For those who don't know snot. Geesh.

This comes from a comment string here at Voices Carry last night. It's worth it's own post. I thought the title– for those who don't know snot –was appropriate and you'll see why shortly.

Rayilyn Brown, the courageous Parkinson's sufferer and director of the Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation, has been dialoging with me about cloning and experimenting on human embryos here in South Dakota. Then, for whatever reason, Rayilyn decided to send me an email, which I interpreted as a way to continue the discussion privately. I didn't appreciate that so I posted the comment and replied to it. 

Here is Rayilyn's latest comment:

Hi Steve

Of course we are talking about cloning but it sounds like you are equating reproductive cloning (cloning beings) with therapeutic cloning.(cloning cells).

I think our big point of disagreement is about the nature of a blastocyct. You think microscopic undifferentiated cells are a "human being" with a "life" and I don't and never will. Moreover, unless a blastocyst is successfully implanted in a uterus there is absolutely no chance it will ever become anything on its own - kind of like an unplanted seed.

If I believed a blastocyst was a person I certainly would NOT favor killing it for research. There is no "entity" or body the cells are taken from - the cells are the "it".

I think it is really no one else's business if a woman wants to use one of her eggs and her own skin cells to help develop a cure or treatment for her cancer, for example. This is therapeutic cloning.

If you are afraid of "killing" cells, don't sneeze, you'll commit genocide. Every cell in your body has the potential to become a clone of you. finally, unless the research is done, we won't know what will work.

Rayilyn Brown, Director Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation

Now for my reply:

WOW - did you really just equate a human embryo with snot?? Shame on you.

Science 101… a blastocyst IS AN EMBRYO. It IS A FERTILIZED EGG five to seven days after conception. That is biological fact. The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last July that CONCEPTION produces a separate unique living human being NOT "undifferentiated cells."

Dave Volk and CO are expressly saying they want to experiment on human EMBRYOS.

By your ridiculous definition of what defines human life, a 3rd trimester baby isn't anything beyond a blob of cells because, as you say, there is no chance of it becoming anything on it's own. Heck, let's experiment on old folks in nursing homes because they are dependent too. If independence is what defines human life entire poor and dependent nations are populated by masses of cells not people.

Rayilyn, regarding your last sentence… "unless the research is done we won't know what will work." HELLO? They have been doing this "research" and it HAS NOT BEEN WORKING! These cells mutate, form tumors and kill rats. Let's invest in that which IS ALREADY WORKING - adult stem cell research. It is already helping hundreds of thousands of people. I'm going to drop in a wonderful story which I'm pulling from an earlier post here at Voices Carry. I hope it helps you see that a blastocyst IS A HUMAN BEING.

On January 16, 2007, a remarkable journey came to an end in Covington, Louisiana. Sixteen months earlier, Noah Benton Markham's life had been jeopardized by the winds and rain of Hurricane Katrina. Trapped in a flooded hospital in New Orleans, Noah depended upon the timely work of seven Illinois Conservation Police Officers, and three Louisiana State officers who used flat-bottomed boats to rescue Noah an take him to safety. Although many New Orleans residents tragically lost their lives in Katrina and its aftermath, Noah's story of rescue is, nevertheless, one of the most inspirational takes of heroism from that national disaster.

What, then, makes it unique? And why did the story of his rescue end sixteen months after the events of September 2006? The answer is that Noah has the distinction of being one of the youngest residents of New Orleans to be saved from Katrina: when the Illinois and Louisiana police officers entered the hospital where Noah was trapped, he was an embryo, a human being in the very earliest stages of development, frozen with fourteen hundred embryos in canisters of liquid nitrogen

Noah's story had a happy ending: Noah's parents were overjoyed those sixteen months later when Noah emerged, via cesarean section, into the light of the world. His parents named him in acknowledgment of a resourceful survivor of an earlier flood. His grandmother immediately started phoning relatives with the news: "It's a boy!" But if those officers had never made it to Noah's hospital, or if they had abandoned those canisters of liquid nitrogen, there can be little doubt that the toll of Katrina would have been fourteen hundred human beings higher than it already was, and Noah, sadly would have perished before having the opportunity to meet his loving family.

Let us repeat: Noah would have perished. For it was Noah who was frozen in one of those canisters; Noah who was brought from New Orleans by boat; Noah who was subsequently implanted into his mothers womb; and Noah who was born on January 16, 2007. Noah started this remarkable journey as an embryo, or blastocyst - a name for the early stage of development in a human being's life. Noah continued that journey after implantation into his mothers womb, growing into a fetus and finally an infant. And he will continue, we are confident, to grow into an adolescent and a teenager as he continues along the path to adulthood.

Noah's progress in these respects is little different from that of any other member of the human race, save for the exertions necessary to save him at the very earliest stage of his life. But in later years, if Noah were to look back to that troubled time in New Orleans and ask himself whether he was rescued that day, whether it was his life that was saved, we believe that there is only one answer he could reasonable give himself: "Of Course!" (Source: Embryo)