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"The point of this discussion is to explore the ethics of destroying a 7 celled blastosphere. But it seems as if most people, including yourself, don't actually want to discuss the issue, which I find puzzling.
Perhaps this is not the right forum for intellectual scientific inquiry."

This has been a fascinating thread for me. I've seen several different viewpoints most of which have been eloquently expressed. There have been many thought provoking hypothetical scenarios proposed. I think the reason that most people don't want to discuss the ethics of destroying a blastosphere is because most people are not comfortable with it. No matter which side of the fence you are on, you cannot deny that the cells have a unique human DNA composition and that they have the potential to become a person. Destroying them means destroying a potential human being and should get just about anybody's moral compass spinning.

This has been a fascinating thread for me. I've seen several different viewpoints most of which have been eloquently expressed. There have been many thought provoking hypothetical scenarios proposed. I think the reason that most people don't want to discuss the ethics of destroying a blastosphere is because most people are not comfortable with it. No matter which side of the fence you are on, you cannot deny that the cells have a unique human DNA composition and that they have the potential to become a person. Destroying them means destroying a potential human being and should get just about anybody's moral compass spinning.

This has been an interesting thread for me as well. Some people seem to come at the issue of blastosphere destruction with their conclusions well defined but without having given much thought as to how they arrived at those same conclusions. I have tried to challenge those people with questions about testing sperm/eggs, parthenogenesis, or the ethics of neither killing the blastosphere NOR implanting it, but rather letting it live until it died of old age. Few people have been willing to actually answer these questions.

In my view, the testing of sperm and eggs prior to conception will be nearly universally recognized as ethical, with the exception of the Catholic Church and it's unquestioning adherents (who represent a minority of those identifying themselves as Catholic), which/who still labor in the Middle Ages.

Creation of healthy sperm and eggs from scratch are likely to spark far more of a reaction, since the thought that parents may pick specific genes for their children will no doubt be met with substantial and possibly not unwarranted fear.

In my view killing a fetus is not moral, but I've not reached a conclusion on destroying a single fertilized cell or a small ball of cells. I don't know if life is imbued with a soul at conception or at birth or somewhere in between (or not at all). But I suspect that since abortion is currently legal, for the time being, in the United States the termination of blastospheres will continue unabated, regardless of the ethical considerations.

jas3