WEB POSTED 08-06-2001

"LET US MAKE MAN!" - "US" WHO?

Once again, the various news media are rife with startling "news" of things which have been going on all along, but out of the sight and hearing of the general public. This time, it is "STEM CELLS". I know you are aware of it, since it is being featured in all the news media � both seen and heard. So hot is it, the venerable CHICAGO TRIBUNE devoted eight pages of its July 29th issue to this emerging program. At least it is being treated as an "emerging" program. As I read, see and hear of it, I reflect upon The Honorable Elijah Muhammad�s telling me, some forty years ago, that this sort of study was being developed.

One journalist points out that "The greatest danger, experts say, comes when innovative work proceeds out of public view, so that people cannot evaluate the changes that medical technology offers.

"There is nothing," he continues, "in principle stopping genetic researchers today from attempting some truly obscene operations � such as people with dog genes..."

Abortion foes, meanwhile, oppose federal support of the procedure on the grounds that obtaining embryonic cells requires destroying an embryo � thus becoming guilty of infanticide.

Reference was made to a book entitled "THE CLONE AGE", by Chicago lawyer Lori B. Andrews, director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which contains the observation that "More than a million people worldwide were conceived in laboratory petri dishes..."

Douglas Melton, chairman of Harvard University�s department of molecular and cellular biology, is quoted as stating, "Most other cells divide once and specialize into something like nerve or muscle cells. Stem cells first ensure their survival by replicating themselves. We biologists say that makes them immortal.

"Second, when they divide they also have the potential to specialize into other kinds of cells, so that a daughter cell can become whatever�s needed � a cartilage cell, say, or a blood cell."

One observer points out that, "...the use of human fetal tissue for research goes back much further. More than 50 years ago, the polio vaccine was developed after scientists learned how to grow the paralyzing virus in human fetal cultures."