"Paging Dr. Moreau, paging Dr. Moreau....."

Found this via The Cafeteria Is Closed;

London, Jan. 16, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The British House of Lords has rejected an effort to ban the creation of "hybrid" embryos combining human and animal tissues.

By a vote of 268- 96 the House of Lords defeated a proposed amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would have prohibited the creation of the hybrid embryos. In its final form the legislation allows researchers to produce the hybrids, provided that they are not implanted in the womb.

Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat who had led the parliamentary campaign to allow the practice, applauded the vote by the House of Lords, saying that it was "not rational" to bar the creation of hybrids, since the legislation allows the use of fully human embryos for research purposes. In either case, the embryos are destroyed once scientists have harvested the desired tissues.

H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T! It wasn't even a close vote, 268-96.

The devaluation of human life continues. First it was the acceptance of abortion, the thinking of the time being that the fetus wasn't "really" human due to it's lack of development, plus abortion would never, ever become commonplace and never, ever occur outside the first trimester. It was championed as the salvation of women for whom pregnancy could impose serious risks or for victims of rape and incest. Improvement in sonogram technology and other areas have put the lie to the idea there isn't any awareness on the part of the child. No matter though, the camel's nose is in the tent and the rest of the animal is coming!

Since then we've learned to accept without blinking the notions of abortion for convenience, abortion because the baby has a defect (check out the drop in infants born with Down's Syndrome the last few decades), selective abortion because having more than one child at a time would be inconvenient, in vitro fertilization which results in the death of some fetuses, genetic manipulation for desirable characteristics (one deaf couple even tried having their infant modified to be born deaf, I'm NOT making this up!), surrogate motherhood (where a baby becomes a "lifestyle accoutrement" for careerminded hairbags who let their biological clock run out). Let's not forget those conscientous souls who were recently featured in the news for aborting their children in order to lessen their "carbon footprint.

Moving out of the area of infants, euthanasia of the elderly has become commonplace in many countries (Holland comes to mind). Reasons for this include; mercy killings to relieve pain, mercy killings because of a decrease in the "quality of life" (Terri Schiavo anyone), mercy killings so as not to inflict a financial burden on the family/state. The beat goes on and on and on and......

For a while I used to think "Culture of Death" was over the top. Boy was I wrong on that one! Notice how over the past several years we've seen an increase of stories featuring man's gruesome inhumanity to man? I'm thinking specifically of Andrea Yates, the chick who killed her five children and Deanna Schlosser, who hacked off her babie's arms. Granted that both these women were nutty as outhouse rats but when human life is increasing devalued, the ways it will be disposed of become more and more repugnant. I wholeheartedly believe that the rise in stories such as these is directly tied into this devaluation.

So now we'll start seeing experimentation with humans that would have made Josef Mengele puke.

What's next, lampshades made from the skin of the unborn? Planned Parenthood is already selling tee shirts that tell the world, "I'm proud of my abortion". Think of how impossible THAT would have been not too long ago. Seriously, who would have even dared voice such an idea for a tee shirt back in the 80's? They'd have been treated like lepers.

In a recent conversation with my mother she remarked that I was really getting involved with prolife groups. Seemed kind of surprised. I can understand that as her attitude mirrored my own till several years ago, an overall view that we're going to Hell in a handbasket in general but it didn't really involve me personally. Felt I was somehow insulated from it all and that "those people" were different from myself.

IMHO it's that apathy that allows so much of this crap to proliferate. John Q. Public is numb to so much we've forgotten how to express our outrage or even the fact that we SHOULD be outraged. So our culture changes incrementally until one day we wake up and find ourselves in a world we damned well made. Made with our indifference and willful ignorance.

So we're either part of the solution or part of the problem. Becoming part of the solution is difficult, we all have our lives to live. A good husband and father will spend time with his family, insuring his kids are raised right and attending to their needs. After a full day of work, coming home to do his share of domestic duties, who has time to get deeply involved in politics? His counterpart on the other side of the aisle doesn't necessarily have those commitments. Killing babies you and your wife would have had gives you an awful lot of free time for further mischief.

Hindsight is 20-20 and it takes no genius to see John Q. Public has been remiss in keeping us out of this cultural cesspool we now live in. Remiss because of putting family first, ironically we're now in an age where that family has been completely devalued and dismissed as important. Lord knows, the proponents of much that's wrong were able to find the time for their agenda. They were on the top of their game, we ceded the field by never showing up to play.

So now we have a real life version of Dr. Moreau's island coming to life in England. Whoopee. Wonder how long before we see the same thing over here?