Wow... Mark, where do you find this stuff!?
Ian | 06.30.03 - 2:40 pm | #

Did I miss the Apocolypse?
Paul Scheibmeir | 06.30.03 - 2:45 pm | #

Man, the lunacy of this world at times is unnerving. Aborting unborn children, but using their eggs so other women can have children? How about let's cut out the middle steps?

My favorite quote is this: " I'm fully aware of the controversy about this - but probably, in some place, it will be ethically acceptable."

Lovely.
JACK | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 2:50 pm | #

Actually, this nightmare has been around for sometime as these mad scientists realized that an unborn female child has eggs that could be used for experimentation -- the truly dark experiment is to bring to "life" a child descended from several generations of never-born human females -- ie sucessively aborted generations of unborn girls.

If you want a quick insight into the depravity of "probably, in some place, it will be ethically acceptable"-scientists note that all their quotations avoid the term "human".
Patrick Sweeney | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 3:32 pm | #

I'd actually be interested in seeing what the prophets would say to produce that kind of effect.
Paul | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 4:21 pm | #

BTW Mark,

this "Jew" thing is pretty weak. Although most of your readers and I understand your point is ironic to draw analogy between the Holocaust and abortion, it just dosn't look right...

...Especially when you have a post down the page "The religion of most American Jews is liberalism. And here is its sacrament (link to abortion ritual)"

I wouldn't be surprised if Jews who stumble your site mistook you for some kind of anti-Semite... You don't need that.
Ian | 06.30.03 - 4:45 pm | #

The idea of using the eggs from aborted females has been around for several years. NEW SCIENTIST thought that children born from fertilizing such eggs would be thrilled to have come into the world by such a special high-tech process. If you want to see a totally secularized world view red and raw, dip into NS for a few weeks.
Sandra Miesel | 06.30.03 - 5:28 pm | #

Ian:

The closest analogy we have that can still touch our dead nerves is the image of gold fillings ripped from the teeth of dead Jews "for the common good".

If a Jewish person is stupid enough to conclude I'm an anti-semite when I quote an Orthodox rabbi's indictment of secularized American Jews, then I don't have time for the opinions of fools, Jewish or otherwise.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 5:51 pm | #

Yikes... I had no idea that an egg from an aborted child could be used. Aside from the horror of it all, why would anyone want to do this? Just because it could be done? This is so disgusting that it's amazing to believe anyone would even consider this as a possibility.

Is this being done so that scientists can initiate changes in the genetic code through successive generations of aborted "parents," so that they can induce evolutionary changes, or to rid children of all genetic deformities? This is really, really disturbing. All that time in the labratory waiting for the next generation of mice to see if genetic changes made to the parents materialized, will now be cut to mere weeks - and not done with mice, but with humans!

Anyone who thinks these things will lead to a Brave New World is wrong - wrong because we are there NOW...
Bobbert | 06.30.03 - 6:34 pm | #

This is just the beginning. I often look at infants and think that by the time they're my age - 64 - the world, society and human beings are going to be unrecognizable to those of us born in the last century.

Is the Church ready for this? Ready or not, it will be in the 21st century version of the catacombs.
pavel chichikov | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 6:46 pm | #

I'm sure the new age types will be ready to cope with the aftereffects: cleansing the children of the neverborn of all those negative emotions that they are channeling: the rage and anger of the aborted over being denied a chance at life and being forced to reproduce without a choice.

I can picture a new ritual, probably involving dance and sage-burning, and full of affirmations like:

"I, the reason and pinnacle of your never-ness dance to free your spirit from the eternal shadow of not-being. I embrace my birth grandmother, whose noble choice brought me to BE. Rejoice in my BEing, that gives meaning to your nothingness." something like that.
Jo | 06.30.03 - 6:57 pm | #

What? Who thinks up this stuff?
Anonymous | 06.30.03 - 7:36 pm | #

I'm not really anonymous...forgot to type in my name...
Lynn | 06.30.03 - 7:36 pm | #

The 'new age types' are transitional forms.
pavel chichikov | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 8:06 pm | #

This is just so sick. I wouldn't think much of it except when I think that within a few months there will be many "scientists" and "doctors" taking this seriously and calling anyone who disagrees with them "religious fanatics" who want to shove their morals up everybodys' throat. Sooner or later it will be excepted. Just look at abortion, cloning, euthanasia, et al.

Huxley's "Brave New World" is already upon us. Who would have thought?
Ita O'Byrne | 06.30.03 - 8:27 pm | #

The previous--not the current--issue of HUMAN LIFE review had an excellent article on human genetic modification. Science fiction aside, there was a big stir over the idea forty years ago with the publication of THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT by Gerald Feinberg on how we were going to create "improved" humans. The seed of the current weeds went into the ground long ago.
Sandra Miesel | 06.30.03 - 9:28 pm | #

Sinister, isn't it? Orcs are something like genetically modified elves, aren't they?
pavel chichikov | Homepage | 06.30.03 - 11:43 pm | #

If anyone's looking for encouragement, scroll down to the comments section following the Beeb's story. All but one of them I've read are negative. The most perceptive (and frightening) one was this:

"Why should harvesting eggs from an aborted foetus disturb those who support abortion? I think it is completely consistent with the pro-choice view. According to pro-choicers, unborn babies are not human beings and therefore there is nothing morally wrong with their mother choosing to terminate them. What then can be morally wrong with harvesting their eggs? If the unborn are not human beings, then we should be able to do anything we want with them."

pavel chichikov: Right. Orcs are descended from elves captured by Morgoth and turned to evil.
someguy | 07.01.03 - 8:22 am | #

Ian (2nd entry):

Forget it. You will never get Mark to admit he's anti-Semitic; he's convinced he's not. People like him who compare the survival of Israel to that of Croatia will stand around
dabbing their rad-trad eyes with kleenex the next time Jews are carried off to the ovens.

As long as he and Scott Hahn are passing the Covenant Theology crack pipe back and forth (see their "study" on the Revelation from the new St. Marcion series), they will be too busy counting the web hits while little Jewish girls and middle-aged gardeners are gunned down by Palestinian "activists."

sarcasm on

Remember, Ian, anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitism. Got that?

/sarcasm
someguy | 07.01.03 - 8:29 am | #

...when the wise guys sign their names "some guy" that you know they believe in the courage of their convictions.

I think Mark has hit upon a great device to chill the heart: part of society can observe with sang-froid anything done to a fetus, but change the word to one that people know guilt about, like "Jew," and it curls the toes of those same morally bankrupt individuals.

If we can get them to see that "fetus" and "Jew" both describe "people," then we're partway home to living in peace.
Therese Z | 07.01.03 - 9:30 am | #

Using Jews as experimental means to scientific ends as the Nazis did is one of contemporary society's most compelling paradigms of evil. Mark is rightly using that paradigm to demonstrate the same evil in another context. Instead of minimizing the nature of the evil done to the Jews, Mark is in fact relying on its very gravity to make his point.

The abandonment by so many American Jews of their faith is a tragedy. That so many abandoned it in favor of a sophomoric self-indulgent liberalism borders on a pathology.

These points are not complicated. They have been made by many thoughtful observers, including quite a few influential Jewish thinkers who care about the continuing observance of an ancient and essential convenant.

But "some guys" are just too bone stupid to get it.
Mike Petrik | 07.01.03 - 10:04 am | #

Consider the American professor's comment: "Surely it's better to do some good with tissue than no good?" Have you ever seen a clearer description of how evil compounds on itself, how the sins of the father pass down to future generations? To paraphrase: "As long as we're killing them anyway, we might as well ...." Despicable.
kyle | 07.01.03 - 11:25 am | #

Someguy:

1. When did I compare Israel and Croatia? When did I say I was opposed to Zionism? Here I thought I'd said the Jews do have a right to a homeland.

2. When did I declare the Old Covenant void or the creation of an evil God? (which is all I can make of your St. Marcion crack). I affirm the teaching of Nostra Aetate.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 07.01.03 - 12:19 pm | #

That comment is also a good example of what happens when man tries to do good through doing evil.
c matt | 07.01.03 - 12:25 pm | #