Threatened tadpoles, endangered babies

by Fran Eaton

Did you know the Illinois Chorus Frog is threatened with extinction?   

Thus -- according to federal law -- it is illegal for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect Illinois Chorus Frogs, larvae or tadpoles.

But our U.S. Senate is debating Tuesday whether the federal government should pay for using human embryos (shall we say human larvae or tadpoles?) for stem cell research.  Sadly, there is no question where our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama will come down on the issue:  strongly in favor of destroying humans at their earliest stages of development.  The only hope of slowing this type of human harvesting is President's Bush's veto pen.

Of course, Illinois Chorus Frogs aren't threatened by Governor Blagojevich's Executive Order establishing $10 million for taxpayer funded embryonic stem cell research last year.

Too bad American babies haven't been deemed threatened or endangered species.  Their embryos would be protected from state and federal Frankensteinian experimenters. 

Interesting note:  University of Illinois researchers hint the Illinois Chorus Frog's threatened extinction may be due to observed cannibalism during the frog's tadpole stage.   

Will we "higher-level-of-evolution" humans ever learn from nature?