November 28, 2001
Konrad Switters

Recent reports from Worcester, Massachusetts, indicate that as many as 8 human embryos have been destroyed this past month. This is a result of scientific experimentation used by an independent laboratory facility to create and research stem cells through cloning. The President of The United States of America has expressed his vehement opposition to this effort. He has stated that he will attempt to pass legislation to ban the practice:

"The use of embryos to clone is wrong," Mr. Bush said this morning [11/26/01] at a Rose Garden ceremony, "We should not as a society grow life to destroy it." [New York Times]

Recent reports from UNICEF indicate that as many as 100,000 children may starve to death in Afghanistan this winter. This is a result of the destabilization caused by the use of military force by the United States and the International anti-terror coalition. The President of The United States of America fully supports this massive military effort. He had the power to know, and participate in determining, the acceptable magnitude of this calculated loss of life.

This death toll was rationalized as an acceptable byproduct of the military effort under the guise that some loss of innocent life is necessary now to save lives in the future; a small loss for the common good. But this same logic is not applied to stem cell research and cloning. The suggestion that the "destruction of life" is morally permissible in one situation, but abominable in the other, is both sanctimonious and inexcusable.

The knowledge that, "Afghanistan is already one of the worst countries in the world for child survival, with one in four children dying before the age of five," [UNICEF] renders the eleventh-hour humanitarian effort, now under way, even more dubious.

If the current administration has its way, human embryos will be defended by federal government legislation. The children of Afghanistan will not, unfortunately, be afforded the same protection.