Cardinal Commits Metaphor Slaughter

The dogmatists thoughtful folks who oppose any research of any kind using embryonic stem cells have marshalled their most aggressive rhetoric for the big battle in the House of Representatives, and the poor metaphors they are invoking are groaning under the weight. Take for example this column in today's USA Today by Cardinal William Keeler, which features the following fatuous prose:

How does it show respect to treat human lives as mere crops for harvesting?

... government-funded researchers would reach in and destroy these young lives before that can happen...

The fixation on destroying embryos has diverted resources away from more promising therapies, and therefore ill serves suffering patients as well as embryonic human beings.

Leaving the embryonic citizens in their little freezer rods means that they will continue to degenerate, day by day, in what amounts (on the Cardinal's terms) to a protracted abortion. So that isn't in any sense saving them - to save them we'll need to make sure that they are removed from the freezer and used in that most immoral ritual IVF, which means they'll need to be gestated by someone, so, by the way, Cardinal, would you care to adopt an embryo? No? Perhaps you could direct, or at least ask, some of your staff or supporters to carry and bear these poor embyros? No?

The hypocrisy in play in the debate about the ethics of stem cell research is truly incredible, and getting worse by the minute.