I certainly hope that many more people will find this site and read.  I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

I "do" videoconferencing.  We get used primarily for wide area meetings and for remote training / education.  You should also understand that outside of my work, I rarely watch TV and that began in the 1990s.  Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of sitting through an old Nova science program from the early 90s.  It was about a use of embryonic stem cells for a possible cure of people with the symptoms of Parkinson's diease.  They had taken some bad faux Heroin, containing a chemical called MPTP I believe.  

The most irritating thing about it was the complete lack of understanding of the morality that we espouse in our fight for the recognition of the humanity and personhood of every fetus and disabled or aged man or woman.  This was as true for the class and instructor as it was in the now 15+ year old show.  

Before I go on to list my objections, I should mention that it was the only television show that had a shot of the March for Life, other than EWTN that I have seen.  It was brief and was edited to be after a close shot of a small group of rowdy and intimidating pro-life protesters.  I seriously wonder how hard they had to look to find those yelling and screaming folks!  In my experience, that kind of thing is much more likely to come from pro-choice protesters.

 As I said in my previous blog posting, the March for Life has some of the best behaived and nice, considerate people that you could ever hope to meet!  I have been to other large gatherings of like minded people for other causes, but the atmosphere of the March is special.  People spontaneously help you - a tissue to blow your nose or an umbrella to ward off the rain.  I have never felt that I was in any sort of danger.  I keep my hands close to my pockets by old habit, but I don't think there's a pickpocket in all the thousands of people there!  Yes, some fightin' words get said by some of the speakers before the March, and some chants for Life go up from the younger groups as we pass Congressional buildings and the Supreme Court, but if they seriously make anyone feel threatened, I'll get a hat and eat it!  Any counter demonstrations you may hear of are tiny in comparison.  I think I saw one at the final corner one year only, but I don't make it down every year.  You may laugh, but I feel like I'm in a small, advance time piece of the Kingdom of God when I experience the March.

Back to the blind and misleading press, in this case a science telvision show.  One way that it was misleading was the above mentioned mischaracterization of Pro-Life protesters.  Another is that it didn't mention, let alone go into therapy by Adult stem cells.  Yes work with them was far less advanced then, but most stem cell cures come from the use of your own adult stem cells.  Secondly, there is what I must call the willful blindness to the simple reason for objecting to the use of aborted fetus stem cells for experimentation.  "After all, they've already been aborted!?"  Excuse me, if a fetus is a human being, he or she deserves the respect we give to our dead.  You don't want Igor to dig up Uncle George for parts to be used by Dr. Frankenstein?  Well, I'd like our aborted children to be buried or cremated or treated with similar respect!  That the users of these parts of children look so mild and everyday is actually more chilling than imaginary monsters!

To sum up, the focus of the show was directed solely at one of the few embryonic stem cell semi-successful experiments.  It did not give a balanced view of the moral issue involved and did not mention adult stem cell therapies. We know that pro-lifers have no objection at all to medical experimentation with adult stem cells, but a naive viewer certainly wouldn't.  He or she wouldn't even know that such a thing as an adult stem cell even exixts!!  That is out and out propaganda, not dispassionate reporting of the facts and the issues involved!  No wonder people such as the instructor and students are biased and don't understand the issue at all!

If you haven't, go to the March for Life in January, or a more local equivalent.  I think the people marching in San Francisco on that day in January are braver than us east coast residents!   Help your family, friends and neighbors to see the issue of stem cells from a broader perspective and keep the Faith folks!