American spirit means looking out for others
Whether you celebrate the Fourth of July with a backyard barbecue or by heading out to a waterway, remember to salute another popular American tradition: designated drivers and skippers.
More than 148 million American adults have either been a designated driver or been driven home by one.
In addition, 85 percent of boaters believe use of designated skippers encouragse boating safety.
Thanks to efforts like these, and effective law enforcement and community-based alcohol awareness and education programs, alcohol-related boating fatalities have decreased 22 percent since 2002, the U.S. Coast Guard reports.
Likewise, drunken-driving fatalitites over the Fourth of July holiday are down 31 percent since 1982, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
This holiday weekend, do your duty as an American and use a designated driver or skipper or volunteer to be one.
There’s no better way to demonstrate true American spirit than by looking out for family and friends and helping everyone have a safe, fun holiday. Responsibility matters!
KIMBERLY A. CLEMENTS
president
Golden Eagle Distributors Inc.
Nothing unethical about stem cell science
Contrary to the claims of President Bush, nothing is unethical about destroying embryos in the course of scientific research.
An embryo is a potential, not an actual, human being, just as canvas is a potential, not an actual, work of art.
This primitive cluster of cells is no more unethical to destroy than the cells that make up one’s appendix.
Calling an embryo “human life” is an evasion of the distinction between a mass of undifferentiated cells in a test tube and an actual, living human being.
Only the mystical doctrines of religion could cloud that distinction by holding that a human being is not a biological entity with certain natural properties – i.e., an independent organism possessing a rational faculty – but rather a transcendent soul temporarily trapped in a body.
Embryonic stem cell research could improve the lives of millions. In an effort to obscure the anti-life consequences of his opposition to such research, the president cited new discoveries that suggest scientists might one day be able to create pluripotent cells from non-embryonic cells, supposedly making the “unethical” destruction of embryonic cells unnecessary.
But human welfare demands that scientists pursue every avenue that promises to realize the potential of stem cell technology – not abandon embryonic stem cell research in order to assuage faith-based objections.
We should praise this research for the life-enhancing breakthroughs it promises, and condemn the immoral attempt to return us to the Dark Ages, before science was liberated from the chains of religious dogmatism.
KEITH LOCKITCH
resident fellow
Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, Calif.
These letters to the editor appear online only and not in the Tucson Citizen’s print edition.