NIH and Dred Scott

The Dred Scott Decision is perhaps one of the most famously bad decisions of the Supreme Court. It was just four years later that the Civil War began, and later the decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th ammendments.

The decision is chilling in its terms:

"Does not this show that property in a human being does not arise from nature or from the common law, but, in the language of this court, 'it is a mere municipal regulation, founded upon and limited to the range of the territorial laws?'" (Page 60, US 549)

"A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man, and he is destined to an endless existence." (US 550)

This was clearly a different time, when the Court would acknowledge God as Creator. Yet, in the same breath, they would deny a human being such a basic right as freedom.

That is certainly their right to do. But such a perversion of nature cannot long stand.


Today we have a similar situation. I do not think it will be long before Roe and Dred Scott are connected in the common telling of history (I pray it would not take such another event as the Civil War to come about). Of course, an extension of the abortion issue is ESC...

From the National Institute of Health:

"hESCs should have been derived from human embryos: that were created using in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes and were no longer needed for this purpose"

If you are "no longer needed", you can be killed.