James Dobson Compared Stem Cell Reserch to Nazi Experiments

August 11, 2005 1:33 PM

James Dobson Compared Stem Cell Reserch to Nazi Experiments Dobson, of the conservative group Focus on the Family, on August 3rd also said that some good probably could have come out of the Nazi experiments.
posted by benkolb (23 comments total)

Ugh, didn't we discuss dobson enough in the past few days?
posted by delmoi at 1:35 PM on August 11, 2005

I wonder if someone told them that stem cells could prevent 'the gay' they'd change their minds?
posted by MrLint at 1:38 PM on August 11, 2005

delmoi: You can never have enough Dobson in your life!
posted by benkolb at 1:40 PM on August 11, 2005

You kidding? He'd wait until 'the gay' was detectable in utero and then he'd propose that gay embryos be used for stem cell research.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 1:41 PM on August 11, 2005

Yeah what's with the DobsonFilter?
posted by parallax7d at 1:42 PM on August 11, 2005

I know as a liberal I cringe whenever the press reports on Jane Fonda as if she speaks for me, and I bet a lot of conservatives and Christians cringe whenever James Dobson is in the news, too, for the same reason.
posted by Jatayu das at 1:43 PM on August 11, 2005

*looks out window; stares at bunnies*
posted by dhoyt at 1:44 PM on August 11, 2005

FOFfilter.
posted by jonmc at 1:44 PM on August 11, 2005

Thanks. My outrage was starting to subside a little after my last spike with the whole copyright webstandards post three down, but you got my outrage back up to a nice level by reminding me that people like Dobson have opinions.

I'm ready to start the revolution again!
posted by dios at 1:44 PM on August 11, 2005

Oh, dios. We can't prevent Dobson from having opinions, nor can we prevent him from speaking them. After all, this is America, and everybody here gets the same rights to free speech regardless of the hatefulness or lunacy of their beliefs. The problem is that some people are actually stupid enough to listen to this guy and do what he tells them to. I blame Republican cutbacks in education funding, personally.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:50 PM on August 11, 2005

So may I assume, dios, that you'll email Dobson to remind him that people like Hitler have opinions?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:52 PM on August 11, 2005

Yeah... some good could have come out of Nazi experimentation... but at what cost? OH WAI
posted by Dean Keaton at 1:53 PM on August 11, 2005

Apparently, sixty years on, the horrors of that savage time have been so clouded over in the cultural memory that proponents of stem cell research, a cowboy President, and...I d'no...people who won't let you touch the radio in their car are as vicious as capital-N Nazis.

But I'll be fair to Mr. Dobson. He's right: that poor little embryo is an analog of the fully formed human beings (with fully-formed nervous systems, I might add) who were brutalized by Mengele and the others. Why, I'm sure that an embryo feels the same pain that a young woman who was deprived of food and water for days and then forced to drink chemically processed salt water did.

Here's a rule of thumb I think it's fair to live by: there's a good chance that we will never see anything as horrific as the Nazi regime in our lifetimes. This goes for both far left (lil' socialist me) and far right (big flabby pasty Dobson): any comparing of a modern "outrage" to the horrors of the Nazi's is obscene. Period.
posted by ford and the prefects at 1:57 PM on August 11, 2005

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.

Isn't he pretty much straight on with that? Which is not to say that his version of morality is the one that should guide medical progress. But I don't think he's wrong in saying that Nazi medical experiments may have been scientifically beneficial-- lots of their science was just uneccessary and cruel, but some of it was merely inhumane and would have been valuable to people in the 1940's.

Castigate Dobson for his very real, very revolting politics. You don't have to insinuate that he's a nazi-lover.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:59 PM on August 11, 2005

I want Dobson up there, "speaking" for the Republican party. I want him saying these crazy-ass things unapologetically all the time.

Yes, that would be perfect.
posted by thanotopsis at 2:00 PM on August 11, 2005

"Dr." James Dobson: without whom Godwin's Law would certainly have died in committee.
posted by ToasT at 2:02 PM on August 11, 2005

Christians were used by corporations to get into the White House. It's a shame no one told the Christians that Jesus is dead, and their political power is just crumbs from Wall Street.

So suddenly it's the 1970s again, the 1960s never happened, and this relic of idiocy Dobson is waving is wax dick around like a steely scepter. Whatever.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:03 PM on August 11, 2005

The real kicker to this whole thing is that almost a week later, Dobson, on Sean Hannity's show, completely denied saying that he had compared Nazi experiments to stem cell research
posted by benkolb at 2:05 PM on August 11, 2005

But I don't think he's wrong in saying that Nazi medical experiments may have been scientifically beneficial-- lots of their science was just uneccessary and cruel, but some of it was merely inhumane and would have been valuable to people in the 1940's.

Which "experiments" were valuable? Are you referring to these? What's your definition of "merely inhumane" as opposed to "unnecessary and cruel" in the context of these "experiments"? Genuinely curious.
posted by Rothko at 2:07 PM on August 11, 2005

A Nazi point fingers at the Nazis -- oh, the irony.
posted by NewBornHippy at 2:12 PM on August 11, 2005

Of course, Jane Fonda is the actress who played Barbarella, not the leader of a religious-social-political movement claiming somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million American followers.
posted by iron chef morimoto at 2:28 PM on August 11, 2005

I know as a liberal I cringe whenever the press reports on Jane Fonda as if she speaks for me, and I bet a lot of conservatives and Christians cringe whenever James Dobson is in the news, too, for the same reason.

I certainly hope so. I also wish that Dobson actually was as politically irrelevant as Fonda is.
posted by Happy Monkey at 2:31 PM on August 11, 2005

that poor little embryo is an analog of the fully formed human beings (with fully-formed nervous systems, I might add) who were brutalized by Mengele and the others. Why, I'm sure that an embryo feels the same pain that a young woman who was deprived of food and water for days and then forced to drink chemically processed salt water did.

There are many states of consciousness that babies enter into in their first stages of life. Yes, a fetus senses pain, but so do animals, and we still "ethically" experiment on them (though some would disagree). The difference between what we as a society deems OK to experiment on versus what is not OK seems to draw the line at consciousness (as vague a term as that is). Given that fact, there is a BIG difference between the Nazi experiments on full-grown adults and doing stem cell research.
posted by Moral Animal at 2:32 PM on August 11, 2005