Embryo ethics

As the debate over stem cell research resumes in Washington this week, the moral principle on which the White House bases its position remains largely unexamined

As the Senate prepares to take up stem cell legislation this week, Congress and the president are at odds over a tangled question at the boundary of science, ethics, and religion. President Bush has restricted federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and last year cast the first veto of his presidency when Congress tried to ease the restriction. With majorities in both houses of Congress ready to try again, the president has threatened another veto.

Alerts The main arguments are by now familiar. Proponents argue that embryonic stem cell research holds great promise for understanding and curing diabetes, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and other debilitating conditions. Opponents argue that the research is unethical, because deriving the stem cells destroys the blastocyst, an unimplanted human embryo at the sixth to eighth day of development. As Bush declared when he vetoed last year's stem cell bill, the federal government should not support "the taking of innocent human life."

I don’t know what the hell is “tangled” about it.

Killing is killing. It’s not permissible to kill one person in order to help another, especially since fetal stem cells don’t work, and adult stem cells do.

This proposed bill is no better than the Communist Chinese, who harvest body parts from political prisoners in the Laogai and sell them to rich liberals in the West.

This article was actually one of the more thoughtful I have read supporting embryonic stem cell research.

He points out the inconsistency of not funding stem cell research, while allowing hundreds of thousands of embryos to die in fertility clinics.

But his argument allowing it rests upon the “personhood” of the embryo.

He admits: “First, it is undeniable that a human embryo is “human life” in the biological sense that it is living rather than dead, and human rather than, say, bovine.”

Then he argues that it is not sentient and therefore fair game for medical experimentation—contradicting his previous point that it is human life.

He fails to define WHERE the embryo becomes human and WHY.

This is muddled thinking. From a scientific point of view, a separate individual member of the human race is created at conception. If we value human life, we cannot kill it. If we want to justify killing it, we must deny its humanity—which contradicts scientific fact.

From a legal point of view, human DNA is evidence of a human being. The law does not distinguish from what age the person is.

From a religious point of view, our lives begin in the womb. David said God knew him before he was formed in the womb. John the Baptist leaped in Elizabeth’s womb when she met Mary, who had just conceived Jesus from the Holy Spirit. (Luke 2).

He points out the inconsistency of not funding stem cell research, while allowing hundreds of thousands of embryos to die in fertility clinics.

The question he doesn't ask is, why are all those "surplus" embryos created? It seems to me there's something wrong with a system that ends up with what he admits are human beings sitting in a refrigerator.

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