Three Parent Babies in England

MPs agreed to allow “triple parent” babies in England yesterday, though the House of Lords still has a say on the issue. What are “triple parent babies?” They are fertilized eggs with DNA from two women and one man. I do not understand all of the science involved. The procedure is described as a mitochondrial transfer that allows women with genetic dispositions that are normally destructive to children to have healthy babies by using parts of an egg from another woman. Sympathetic scientists are claiming this is a treatment and little else.

David Prentice, from the Lozier Institute, was on our campus last week, and he cautioned some of us that this procedure is really cloning under a different name. Stuart A. Newman, a professor at New York Medical College, agrees and argues that since this is essentially cloning, possible offspring will be subject to the same problems that follow cloned organisms–frailty, particularly a limited lifespan. Putting the ethics of cloning aside, if Newman is right, Britain may have just allowed dramatic genetic engineering in the human reproductive process. Our Brave New World may be one step closer today.

ISIS and Jordan

Sometimes, it is good to have a king. ISIS published a video that showed the gruesome, caged burning of a Jordanian military pilot. In response, Jordan’s King Abdullah condemned the acts and promptly ordered the execution of two Jordanian-held and ISIS attached prisoners at dawn of the next day. One of the prisoners, Sajida al-Rishawi was part of a terrorist attack in Amman, and ISIS had demanded her release before it beheaded a Japanese soldier.

ISIS is beyond reason. ISIS is beyond negotiation. ISIS is hard to call anything but evil. At some point, we will have to display the collective will to stand against ISIS. Nothing else will work. Here is how one Tweet put it.

To paraphrase Al Capone, you can go a long way with a diplomatic condemnation. You can go farther with a diplomatic condemnation and a gun.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 4, 2015

Yuval Levin on Obama’s Proposed Budget

Levin, one of the sharpest thinkers in Washington, D.C., has this to say about President Obama’s proposed budget. The post is long, but it is a good window into the progressive mind as it exists at the moment. Most interestingly, Levin thinks that progressivism has exhausted itself and is now bereft of new ideas.