Intel Corp. Chairman Andy Grove kicked off the “Stem Cell
Challenge” last week. The San Francisco Chronicle reports
that Grove is offering a $5 million grant to the University of
California-San Francisco to conduct research on the stem cells of
destroyed embryos and finance “studies that can’t be conducted with
federal funding.”
Worried that the National Institutes of Health will only support
this controversial research with a limited number of tax dollars,
Grove is encouraging other philanthropists to respond to his
“challenge.” He promises to match private gifts ranging from
$50,000 to $500,000, “up to a total of $5 million,” so that UCSF
can reach its “goal of raising $20 million for privately funded
stem cell studies by 2005,” reports the Chronicle.
(Grove’s interest in UCSF’s stem cell research apparently followed
his treatment there in 1995 for prostate problems.)
In a revealing aside, the Chronicle reports that UCSF
already operates an embryo experimentation lab — off campus.
“Since September, UCSF has been using private funds to create new
stem cell lines at an off-campus site that it is keeping low key
for security reasons,” the Chronicle reports.
What does “creating new stem cell lines” mean? It means killing
2-week-old embryos.
But so what? says Grove. He dismisses moral objections to this
research with the breezy rejoinder that “outlawing research is
something you associate with medieval times, not something you
associate with the 21st century.”
Yes, man is obviously so much more enlightened now. Liberated
from those medieval hang-ups about God and morality, he can kill
the defenseless, use them as spare parts for research, and call it
philanthropy.
Grove isn’t the first Silicon Valley executive to present
high-tech barbarism as high-minded charity. Groups like the Packard
Foundation boast of their work on behalf of humanity, even as they
underwrite projects that degrade man’s dignity. According to the
pro-abortion, pro-population control Packard Foundation, nothing
“helps the children” so much as not being born.
The rich and strong, according to the liberal planners, deserve
medical attention and technology’s aid. But not the unborn — that
is, unless the rich and strong want them born, in which case they
go from insignificant embryos with only utilitarian value to
beloved children in the womb.
Andy Grove is certain that embryonic stem cell research proves
the progress of man. But is the moral code that justifies it any
more sophisticated than that of the earliest barbarians? Stripped
of all the phony rhetorical packaging, the modern moral code still
says that might makes right. The weak still exist for the
exploitation of the strong. What was once done with a stick is now
done with a scalpel. Babies once left on hills to freeze are now
left in labs to freeze.
Something as ghoulishly glib as a “Stem Cell Challenge” can only
meet with praise in a culture of stunning impiety. The moral
enlightenment of which Grove speaks is nothing more than
selfishness mislabeled charity. That we casually treat human
embryos as guinea pigs for medical research simply confirms that
modern man is consulting his own will and mind, not God’s.
The Groves of the left consider George Bush’s unwillingness to
finance future embryonic research an outrage. The outrage is that
Bush and Congress permit it at all.
Such is the moral confusion that the Congress of the United
States can’t even ban cloning! Whether humans should be able to
create miniatures of themselves for harvesting in a medical pinch
is just one more issue to “debate.”
In a “Stem Cell Challenge” society, health trumps honor; the
great fear is not the corruption of the soul, but the corruption of
the body; the unborn must die for the longevity of the living.
Is this really a way of life worth prolonging?
