Tony Abbott Quotes
We shouldn't be willy-nilly creating potential human life just to satisfy the urges of the scientific community.
Abbott, Tony. Quoted in "Abbott warns against stem cell 'willy-nilly' creation." ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 Aug. 2006.
This is a classic example of a legislator, concerned about the ethics and morality of certain types of scientific experiments, and not understanding the scientific meaning of the terms used, would also make illegal existing and important technologies and cures. In this case, he thinks of cloning as reproducing another exact human being, but we clone human cells every day to produce many of the beneficial medicines we use commonly. And the combination of animals and humans is common in many aspects of modern medicine. For burns the tissue of pigs is used to cover the wound and act as a scaffold on which human skin cells grow. There are millions of people in America and the rest of the world who are leading a normal life with a pig or a cow heart valve. There are ethical problems to be sure but most legislators have little clue as to what they are, and tend to want to outlaw whole areas of science out of their ignorance in in reaction to public pressure from others who do not understand what it is that they want to prohibit.
When a couple sought assistance from a fertility clinic, the best medical procedure to fertilize a few female egg cells with sperm. After a few days of development, the seemingly best embryo is selected for implantation in the mother. The others are usually frozen so that they can be used later if there is a miscarriage or the baby dies in childbirth. The Senator and a few other religious fundamentalists believe that the fertilized cell clusters are actually human beings. Therefore if there is a successful birth, the remaining ones should not be used for research using the embryonic stem cells. On the other hand, many are often discarded as most people do not see the cell clusters as a human being but as a potential human being just as a pile of bricks and a truck of cement is not a house but is a potential house if things are done properly.
Kass was appointed for his religious, anti abortion views and he is an excellent proponent of one perspective. There are others who do not necessarily see human cloning in such a dark light. Although, the process has to be developed, at some time it well might be a mode by which infertile people could have children. Kass’s criticisms were made by others when in vitro fertilization techniques were being developed.
This was written over 2 decades before Dolly the sheep was first cloned. Since his call for a societal public discussion about cloning, there has been very little, but by the 21st century there had been just a few hasty, ill-informed, almost hysterical efforts to legislate on the subject.
George W. Bush followed his deeply held religious belief and that of a small, but controlling religious fundamentalist segment of the Republican Party and banned Federal funding of scientific research that involved fetal stem cells. The thinking of the religious fundamentalist was that if fetal stem cell research were to be extensive there might be a demand for the fetal cells which could come from abortion. This might create more abortions and it would mean that something good might result from a terrible evil—an abortion. This in turn might make abortion less terrible for some people and produce some moral ambiguity. At the same time there are tens of thousands of fertilized embryos available from in vitro fertilization procedures where extras are produced but usually not needed and often are disposed of as waste. However, these fundamentalists do not want to even allow those to be used. Hence, the “insanity” characterization which is more accurately illogicality.
In the aftermath of the murder of Martin Luther King, riots broke out in Washington DC. Most of the rioting was in the Black neighborhoods and the rioters were looting the retail stores. Hoover instructed the mayor to authorize the use of deadly force to “restore law and order.” The mayor, generally not known for political courage and standing up to authority refused. He would only authorize deadly force to prevent serious injury or death to people. Washington not only refused Hoover, but at that point walked out on him. The riots subsided shortly thereafter.
Anthony John Abbott AC is a former Australian politician who served as the 28th Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015 and leader of the Liberal Party from 2009 to 2015. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 2009 to 2013, and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Warringah from 1994 to 2019. He is currently an adviser to the British government's Board of Trade.
