This one comes courtesy A Vote For Science, a science blog covering the election. It’s got some very interesting posts, trying to bring a fact-based approach to the candidates positions. The issue here is, amazingly, in vitro fertilization (IVF). When asked at a science forum whether McCain’s position that life begins at conception is at odds with IVF, his health advisor can’t give a straight answer and falls back on some nonsense talking points about stem cell research and opposing “fetal farming,” which doesn’t exist. Check out the video (also includes Obama advisor’s response):
McCain’s health advisor stumbles on IVF question
This is what happens when you make policies about science based on willful ignorance of the facts and unjustified belief in nonsense. The idea that a clump of 6-8 cells has the same moral standing as an adult human being is ludicrous to anyone with even a modicum of a common sense. The irony here is that IVF is about as much of a feel-good, pro-family story as you can get: Modern science gives a baby to an infertile couple who desperately wants one. If you add in all the cool research that can be done on the unused blastocysts, it’s even more of a win-win. Consider that, in their zealous quest to deny some women the right not to have a child, the Christian right is actually in a position of denying other women the right to have a child.
You may not know (I didn’t) that many mainstream churches actively oppose IVF on the “life begins at conception” grounds. For example, here’s an analysis of the Vatican’s statement. It also a great example of religious people knowing that their basic argument is utterly uncompelling, and desperately overcompensating:
IVF violates the rights of the child: it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personality. It objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity, it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing. This threat to the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder, and injustice in the whole of social life.
Wow, an uprising of anarchist test-tube babies. If that’s not a sound basis for science policy, I don’t know what is.