Hari on Liberal Eugenics, Bailey

In the Independent, Johann Hari, fresh from trading spitballs with Oliver Kamm and Nick Cohen, makes the case for "liberal eugenics," emphasizing that it "has nothing to do with the evils of Nazi eugenics. It is entered into by parents and it is motivated by love." Taking pot-shots at the Vatican's position on stem-cell research, Hari cites our own Ron Bailey in his defense, whom he correctly identifies as a "brilliant science writer":

Stem-cell research is Mengelian. Discarded embryos have been murdered. To a materialist who rejects supernatural explanations for the world, this of course seems absurd. We believe humans develop slowly and in stages, and that they have far greater rights once they become self-aware and capable of feeling pain—at around twelve weeks after conception—than when they are insentient blobs. The brilliant science writer Ronald Bailey has picked numerous holes in the Vatican position. Using their logic, if there was a fire in an embryo lab and you had a choice between saving a petri dish of ten near-invisible embryos or Steven Hawking, you would snatch the petri dish and run. And there's a bigger hole. Eight in every ten embryos are flushed out in women's menstrual flows, so why aren't the Catholics trying to prevent this global holocaust of human beings? Why aren't they trying to collect and implant them? The answer is obvious—even they cannot take the Pope's position seriously. If we followed his dictates and refused to develop cures that can treat millions because of these supernatural beliefs, we would actually create the "culture of death" that the Pope crows about.

Whole article here.

Ron being brilliant on the subject of stem cell research here.