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This article is from
Creation 17(4):24, September 1995

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Frankensteins and foetus dinners

A Creation magazine article proves sadly ‘prophetic’.

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Eight years ago we ran an article on the moral, ethical and legal dilemmas posed by genetic engineering, embryo research, etc.1 One of the comments we made has now been thrown into stark focus by a terrible development.

The original item in Creation magazine concerned an international conference on Health, Law, and Ethics. After a discussion of some horrific happenings, such as the implanting of twins into a man’ abdomen (move over, Arnie) and attempts to hybridize cows and humans at the embryonic stage, the conference heard from international authority Dr J. Densen-Gerber, who said, ‘If you don’t think there are Frankensteins sitting in the world’ laboratories playing God, I think you don’t really understand what’ going on’.

Our article pointed out that when an evolutionary worldview rules, people no longer accept revealed moral absolutes. Discussions on ethics, without such a solid biblical anchor, can only be based on a temporary, shifting consensus of human opinion.

For example, without the Genesis absolute that man is made in the image of God, what philosophical basis is there for determining whether or not one should experiment on human embryos? At the conference, renowned evolutionist philosopher, bio-ethicist and animal-rightist Professor Peter Singer, of Australia’ Monash University, claimed that at the stage before the human embryo develops a nervous system, it has no more moral or ethical rights than a lettuce.

Singer said he would rather see human embryos used in experiments to test chemicals, instead of rabbits, as was then happening. George Annas, Professor of Health Law at Boston University, objected. If you believe, he said, that there is no difference ethically between a human embryo and a rabbit, ‘you should be happy to bottle human embryos in a jar and send them to gourmets to eat’. His basis for objecting to Singer’ comments had nothing to do with man’ being made in God’ image. His reasoning was that most people would eat roasted rabbits, but would be revolted at the idea of eating human embryos.

Our Creation article said about this:

‘Notice how philosophically unstable this is as a basis for the rights of the human embryo. People’s taste or psychological revulsion! What if a generation could be conditioned to accept this new food? Your whole moral/ethical basis must shift again.’

Many might have thought this proposition unthinkable. Yet a recent report from a Hong Kong newspaper shows that the unthinkable has become reality. Human foetuses ‘are the latest health food fad in China’.2 One State-run abortion clinic is giving aborted foetuses, usually a few months old, to women who believe that eating them will result in smooth skin, healthy kidneys, and so on. A doctor at the Sin Hua clinic was reported as saying ‘that she personally liked her foetuses with pork soup’.

Mainland (communist) China has been exposed for decades to intensive evolutionary brainwashing. As creation ministries never tire of pointing out, the more people believe that we are all just evolved animals, the more the rules for behaviour become whatever people want them to be.

References

  1. Of lettuces and cow-humans’, Creation magazine, Vol. 9 No. 4, 1987, pp. 27-30.
  2. Reported in ‘Human foetus food fad’, The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia), April 13, 1995, p. 10.