. Once the treatments are over, the inject the adult stem cells back into the bone marrow.

The current research with adult stem cells shows a lot of promise in potential treatments for 8 or so ailments. And they are very close to using adult stem cells to improve patients with heart/muscle damage and blindness.

So not only are pro-lifers lying about how many ailments adult stem cells can help with, but they are implying that they can cure/help them right now (which isn't true).

2.) "Unlike treatment with embryonic stem cells, treatments using adult stem cells do not produce cancerous tumors and the serious complication of rejection is eliminated."

Saying that embryonic stem cells cause tumors is an outright lie. Pro-lifers using this argument are saying this to deceive the public. There is no evidence that embryonic stem cells cause cancer or any kind of tumor. Just because they don't like embryonic stem cell research doesn't mean that can make up things about it.

The part about rejection is more truthful, though the chances of rejection are probably no greater than a heart transplant or something.

3.) "Sen. Tim Johnson cites the frozen embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization as "medical waste." Would he consider it ethical to experiment on death-row inmates or would he have approved of the Nazi experiments on humans?"

Here she compares Sen. Johnson with Nazis. That's just mean. Whenever you bring up Nazis in your argument, it shows how weak the argument is.

4.) "Of the 400,000 frozen embryos, only 2.8 percent have been tagged for research by their biological parents. The rest are awaiting implantation by the parents or made available for adoption. More than 100 frozen embryos ("Snowflake" kids) have been adopted."

This part confuses me. It seems to be her answer to Johnson's "medical waste" remark, but she just throws it out there without making a point. I found an article that talks more specifically about those embryos:

The team tallied a "conservative" total of 396,526 embryos.

About 3 percent were earmarked for research; 2 percent for destruction and a like number for donation to women; and 1 percent for quality-assurance studies. Most of the rest -- about 87 percent of the total -- were reserved for ongoing fertility efforts.

It seems that 2% of that 400,000 is earmarked for donation to other women, which is where the Snowflake babies have come from. What I find interesting is that the pool of embryos for donation to women isn't the same thing as the pool earmarked for research. President Bush and anti-abortionists would have us believe that the Snowflake babies are coming from the research pool when, in fact, they are not.


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I don't mean to pick on Mrs. Schauer. I'm sure she's a very nice lady. I just thought her letter was a good illustration of one of the things that's wrong with the pro-life movement. If they want to claim that their side is the side of good, faithful Christians, then they need to stop lying and cheating to get their way.