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I think it is a mistake to use this argument against ESCs. It is true, but may not be true for long. There is some ESC research going on, and it is entirely possible that there will be positive outcomes from some of it.

ESC is destroying human life, and even if research finds a potential use for them, it is still wrong. Taking an innocent life is never justified, no matter what the reason. Saying it has not resulted in any beneficial treatments seems to indicate that if it had then ESC is ok.

"Saying it has not resulted in any beneficial treatments seems to indicate that if it had then ESC is ok."

I think you're missing the point. Most religions have prohibitions against suicide, but at the same time lionize those who die in attempts to save the lives of others, even if they are not successful. "greater love hath no man..."

Likewise, most religions have prohibitions against taking the lives of others, but also exempt those who do so in defending children, women, or the religion itself.

What they are saying is that creating babies for the purpose of killing them to harvest the embryonic stem cells is not only wrong, but also a waste of lives that should be protected, and that the justification for taking those lives is a lie, and therefore not in any way justifiable.

RE: There is some ESC research going on, and it is entirely possible that there will be positive outcomes from it.

Highly improbable, due to the fact that ESC's invariably form tumors, are genetically unstable, and never match the donors. EVEN if they ever get cloning to work, which is increasingly improbable, the problems with ESC put them at least 6 decades behind adult stem cells. (The first successful adult stem cell treatment was in 1968, whereas the optimistic estimate is that, if they got cloning to work TODAY, they would need 20 years to develop a therapy). THEN there is the problem of how do you get women to give up their eggs at high risk of illness (19%) death (estimated 1%), loss of fertility (several percent), organ failure (2%) and cancer (rate unknown at this time, since it takes average 20 years to develop, but risk exists)? The only answer is to coerce and virtually enslave millions of women, at the risk of causing an underpopulation crisis. THEN there is the problem that it is prohibitively expensive. Oh, but there's more. Since we now know cloned ESC's from mice were REJECTED by the donors as foreign tissue (Rideout et al, Cell 2002), there's a good likelihood that going to all that trouble is still pointless. Now there's ONE MORE problem. Suppose they told you they had solved all these problems in animal studies and now they want YOU to try out this gazillion-dollar therapy. However, if the tests were wrong, you will develop excruciatingly painful tumors that will spread throughout your body causing you to die a Twilight Zone death. Gonna go for it?

Why not use therapy that is working, inexpensive, and morally acceptable? Unless, perhaps, the real goal is to undermine human rights and underpopulate the planet.