I didn't see any recent thread on this so I just wanted to start up something.
I can see people not liking abortions, but considering how stem cells are created I can only blame the sentiment against it on misinformation. If anyone's familiar with in vitro fertilization, they'd know that far more embryos are produced than what could possibly be used. Most pregnancies require fewer than three or four (many are successful on the first embryo) and yet hundreds are created in the process. They're frozen for storage, but can only survive for so long. I don't remember the time they survive frozen, but there's always an excess that's disposed of.
The way some argue it, using them for medical research amounts to murder. Well, fact of the matter is that there's no real potential for life because there are simply too many of them compared to the number of women needing an embryo. Those of you who absolutely oppose SCR, do you really prefer they all just stayed frozen until they died naturally? If so, why, and please don't tell me this is moral because you're not only failing to save the embryo but you're also allowing people who could benefit from such research to suffer from the lack of it.
It isn't stem cell research that is controversial -it is EMBRYONIC stem cell research that is controversial. And it is really annoying that proponents try to blur the line here by dropping the "embryonic" part and pretending it is stem cell research in general that others oppose -people who must be nutcases, of course. But more than a few people consider embryonic stem cell research to be nothing less than a form of cannibalism -including most bioethicists. I posted on this subject on a different thread some time ago. Proponents don't just want to access to unused frozen embryos from parents trying to have a child -they want the "right" to create their own embryos, kill them and then harvest their cells like a crop.
Many people consider it immoral to create a human life for the express purpose of killing it and cannibalizing it in order to extend the life of another human life. That isn't a hard one to get around -you either have a serious moral problem with someone creating a human life, then killing it and harvesting it -or you don't. But the controversy isn't about stem cell research in general such as adult and cord blood stem cell research -just embryonic stem cell research.
A lot of people don't realize that the most promising lines of research don't involve human embryos at all. Embryonic stem cell research is actually the one line which has produced no significant results to this date, has no significant results predicted anytime in the near future (the deliberate exaggerations by proponents don't count since honest researchers admit to the truth on this one) - and is why proponents insist that research involving killing living human embryos requires government funds. They keep running into the very same kinds of problems with embryonic stem cells -the tendency for tumor formation, the inability to get the embryonic stem cells to become the desired type of tissue and the instability of gene expression in further generations even if the desired tissue is created. Which means they can sometimes get an embryonic stem cell to become a liver cell for example -but a few generations later of cell reproduction, those cells are no longer liver cells but just rapidly reproducing undifferentiated cells. Undifferentiated, rapidly reproducing cells are cancer cells. And we are back to the first problem I mentioned with the tendency for tumor formation with embryonic stem cells. A religious person might suggest that God intended there be no benefit from the cannibalization of another human life.
The lines of stem cell research that have already produced real results and are already being used for the benefit of real people, treating real diseases and conditions are adult stem cell research and cord blood stem cell research -neither of which involves killing living embryos and attract lots of private investment. Embryonic stem cell research has problems attracting private funding because it is far less promising. Private investors do a lot of their own research because they want to make money -not lose it.
If private investors won't touch it and risk their money on that line of research because it is far less promising than other lines of stem cell research -then why should taxpayers get soaked for the bill? Does it make sense to you for taxpayers to foot the bulk of the bill for the least promising line of stem cell research when they aren't for the most promising ones?
In addition, there are at least three different lines of research going on right now (with plenty of private funding as well) trying to produce what is desired from a human embryo without an embryo at all. One of these is called "Altered Nuclear Transfer" which involves removing the nucleus of a human egg (with only half the necessary DNA, it is not a human life), treating the empty egg and inserting the nucleus from an adult tissue cell. Similar to cloning except the treatment of the empty egg prior to insertion of the adult cell nucleus results in the cell becoming incapable of becoming an embryo and only produces a mass of disconnected, undifferentiated cells called "pleuripotential cells" -with indications they carry the same kind of potential as the stem cells found in an embryo. Since it is incapable of ever becoming an embryo -it isn't a human life and remains just a mass of cells.
If it is possible to create what is desired from a living human embryo without any need of creating, killing and then cannibalizing another human life -then isn't a moral society obligated to take that route and avoid the one that treats human life as of no more value than a crop of corn?
