Thom Hartmann: And greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American Way. Thom Hartmann here with you. In our program today in the 2nd hour of our program William Yeatman, an energy policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute is gonna come on, we’re gonna be talking about all that global warming that’s falling in Washington DC. He’ll be followed by Bill McKibben with 350.org on the same topic. In our third hour, Carrie Lukas is dropping by with the Independent Women's Forum. She is concerned about the creeping laws in Europe. Spain has just adopted a variation on Norway’s law requiring at least 40% of the members of board of corporations be women. And at 20 minutes after, 11:20 pacific, 2:20 eastern whatever, 20 minutes after the third hour, Professor Herb Boyd is gonna be with us. He just, he’s in Haiti, he’ll be reporting live from Haiti. He just had a meeting with René Préval, the president of that country this morning, so we’re gonna be getting into that. Plus there’s a pile of news today.

But first, Curtis Coleman is with us. He’s the GOP candidate, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate running against Blanche Lincoln, the democrat from Arkansas. He of course obviously also from Arkansas. His website, CurtisColeman.com, spelled just the way you would expect, CurtisColeman.com. And Curtis Coleman, welcome to the show.

Curtis Coleman: Thom, delighted to be with you, thank you.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you for joining us. Recently you said, and I quote, tell me if I have this quote wrong, but you said, “embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you that what I just described, I just described what the Nazi’s did to the Jews in the death camps of World War II.” Is that an accurate quote of yours sir?

Curtis Coleman: That’s adequately accurate, it is Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Okay. I wanted to give you an opportunity to apologize to the holocaust survivors of Arkansas for that comparison and that remark.

Curtis Coleman: Well, I’m not sure why an apology is needed. Let me begin by saying that there was never an intention of any offense to anybody in any regard whatsoever. Let me just also say that in that same interview I talked about how I strongly support stem cell research but there was in fact…

Thom Hartmann: Are you suggesting that the death camps of the Nazis were designed to help and prolong the lives of who, the Aryans in Germany?

Curtis Coleman: Well, we do know historical fact that there were medical and I use that term a little bit loosely there, experiments conducted…

Thom Hartmann: Yeah Dr. Mengele was doing his experiments in Ausch-, not in the death camps but in Dachau, I actually lived near there when I lived in Germany, which was a labor camp, not one of the death camps. The extermination camps like Auschwitz had one single purpose and that was killing people. Just so you, for your information, you may not know that. There were a half a dozen or so, I don’t remember the exact number of these camps, Belsen, Auschwitz, that were specifically for the purpose of murdering people and nothing else. And then you had Mengele down at Dachau which was more of a labor camp and he was doing, in a medical experimentation facility, and he murdered many people and did horrific things in the name of science, yes. But it’s not, that was not a death camp.

Curtis Coleman: Well, I gladly stand corrected on that, and thank you for that correction and I’ll be much more careful in that reference in the future. But I do know, and there is historical documentation, that the Nazis did conduct medical experiments on human beings in those labor camps.

Thom Hartmann: Well then let’s take it to the second step. How, you know if a woman wants to become pregnant and can’t and she goes in and has a number of her eggs removed with a needle from one of her ovaries and they get fertilized in a Petri dish and one of the several fertilized ones, one of the healthy, one of the best looking ones gets put into her and she becomes pregnant and has a baby and we’re left over with a bunch of fertilized ovums and typically these get just simply flushed down the drain, how can you compare using those cells that otherwise would be flushed down the drain to cure diseases, and I would point out that just this week the news release was issued, the first clinical trials are actually happening now, Genron received FDA clearance to begin the world’s first human clinical trials of embryonic stem cell therapy on people with spinal cord injuries in the United States [Geron - ed.], and it’s actually, I mean this means it’s working. How could you compare that with murdering, you know, women, children, men, adults, human beings who are, you know, fully born? How could there even be a comparison?

Curtis Coleman: Well, I think fully born is an interesting phrase that you use and there are two things that I would tell you about that. One is that what we do know that in that embryonic cell that is used to create those medical experiments that everything that’s needed in that inner cell mass, in that blastocyst, in that inner cell mass is everything that’s needed for that human being to become totally unique person in all of history. It’s how I started, it’s how you started, it’s how Thom Hartmann started. I mean how do we know we’re not destroying John F, another John F Kennedy or Martin Luther King?

Thom Hartmann: You realize that the logic of that…

Curtis Coleman: Life begins, the fact is that life begins at the very moment there’s a human embryo. And at that moment there’s a human embryo and it deserves all the protection the law provides at any stage of life.

Thom Hartmann: Well you’re defining that, the Catholic church has a different definition. They suggest that me and my wife, if I hadn’t had a vasectomy, and, Louise and I back before we had three children, that at the moment we decided to have sex that the potential for human life existed and that’s why the Catholic Church is opposed to the use of condoms and contraceptives. Because they, you know, because everything that is necessary to create a full, another John Kennedy is right there even though we haven’t even gotten naked and hopped into bed yet. You know, this whole thing of when life begins, I think frankly, and respectfully, is a discussion that we need to have in the United States. Does life begin like the Catholic Church says at the point of marriage? Does life begin at the point of intention as many Catholic theologians have said over the years? Does life begin at the moment of conception? Does life begin at the moment of viability, the Supreme Court in the United States has ruled that by and large human life is human life when a fetus is viable.

Curtis Coleman: Well, Thom, I totally agree with that statement, that we need to have a discussion about when life begins and I fully support that. But I ask you to appreciate my position. I’m a person who believes that the moment there is a human embryo, that life has begun. And that I believe that at that moment, from that point forward, that that life deserves all the protection the law provides. And that’s why I am, I believe, that medical experiments on human life that are conducted to temporarily extend the life of other human beings, which is all we can do, is temporarily extend the life of other human beings…

Thom Hartmann: Yeah no I understand your position and I’m not trashing it. What I am saying is that to compare eight cells in a Petri dish to a human being in a death camp or even in an experimentation camp in Germany during World War II is a horrific comparison.

Curtis Coleman: Well, not at all. I mean, it’s life at a different stage but it’s still human life. That’s the point, it is still a human being, it is still a human life. It hasn’t fully developed but it’s still that human being and it’s unique and it has…

Thom Hartmann: It is not, it is not experiencing pain, it is not experiencing the horrors of what the Nazis did, it is not experiencing. You know,I’m telling you there are holocaust survivors listening right now, Curtis Coleman, who just have to be in shock to hear you say this.

Curtis Coleman: Well, I agree that it’s not, that it is not experiencing to our knowledge, I mean we really don’t know what those cells are experiencing. But I do agree that it’s not experiencing the same personal pain that those people did and I am totally sympathetic to that.

Thom Hartmann: Okay. Well as I said, we’re in agreement, we need to have a national conversation about when life begins.

Curtis Coleman: Absolutely.

Thom Hartmann: CurtisColeman.com is the website. Curtis Coleman, the candidate, the GOP, the Republican candidate running against Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. Thank you very much for dropping by sir.

Curtis Coleman: Thank you Thom, delighted for the opportunity.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.