Stem cell research

Christian Century, August 29, 2001

SCHIZOPHRENIA--a group of disorders characterized by loss of contact with reality, marked disturbances of thought and perception, and bizarre behavior--seems to affect over 50 percent of Americans, those who favor legalized abortions. What is done with hundreds of thousands of discarded embryos and tiny human beings does not seem to be a problem for the majority of people in the world today. The stem cell issue, however, has created huge debates about how terrible it is to consider their use for combating many severe chronic diseases ("Embryos and us," Aug. 1-8).

It seems to me that all of us who believe in God's creation have to be terribly conflicted about the whole matter.

Ted Boone
Dallas, Tex.

The fundamentalists in the House lump embryos with fetuses and call it abortion when either are destroyed. Evidently, none of them (nor their relatives) has any of the diseases that may be helped by embryonic stem cell research.

Having witnessed my son attempt to deal with Type 1 diabetes from age 12, I cannot understand how any civilized person can say my son's life is worth less than a clump of cells that likely will be put in the trash. Research using embryonic stein cells is no more "playing God" than any medical procedure that prolongs life beyond its natural limit. Such practices now are standard operating procedure. Embryonic stem cell research should be too.

While other countries move ahead with the inevitable, the U.S. is starting to look like the church when it excommunicated Galileo.

Mike Mitchell
Fort Payne, Ala.

The unending debate about abortion, choice and stem cell research seems to revolve around the question, "When does life begin: at conception, or birth or when?"

I think life begins in stages. Of course there is life before birth. There is also life before conception. (If the ova and the spermatazoa are not alive, there is no birth.)

But even the newborn baby is only partly developed; many of its faculties are not "born" yet. Even the early teenager lacks some stages of development. I think that birth is a long process that lasts for years, even a lifetime.

And nature itself is extravagantly wasteful of life. Only a few of the ova go on to lull development. The male produces thousands of spermatazoa that are destined to die. So I would say that it is not unnatural if some embryos die.

William Reitmeier
Lincoln, Neb.

Neighbors in need ...

JOHN BUCHANAN expresses concern that the faith-based initiatives represent a shift of responsibility in caring for the needy from the public to the private sector ("Neighbors," Aug. 1-8).

First, the initiative is not concerned with shifting responsibility, but only with seeking effectiveness by recognizing that the cure for some social problems is not wholly a matter of throwing monetary resources at people. Sometimes a little religion doesn't hurt.

Second, the responsibility, ultimately is an individual responsibility. We Christians are concerned with that responsibility precisely because we are told by our God that it is our responsibility That some, perhaps too many, "handle that problem through" or "slough it off upon" the government does not make the problem any less of a private, personal responsibility than it was before.

John A. Johnson
Chicago, Ill.

UCC in Texas ...

I WAS LONELY serving a church in the Texas panhandle, 80 miles from my nearest UCC neighbor, but not as lonely as John Dart suggests in "Ecumenical chums" (Aug. 1-8).

According to my recent yearbook, there are 70, not 25, UCC churches in Texas. Far fewer than the Disciples' 400, but not completely missing.

Clark N. Ross
Wilmette, Ill.

Navy mom ...

I THANK Debra Bendis for sharing her struggle with the issue of having a son in the U.S. Navy ("Navy mom," July 4-11). My mother watched all three of her sons go into the military--one son at the beginning of WW II and two during the Korean conflict. One son stayed in the service and became a warrant officer. The other two stayed for their enlistment period and then became pastors--one a Presbyterian and the other a Mennonite.

We don't talk much about boot camp training, hut anyone who has been through boot camp knows that one of the reasons it is so hard physically and emotionally is that under all the push-ups and marching and becoming a "real team" is the fact that we are being taught how to kill people. On the rifle range it is anything but subtle. You load the weapon, you aim the weapon and you pull the trigger. This, after all, is what the military, is all about--preparation for killing other people.

I did not kill anyone during my military, experience (I was fixing drinking fountains on ships), but every time I heard one of those big guns go off when we were near the Korean coastline I knew that someone was trying to kill someone else.

Today I have another view--I'm the one who became the Mennonite.

Thanks for reintroducing me to the struggle.

Jim Compton-Schmidt
Fresno, Calif.

Lethal injection ...

WILLIAM J. WISEMAN JR. is unjust to Thomas Cranmer when he writes: "Cranmer died in the flames, terrified" ("The lethal injection," June 20-27). I commend to him the award-winning biography by Diarmaid MacCulloch titled Thomas Cranmer: A Life.