Thanks, Weirddave…I have no idea how this thread became a demand for me to justify my moral views. It’s not as though I invented the pro-life position, and although I could easily talk about this ad nauseum (as I have in other threads where it was actually the topic of the discussion), I really don’t see what the point is here.
I mean this in the best way possible, honestly, Weirddave–but my impression is that this is Great Debates, not Great Everybody Hugs And Validates Each Others’ Moral Belief Systems. We’re (at least I hope I’m not) dictating anything. This decision has huge consequences–if you believe (in my opinion, erroneously) that a blastocyst is a human life, then a vociferous defense of the status quo is necessary to prevent murder. If you believe (as I do) that a blastocyst is somewhat less than a human life but with great potential for medical research, then overthrow of the status quo is necessary to prevent needless death. I don’t see how we can just all get along and recognize our diverse viewpoints. It’s an issue that I think deserves some talking out. I’m not saying Sarahfeena is evil or stupid. I completely understand how someone could reach a different point of view on this issue. But my goal here is to make my point of view more prevalent in American society.
That is a ridiculous question. People die of natural causes all the time. If I dropped dead right now, should I blame my mother for giving me life in the first place?
I am well-versed in biology, and I know all about blastocysts. I do not agree that it is “What Could Be But Is Not.” In my opinion, this is a human being, with it’s own human DNA, which, if not interfered with, is on an irreversible trajectory to become someone just like you or me. I was never an egg cell or a sperm cell. I was, however, a blastocyst, as were you.
You can show me all the examples of non-human blastocysts that you want, you will never change my mind about this. Those non-human blastocysts will NEVER become a human baby. The human one will INEVITABLY become one. That is all I need to know.
No, you weren’t. You are your mind, your thoughts and memories, and a blastocyst has none.
Why is that relevant ? Potential isn’t reality, and a blastocyst isn’t a person, human or not.
As someone who has lost 2 babies to miscarriage, I think I’m going to leave this question alone. Hope you don’t mind.
You were not an egg cell or sperm cell? But certainly, your entire existence is entirely to their credit. And yet you were a blastocyst? It seems to me that’s an arbitrary place to draw a line–the place at which 2 haploid cells become a single diploid cell. Why should that be any more “me” than the two cells that fused to form it? Why should it be as much “me” as the fetus that developed from it? It’s a line that can be drawn in a number of places, and if you held a gun to my head, I’d have to say I don’t really identify much with a blastocyst. That’s not who I am. Maybe it’s what I came from, in the same way I came from male and female gametes, or chimpanzees, or chordates, or colonial choanoflagellates, if you want to take it really far back. I believe I had the potential to have been a great athlete–if I’d practiced every day. But make no mistake–I was not and am not a great athlete. IVF embryos have the potential to become human life–if they hadn’t been generated outside of a human womb.
And surely, the development of the blastocyst is not inevitable, in that any number of factors can cause its premature termination, accidental or otherwise.
I’m quite sure I won’t change your mind about this, but if it’s all the same to you, I enjoy arguing about it anyway. It helps me examine my own beliefs, and so even if you don’t see the point to this kind of sparring, I like to think there is one. If its merely irritating to you, I apologize, but I really do get something out of it.
No, it’s not irritating, I kind of enjoy it myself. It’s the tone of some peoples’ questions I sometimes find annoying.
Here’s the thing. I do not believe conception is an arbitrary place to draw the line. The reason I am pro-life is because I was trying to figure out where a reasonable place TO draw the line is. I started with a full-term baby, and went back through the 9 months to logically try to figure out where the magical moment was that the fertilized egg became…a baby.
Is it at the moment of birth? No, couldn’t get with that. If it was literally about to be born, then it is essentially the same thing as a baby that has been born.
So is it viability? No, for the same reason as above, and because viability is being pushed back further and further until goodness knows we might not even NEED a uterus to have babies in the future.
So, is it when it starts to look like a baby? That doesn’t work for me…I just see that as another stage of human development. My daughter is 2 now, and doesn’t look like an adult…she looks like a toddler. It’s just a stage.
So, is it the first trimester? That seems completely arbitrary to me.
So when is it? As far as I can see logically, before conception, you have a sperm cell and an egg cell. Once they join, you have the complete DNA that a human adult has…just at a different stage of development. As I said, that blastocyst will not become anything but a human…it is an inevitable progression, as long as nothing interferes with it. A sperm by itself will never do that. An egg by itself will never do that. A non-human blastocyst will never do that. So, although I see your point about it being hard to relate to being a blastocyst, I think it is hard to deny that YOU were never just a sperm or an egg cell, but you WERE a blastocyst. Once it formed, it inevitably became YOU…not me, or a frog, or a sea urchin. It became you, a unique human.
I think it would be easy for me to say that I was once a sperm and egg cell. Today, I am composed of about 4 trillion cells. All of them contribute to what I consider “me” in some small way. Some contribute more than others. Perhaps at that point, I was “me” but only comprised of two cells. Those two cells contained all the potential that would be me, after all. But again, I am not merely defined by my chromosome count or my developmental potential. Blastocysts lack knowledge, thought, or memory. They lack even the most rudimentary of tools for those functions–they have no neurons or intrinsic circulation, and can only perform the basest of trophic functions and only if they are supplied externally.
And again, the path is not inevitable once syngamy takes place. This cite says that 1 in 4 conception events are actually successful–due to events that occur
both before and after syngamy. A pretty high rate of attrition for an irreversible trajectory. I’ve watched animal embryos develop from gametes, and while it’s incredible, the gradualism of the process is really the most striking thing about it. I really recommend the frog embryo time-lapse videos here (especially Gastrulation through Neurulation and Tailbud high-resolution!). Is it a frog at the beginning of the video? Is it even a frog by the end of the video? Again, perspective.
No, I reject the idea that one can draw a line and define when life begins. I will admit, conception is a pretty attractive place to try. It is unsatisfactory, perhaps to be unable to point somewhere and say “that’s where life begins.” Apparently, it is also a legal necessity to do so, despite the scientific impossibility. One thing is for sure–I’m a human being now. But I don’t think I was as a blastocyst. There may be a metric fuckton of ambiguity in between those two stages, but for the purposes of deciding whether or not to pursue research that could benefit individuals who are unequivocally human beings, I will opt to destroy that which doesn’t seem to be very human.
Those who are “troubled” by the headlong rush towards reproductive cloning via stem cell research come from a wide background. There is no question the Religious Right in the United States gets most of the press, but there are non-religious people concerned with research ethics who have raised some important issues on why this issue is worthy of careful study.
Ethics and morality must be considered during the course of scientific research. Now, obviously the specific ethical issues with embryonic stem cell research are debatable, but that debate must take place and is healthy. Researchers cannot simply be allowed to police themselves, that is why we have IRBs, ethical principles and federal regulations that govern human subjects research. Stem cell research is a relatively new field with some complex ethical issues to consider. It is better to have an open debate on the ethics and morality of the research rather than just rush in head first and say ethics be damned.
I am hopeful that the newer extraction techniques render the debate moot.
The United States is far less restrictive with embryonic stem cell research than Germany, Austria, Italy and Ireland, which ban the research altogether.
The good news is the international community is working to come up with a framework to guide embryonic stem cell research. The Hixton Group provides a limited framework, Framework for stem cell research , but much must still be addressed.
The cold hard fact is, however, some nations will have no restrictions on what is permissible and some will never permit such research. This is not just a United States’ social conservative issue; the issue is debated worldwide.
A good reference for embryonic stem cell policies around the world: Stem cell policies around the worldl
Some very good law review articles on the law and ethics of the issue:
Law and ethics of stem cell research - law review
From Cheshire’s article in the law review reference above:
There are some very interesting and delicate issues surrounding the debate if we can get past the billboard treatment of the issue by both sides. I highly recommend Cheshire as an introductory piece to read.
What if there is a 10% chance? Or 1%. My understanding of Catholic doctrine is that there must be a chance of procreation, so this would be moral under that rule, and a barrier method would not be.
In the case of in vitro fertilization, every embryo created does have a chance of life at the beginning. It is true that a more viable one might be chosen, but a more viable fertilized egg would have a better chance of implantation. In fact, someone having sex may or may not desire a baby, while someone undergoing in vitro fertilization definitely wants a baby. Even embryos not used might be later. True a person, not random chance, later makes the decision, but at the time of “conception” each embryo does have a chance.
I saw a piece on TV when this whole thing came to the forefront. A couple had the procedure done and had the embryos frozen and then implanted their next pregnancy from the same batch. I could be wrong on the numbers, but I believe they had three children from that batch of embryos. That’s why they freeze them! If they were intended to be discarded, they wouldn’t bother with freezing them. I’ll concede that some are intentionally discarded, but they could still be used for a good cause.
I don’t understand why believers can’t entertain the thought that this technology might be part of god’s plan. That the higher power gave man the ability to learn how to successfully do this so people could be happy and healthy. Why can’t it possibly be that he’s concerned about the people who actually exist as opposed to those who might? Why can’t it be god’s will that the embryos are doing his work?
If you believe there is a god, can you also believe that maybe the church got it wrong on these matters? After all, you don’t really know. You are choosing to believe the options most palatable to you. But that doesn’t mean it’s the truth.
Of course there is a difference biologically (i.e., genetic composition), but how does it translate into a moral or spiritual difference?
I am not actually sure what the Church’s stance is on this, and I am not sure there is actually a medical condition that causes known repeated failure to implant. I was merely conjecturing.
I’d like to clarify that my personal opinion on this, and the Church’s, are 2 different things. I am a relatively traditional Catholic, but I have thought this through on my own, as well. The Church’s teaching is that part of the problem is the creation & destruction of embryos, and the other part is the mechanical nature of the technology (as stated before, they believe that procreation should only come from the sex act). I have a harder time with a good apologetic defense of this one, not because I necessarily think they are wrong, but because I am not a theologian. I will merely reiterate that their position on this is very clear and very consistent. It applies to married people, single people, gay and straight, and for no situation do they deviate from it.
That being said, the part about the embryos is my bigger problem with it, because although the Church doesn’t agree with IVF for the above reasons, there is no reason I can see that this should have an impact on non-Catholics. Destroying embryos is something that is can be considered wrong as a general rule for everyone, if you consider it to be murder.
I completely understand that the embryos are all meant to be used in the attempt to become pregnant, and that some of them are saved to have more children later. However, there is a big difference, in my mind, between deliberately creating, say, 10 embyros when you KNOW you want only 2 or 3 children, and having children the natural way and possibly losing a couple of fertilized eggs in the process, because they are not viable, or don’t implant, or whatever. In some cases, there is even selective reduction AFTER they have implanted successfully, because too many of them do, and the woman doesn’t want or can’t have multiples.
Look, I completely understand the burning desire to have children, and I know people who have had IVF (some churchgoing Catholics, in fact), but I, personally, would not do it. I find it to be fraught with too many moral issues that I cannot resolve.
I never said it wasn’t a good cause.
The Church considers embryos to be people who exist, not people who might exist. Using them for science is the same thing to them as killing you and using you for science. If we did that, would you be ok with us saying it was God’s will for you to do his work?.
Unless you can wrap your head around the fact that the Church (and I) consider the embryos to be actual people, you will never come close to understanding the position we take.
Of course…there are areas I don’t agree with the Church on. This is not one of them.
washpark thanks for the Cheshire article. It is well written, and is an excellent summary of the arguments against stem cell research.
I will say this in response to his article, though–he makes a number of arguments that verge on the strawman.
Nobody is asking for unlimited liberty. Nobody is asking for a lack of oversight. Clearly, some of the controversial results obtained by South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk illustrate that the desire to make great discoveries can often cloud the judgement of scientists. However, scientists already work with live animal embryos, and we work with human tissues. There is already a framework in place for oversight at all major R01 institutions–an extremely strict framework mind you–and I see no reason why it cannot be extended to cover human embryonic stem cells. In fact, because lines already exist (though they are suboptimal) most institutions have classes, training, and regulation in place as we type for this kind of research. His point, I feel, is therefore moot.
Is this a slippery slope argument? The debate here–the question being asked–is should we be allowed to use embryos created for IVF (not explicitly for research, mind you) and destined for destruction for scientific gain? He goes on to compare this to human cloning and animal-human hybrids, as if all cell biologists are just dreaming up new ways to piss off mainstream America at the bench. We can limit the scope of this research if we choose to with the proper oversight. There is no slippery slope here.
Just like the way people are forced at the DMV to sign up as organ donors.
This is circular. How is the research community supposed to define the utility of human embryonic stem cells without sufficient access to them in the first place?
No, his argument is well-researched and written, but I still find it unconvincing.
Of course, but you are ignoring my logic that the blastocyst contained all your DNA, and was dividing and dividing until it started differentiating cells, and became you. If the egg or sperm cell hadn’t met, neither one would have done that on its own, so the egg & sperm separately weren’t you. If you want to talk potential, the egg & sperm separately had the potential to become you, and when they met, they became you. I can understand that you think that there is some interim step inbetween where the “you-ness” happened (which I think is completely reasonable), but you can’t deny that there is a fundamental difference between an egg and sperm cell separately, and an egg and sperm cell that has joined together.
Sarahfeena: Just wanted to thank and commend you for arguing your position thoughtfully and keeping your cool in the face of a lot of disagreement, most of it respectful but some not so much.
Count me as one similarly troubled by the related issues of IVF and embryonic stem cell research. It disturbs me that fertilized embryos are artifically created with the express foreknowledge that some will be discarded, and I personally believe adoption to be the morally superior choice. But it’s a complex, ambiguous issue and I would not seek to impose my personal morality on others.
So, what to do with the embryos that do exist? It would please me if every one could find a willing home and become a person, but that’s obviously unrealistic. The possibility of medical advances stemming from research on these cells is a good that must be weighed against any objections. But unless or until I abandon my core belief that human life begins at conception, I must conclude that the moral evil of using human life as experimental fodder can’t be justified no matter the outcome.
Does that include drug testing, space travel, or anything else that might end in the demise of a life? (not that I consider embryos human beings). We take risks with human life every day. We do it for the greater good. Where do you draw the line?
I draw the line when the loss of life is intentional and predetermined.