What is it with rightwing nutcases and the Nazi comparisons recently? Are they trying to own the intellectual terrain in the hope no-one uses it against them?
Via Media Matters:
James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, compared embryonic stem cell research with Nazi experiments conducted on live human patients during and prior to the Holocaust.
DOBSON: You know, the thing that means so much to me here on this this issue [embryonic stem cell research] is that people talk about the potential for good that can come from destroying these little embryos and how we might be able to solve the problem of juvenile diabetes. There's no indication yet that they're gonna do that, but people say that, or spinal cord injuries or such things. But I have to ask this question: In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind. You know, if you take a utilitarian approach, that if something results in good, then it is good. But that's obviously not true. We condemn what the Nazis did because there are some things that we always could do but we haven't done, because science always has to be guided by ethics and by morality. And you remove ethics and morality, and you get what happened in Nazi Germany. That's why to Senator [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist [R-TN] and the others who are saying, "Look what may be accomplished." Yeah, but there's another issue, there's a higher order of ethics here.
Oh bullshit, James. Comparing stem cell research to medical experiments on grown adults held against their will is not just a difference of degree it's a difference of kind.
(PS, I know it's very much beside the point but this is interesting from a purely historical point of view.)
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