Re: OT Embryonic stem cell research was Re: OT: McCain's religion was Re: Eliot Spitz

"Clark F Morris" <cfmpublic@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
 news:vgtfu3l12uf633nlpo4jm33i5j98kgjrtp@
4ax.com...
> On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:13:17 -0600, Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net>
> wrote:
> 
>
> I am extremely uncomfortable with embryonic stem cell research because
> it can give incentives to create embryos for the purpose of
> destruction.  It also seems illogical to say that something isn't
> human until it leaves the womb and then has full rights.  If it is
> legal and ethical to remove and kill a fetus even if it could survive
> independently, why is infanticide illegal and/or unethical?

Such an excellent question, I feel moved to respond.

This is a powerful argument and one that people are having great difficulty
in coming to grips with.

If stem cell research can provide cures to afflictions of the living
(Parkinsons, Diabetes, Asthma, and maybe eventually obviate the need for
organ transplants, with the body simply repairing itself...) then it would
seem to be worth investigating.

But, as you observe, we need embryos to do this investigation and it doesn't
seem "right" to produce embryos purely for experiment.

I've given this considerable thought.

Here's my personal take on it; it might help some people, others may be
outraged by it...

Few of us think of sperm as potential people (masturbation would have to
cease immediately if we did... :-)), and an ovum is not a person either. So,
we obviously have no problem with gametes; it's when they become a zygote
that it gets tricky.

If an embryo is "manufactured" in a laboratory by causing the fusion of two
donated gametes, then I believe we don't need to think of what's in that
test tube as a person, or even as a potential person, even though that is,
in fact what the contents are...

It's a bit like eating meat. When a lamb or a rabbit is running round and
you are stroking it and playing with it, it is an entity and you relate to
it, and enjoy its company. When it is served on a plate, it is not that
entity any more, it is simply "food". It tastes no less delicious because
you knew it personally.

We require sustenance and are designed to eat other life forms (both plant
and animal; I don't see people getting choked up and emotional because they
sliced up a baby tomato...yet the plant life is just as "alive" as the
animal life in this place.)

So, for me at least, if it came from a test tube, it can be experimented on
and we can make as many of them as we need to do that. There is a higher
purpose here; existing living people, who have families and communities that
care about them and whom they care about, can be helped by the
experimentation on a collection of cells that were created in a laboratory,
specifically for that purpose (just as we specifically breed animals for
food), from DNA donated by individuals who know what it will be used for.

I have no moral problem with that. In fact, I believe it is commendable, and
if one person is saved from Parkinsons or Diabetes, it is worth it.

So, what about fetuses removed from mothers because of defects or
complications or threats to the mother's life?

Any abortion of a baby is usually traumatic for the parents. They already
have a mental image of their child coming to fruition and emerging into the
world. Now they find it isn't to be... Devastating.

There is a fetus. Why "waste" it?

If some small shred of good or usefulness can be salvaged from such an awful
experience, why not do so? Maybe there is some comfort to be had from the
thought that even such a dreadful experience may do some good for
somebody...

We gladly donate our organs and corneas etc. in the event of accident, so
that someone we will probably never know can be helped. Should we do any
less with a fetus that will never know "life" in the full sense of the word,
not just as an energy process within a cell?

I don't think so. (For myself, I'd gladly donate it to science...)

We should support stem cell research because it will better the human
condition in the long term.

The emotional pain being caused over it is largely self induced and based on
belief systems that were never designed to deal with modern scientific
possibility.

We need to change our minds and perceptions about what is "living" and what
isn't, what can be useful and what can't, and why we would want to inhibit
the acquisition and growth of knowledge that can help untold numbers of
future people.

Next time you get emotional about stem cell research, think about children
struggling to breathe, parents and loved ones who don't even recognise their
own children, mothers with cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy and
radiation, devastating their bodies, when, if we had the knowledge, their
tumours could be attacked at source by cells developed specifically for that
purpose.

That makes more sense to me than bewailing the "sinful" loss of a cell
collection that was going nowhere anyway.

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."