Will Missouri Make
Human Farming Legal?

By Rev. Stephen Apostolos Cakouros

It has come to the attention of many of the voters that some technocrats are willing to bring a child to the embryonic stage in his or her development for no other purpose than to harvest from that baby what are called stem cells. Understandably this is part of a larger picture which prompts the question “should we protect human life?”

Medical experts differentiate between the types of stem cells that can be taken from a living embryo, which if they are removed will necessitate the death of the donor, and the kind of “adult stem cells” that do not require the loss or suspension of life. In other words, will we raise children in the same way we do beef? An Angus cow is bred so that it may be slaughtered. Will we do this with children also? In times past, families have had children so that they might work the farm. Still others farmed out their children to indenturing merchants. Now it is possible to farm the children, raising them as we do cattle in order to harvest for our own needs their several parts.

George Orwell entitled his classic The Animal Farm. Had he lived today his fear of big brother might have prompted him to write The Human Farm. Very soon farms of the type we are alluding to may be found throughout Missouri and America. Instead of wearing overalls and muddy boots the farmers on these plantations will don white lab coats. Let us not mince words about this. An incubus has descended on the State of Missouri. His nocturnal visits, intended for the purpose of breeding, may bring into existence a generation of Missourians unlike any other. This generation will be unique for its coldhearted treatment of the unborn. If this were to happen, in a state that has on so many occasions been willing to help the poor and needy, it would be a sad thing indeed.

The issue is clear. Missouri voters will be asked to decide on whether they should permit medical researchers the legal right to create babies in order to kill them, in the hope that the practice of human harvesting will advance medical science. If the voters decide that this procedure is both unseemly and grotesque, and that it is intended only to line the pockets of certain individuals, and that it is not nearly as promising as adult stem cell research, it will mean that once again the people of Missouri have been willing to vote their conscience. Should the voters not be repulsed by this practice, which many believe is ghastly, what will this do to the voters themselves when it comes to character? Are there diseases of the soul, and are these diseases communicable? Can a society turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to what is happening, and not feel the effects of that? History says it can and it has furnished us with numerous examples of this. We must ask, will civilized people under the guise of altruism, and the promise of cures for certain diseases stand back and say nothing, while others put in place the utilitarian/pragmatic philosophies of Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mills?

The people of Missouri should understand that they may be carrying the future with them into the voting booth. If the cloning of human embryos is legalized, evil genius will not stop there. Evil is fecund. Eventually what we all fear will happen. An elite core of specialists will saunter into our midst. Checks and balances will be removed; technocrats who answer at this time to the citizenry will no longer have to do so. What goes on in the laboratories of America should be brought under the purview of the citizenry, but that citizenry must be made up of an informed electorate which has not always been the case. It has come to the attention of many of us that a campaign is underway to hoodwink Missouri voters. A thick smoke screen has been formed.

Whenever deception is used to promote something an alarm should be sounded. We may take the following to the bank: what is conceived in darkness needs darkness; it is afraid of the light. If we must use language and tactics that are disingenuous then that is an indication that what we are doing is fundamentally wrong. Righteousness never needs to employ devious tactics. It has no need of fine print. The single greatest line in the Bible is found in John 14:2 where Jesus says, “If it were not so I would have told you.”

Some of us have discovered that the people we are dealing with do not play by our rules. Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri recently mailed to the voters a circular that is patently dishonest. We are told in it that certain faith organizations are behind the amendment to harvest embryonic stem cells, but none of these faith organizations are listed. No matter, Judas was ordained an apostle and look what he did. The circular states in the plainest language that a baby will not have to die or an abortion will not take place if this bill passes. Obviously they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The wool has been gleaned from a sheep named dolly. The same process that was used to clone the most famous sheep in history will become legal, but this time it will not be sheep or goats or dogs that will be cloned, it will be children.

One bumper sticker says it all. It is at one and the same time both eloquent and laconic.

It reads: “They lied -- it is cloning -- vote NO on Amendment 2.”

This essay amounts to a brief look at the practice of abortion on demand, embryonic stem cell research, and infanticide; all with a view to what affects these practices may have on the American character. The occasion for this essay is the upcoming vote in the State of Missouri in which voters will be called on to decide if the harvesting of human parts through a process called cloning is ethical. The comments included in this essay are part of a wider study entitled Faith, Reason and the Culture War that has been prepared for publication by the Rev. Stephen Apostolos Cakouros.

Rev. Cakouros is a freelance writer and researcher with four theological degrees. His last earned degree was from Princeton Theological Seminary. The essay was prepared with grateful thanks for the courteous cooperation of the libraries of Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis MO, and the library of Concordia Theological Seminary, Clayton, MO. Rev. Cakouros is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America. Those who wish to comment on this essay may contact Rev. Cakouros at heresy39@yahoo.com.