[QUOTE=wm–]
I draw the line when the loss of life is intentional and predetermined.
[/QUOTE]
So if the IVF process was perfected to the point that they could create and implant exactly the number of embryos the mother wanted to carry, you’d be ok with it?
And by the way, the number of embryos that don’t take isn’t predetermined. It’s a crap shoot…much like the the “good old fashioned way” is.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
So if the IVF process was perfected to the point that they could create and implant exactly the number of embryos the mother wanted to carry, you’d be ok with it?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I think I would.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
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?
[/QUOTE]
Where the people taking the risks are doing it with their own free will to decide to take said risk, and where there is full disclosure to the person of said risk.
[QUOTE=wm–]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks very much, wm. I appreciate your appreciation! 
I pretty much agree with everything you say here.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
Where the people taking the risks are doing it with their own free will to decide to take said risk, and where there is full disclosure to the person of said risk.
[/QUOTE]
We aren’t doing it against the will of the embryos. They don’t have a will. You’re projecting characteristics onto them that simply don’t exist at that point. They don’t care. They can’t care.
[QUOTE=wm–]
Yes, I think I would.
[/QUOTE]
I think I would be ok with it, too…not necessarily for myself, as I would probably follow the Church’s guidance on this, but in general, I would not find this to be a moral problem.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
We aren’t doing it against the will of the embryos. They don’t have a will. You’re projecting characteristics onto them that simply don’t exist at that point. They don’t care. They can’t care.
[/QUOTE]
All the more reason that they should be protected. My 2-year-old doesn’t know the difference, either. It’s my job to protect her.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
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?.
[/quote]
No. First, embryos aren’t people; claiming they are is silly as well as disgusting. It denigrates actual people. Second, I am a person, undeniably; killing me is not the same as killing a mindless thing. Third, God’s will is justification for nothing.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
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.
[/QUOTE]
It’s easy enough to understand; it’s simply insulting nonsense. I understand it; I just can’t take it seriously.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
All the more reason that they should be protected. My 2-year-old doesn’t know the difference, either. It’s my job to protect her.
[/QUOTE]
Because she’s a person, and therefore deserves protection. Using a mindless fetus for medical purposes is no different than harvesting the organs of a brain dead person; it’s ethical because there’s nobody there, just meat that isn’t dead.
Washpark, thank you for the links.
I find the Cheshire article to be eloquent but lacking in substance, particularly with respect to the specific provisions of the current bill under discussion. It also appears to me that many of his arguments could apply equally against IVF programs, yet he is curiously silent on this subject.
nameless has provided a good counterpoint to some of the points Cheshire raises. To expand a bit:
Many Americans are already “expected to become complicit…and to breach their consciences in order to have access to the evolving standard of medical care”. Or do the moral consciences of animal rights activists and Christian Scientists count for less?
Furthermore, anyone is free to reject any particular form of medical care. A hemophiliac animal rights activist could refuse porcine factor VIII, if they so chose. Jehovah’s Witnesses routinely exclude blood transfusion from their list of acceptable therapeutic modalities.
The proposed bill already contains numerous exclusions regarding the source of embryonic stem cell lines. To recap, the bill states that donor embryos:
must be voluntarily donated
a) by fully-informed donors
b) who have not been paid for this
c) and who do not ever intend to have them implanted
and would otherwise be discarded.
Since I can’t ask Cheshire directly, I ask you, washpark (or anyone else), which moral or ethical considerations have not been addressed in the above restrictions which are specific to the use of these embryos rather than the mere existence of same?
The latter clause is important, I believe, for the purposes of excluding moral and ethical arguments about IVF, since that isn’t the issue under discussion.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Because she’s a person, and therefore deserves protection. Using a mindless fetus for medical purposes is no different than harvesting the organs of a brain dead person; it’s ethical because there’s nobody there, just meat that isn’t dead.
[/QUOTE]
More broadly speaking, because the laws of the land have decreed that a parent is the responsible party for medical decision-making on behalf of the child, which generally translates into protecting the child. However, a parent may on occasion be placed in the horrible position of deciding whether to remove a child from life support, and (among other things) considering whether or not to donate their organ(s), and I think that, when all is said and done, it really is the parents’ business only.
I view the disposition of surplus embryos similarly. Since a blastocyst cannot develop without life-support (i.e. implantation) and it can only maintain viability through being frozen (generically “life-support”, I suppose), shouldn’t it be up to the parents (as the medical decision-makers for their offspring) to decide whether they want their extra embryos discarded, donated for medical research, or frozen in perpetuity?
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
you have the complete DNA that a human adult has…just at a different stage of development.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, so you define “baby” roughly as “a collection of cells containing DNA that, given sufficient technological intervention, can be caused to develop into a human being”?
So considering the development of cloning technology, how is a blastocyst different from a loogie I hocked onto the pavement? Because a sufficiently dedicated and funded scientist could potentially scrape up that phlegm and grow a dozen little Hunter Hawks out of it.
(Anybody got the phone number of the Raelians?)
[QUOTE=Hunter Hawk]
Okay, so you define “baby” roughly as “a collection of cells containing DNA that, given sufficient technological intervention, can be caused to develop into a human being”?
[/QUOTE]
Never said that. Technological intervention has nothing to do with it.
The loogie is not ever going to develop into a baby, as long as it is sitting down there on the sidewalk. Once cloning technology turns it into a blastocyst, THEN it is a developing human.
What’s particularly distressing is how incredibly uninformed and poorly thought out most of the anti-stem cell positions are.
Take all the hubbub about adult stem cells. They want to claim that they can do what ES can. But if that’s so, then one of the things AS can do is… grow into people. Just like ES. Did they think this through, like, at all?
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
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.
[/QUOTE]
That’s very reasonable, but please consider this. If you believe that God directed evolution, which I suspect you do (very different from creationism) then God designed a system very similar to that used for IVF. The health of each fertilized egg is randomly distributed, and the body has been designed to spontaneously abort ones which don’t meet minimal standards - no doubt because it is evolutionarily advantageous not to spend energy on fetuses which are not going to make it. I’d guess that no one knows how many fertilized eggs in an IVF environment will be acceptable - thus producing more than are likely to be used is not so much different from what God, in your view, has set up for us (or nature in my view.)
Now certainly no one should be forced to go through IVF, but if someone does, isn’t it better for embryos that don’t make the cut to have some benefit to humanity, rather than just being discarded?
Some vegetarians feel very strongly about the evil of killing animals for food. They are a minority, but so is your position. Do you think it is right for that minority to force you into vegetarianism? I don’t want to get into the merits of vegetarianism, but once you allow one minority with strong moral views to override the will of the majority, you might as well allow all of them.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
That’s very reasonable, but please consider this. If you believe that God directed evolution, which I suspect you do (very different from creationism) then God designed a system very similar to that used for IVF. The health of each fertilized egg is randomly distributed, and the body has been designed to spontaneously abort ones which don’t meet minimal standards - no doubt because it is evolutionarily advantageous not to spend energy on fetuses which are not going to make it.
[/QUOTE]
It does indeed seem reasonable on its face. The only argument I can offer is that it is a morally different situation when these “minimal standards” are being deliberately imposed by a human on another human life, rather than by the random mechanisms of nature (God-directed or however you want to view it). A person dying of natural causes is not the same situation as a person being killed because they have been judged “advantageous not to spend energy on” by another person. (Of course, I’m stipulating here that a fertilized egg should be treated as a person.)
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Some vegetarians feel very strongly about the evil of killing animals for food. They are a minority, but so is your position. Do you think it is right for that minority to force you into vegetarianism? I don’t want to get into the merits of vegetarianism, but once you allow one minority with strong moral views to override the will of the majority, you might as well allow all of them.
[/QUOTE]
Vegetarians, like any other minority interest group, are free to participate in the political process to try and bring about whatever change they desire. If their views are sufficiently out of touch with the rest of society, they will not succeed. But they are still free to try as hard as they like. Are you arguing that people with unpopular views should just shut up and butt out of democracy?
Note that if God designed the human body, then he designed it not only so that fetuses will spontaneously abort when they are damaged, but they will even be aborted by the mother’s body when doing so helps protect the mother from listeria infection: favoring the mother over the baby.
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/07/the_evolutionary_advantage_of.php
[QUOTE=Apos]
Note that if God designed the human body, then he designed it not only so that fetuses will spontaneously abort when they are damaged, but they will even be aborted by the mother’s body when doing so helps protect the mother from listeria infection: favoring the mother over the baby.
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/07/the_evolutionary_advantage_of.php
[/QUOTE]
And I don’t think that anyone would argue that immediate risk to the mother’s life is a morally acceptable reason for aborting. There is a world of difference between this and just ending the pregnancy because it is inconvenient.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
And I don’t think that anyone would argue that immediate risk to the mother’s life is a morally acceptable reason for aborting.
[/QUOTE]
Really?
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
And I don’t think that anyone would argue that immediate risk to the mother’s life is a morally acceptable reason for aborting.
[/QUOTE]
Really?