I don’t consider a blastocyst to be a human life. I don’t know exactly when a fetus becomes human, but there has to at least be some brain function first.
As for throwing the switch, yes I’d do it if those were the only two choices. But life rarely, if ever, gives us only two choices like that. I don’t think those types of scenarios are usefull in making everday decisions.
Smiling Bandit But you didn’t just say ‘fetuses’. You said “aborted fetuses”. There is a great difference between an aborted fetus and an embryo in cold storage.
These embryos are created in labs for the purpose of implantation. More are created than are needed, both because it may take several attempts before one of the embryos grabs the uterine wall, and so that the best embryos can be selected and used. The client can ask for unused embryos to be preserved. Even in the clinics fancy freezer units, the embryos will degrade and eventually become nonviable. When this happens, they become medical waste. If the client does not want the excess embryos stored, they immediately become medical waste. If you’re opposed to these embryos becoming medical waste, you need to obtain the parent’s permission to implant them, fund storage and implantation costs, and find enough women willing to be impregnated with them before they degrade.
These aren’t embryos developing, or ever going to develop, in a womb. They are specimens in a freezer slowly going bad and destined for a landfill.
Which isn’t exactly the issue. The issue is: how can the government fund fertility research that destroys life, and not fund stem cell research, which doesn’t even create a demand for embryos the way fertility treatments do? Why is it only WHEN destroying embryos save life, instead of being medical waste, that they suddenly become an objectionable use?
But what is the difference between the scenario and any similar tradeoff we face everyday between the lives of some and the lives of others? You can’t claim tradeoffs don’t exist simply by being passive.
To extend Doc Cathode’s thought:
As he said, the fertilized cells leftover from IVF are discarded when they become non-viable. They do not remain alive forever, even frozen. They die, out of what could be called benign neglect.
I have posted the argument here before, and not really received a counter to it, but what makes it more acceptable to allow those diploid (i.e. fertilized) cells to die and be discarded, as opposed to using them to establish clone cell lines for research? Why would it not be acceptable to allow parents of diploid cells to donate them for clinical use (as the South Koreans have just demonstrated), just as they would donate an organ?
Vlad/Igor
Does it?
I could save several people by killing you and harvesting your organs. But we, as a society, agree that we won’t do that. I don’t see the problem there, since I would then have to kill someone else to save you. It’s not a sustainable system.
Same here. I’d especially like that confrontation to happen with a sample where the thousands and thousands of people affected by terrible and currently untreatable diseases surround him as he explains himself.
Death penalty = revenge. It is that simple. Terrorist attacks are done for the same reasons. That sounds cheap, but it’s nearly always true. Regime change, yes, has been important in the past. In Iraq, it was a mistake. A very, very expensive one. It might not even have been a mistake for the Iraqi people, though the number of civilian casualties do beg a lot of questions, but the cost to the American citizen wasn’t worth it. As a simple financial investment, it was a bad call.
Fundamentalist thinking at its worst. It’d be cute how people attempt to explain and/or defend Bush’s stance in this thread with ridiculous arguments and a fairy-tale concept of what life is worth when it is but a few cells large, if there weren’t all these patients suffering and dying while waiting for a cure.
Your point being? I know exactly what they are, medically, speaking. I don’t particular care for medically speaking. I don’t think one should create them.
I doubt anyone thinks it’s good to destroy a life to save one. The crux of the whole argument is how you define personhood. I don’t think a blastocyst is a “person” (you know, a human who can suffer from some form of abuse), so I don’t think harvesting embryos for stem cell research is a moral offense. Bush apparently claims to believe destroying an embryo to derive stem cells is the moral equivalent of killing full-grown adults and harvesting their organs. I think that’s absurd. We can’t even agree on the very basics of what a “culture of life” ought to constitute, so further moral arguments about sparing or destroying “life” are automatically torpedoed before they leave the dock. There is no debate about destroying a life. The debate is the nature of life itself.
I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of lives you would have prevented. Eighty-one of them were on stage with President Bush this week. A hundred years from now, most of the children conceived by in this manner will have millions of offspring.
Pro-life, are you?
Yeah, well, the seed I discharged last night could have impregnated millions. And I, and many other men, do that daily. Also, most women don’t get pregnant every month. Oh the humanity!
And so apparently some of the ivf leftovers were wanted elsewhere. Good for them! But for each one of them there are several that are not needed.
Seriously, you need to understand life, because your (and more importantly, if he vetoes, Bush’s) weak understanding of it prevents research that could help prevent some of the most horrible diseases.
I’ll say again, a flower or a seed do not value equally to a full grown, fruit bearing plant. A few cells without a nervous system cannot ‘feel’, ‘remember’, ‘learn’, ‘suffer’, or anything. But a fully grown person who develops Alzheimers early in life suffers, and so do all who know him or her.
I can’t believe that some people throw overboard careful judgement, simply BECAUSE we’re talking about something important here. But many pro-lifers do, and I consider the term pro-lifer a rather ill-fitting term for these group of people, who do not even have enough understanding of life to know how to be pro-life.
Yep. In two thousand years, assuming I have any kids, my offspring may amount to a similar number. I have no problem with most reproductive therapies. I do have a problem with one which, from my perspective, kills dozens to for every one it creates.
I don’t define myself with slogans. 
The current administration’s position is not to fund stem-cell research on any new lines generated post 2001. That does not equate to saying it is against stem-cell research (although, of course that very well may be the case with the personal beliefs of some members of the administration).
States and the private sector are free to fund such research on existing as well as new lines. A Capitalistic will will find a way.
Like abortion, it is legal and similarly the federal government refuses to fund it with taxpayer money.
There is simply too much opposition on moral/ethical/faith-based grounds to FORCE taxpayers to pay for it. Perhaps THAT is the real and, in my view, intelligent reason for the veto promise.
I, for one, wouldn’t care at all if some of my federal taxes were allocated to fund research in this area. I do, however, respect the views of those that would not, and for that reason support the current administration’s position. At the State level, however, it is up to each State to decide.
Is there too MUCH opposition, or is the opposition that exists just very vocal?
How much opposition does there need to be in a case like this to make it appropriate for the gov’t to withold funding?
“I happen to believe that the death penalty, when properly applied, saves lives of others. And so I’m comfortable with my beliefs that there’s no contradiction between the two.”
—Bush, April 14, 2005
“In this session, the U.N. will consider a resolution sponsored by Costa Rica calling for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. I support that resolution and urge all governments to affirm a basic ethical principle: No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another.”
—Bush, Sept. 21, 2004
“The use of federal money, taxpayers’ money to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is—I’m against that. And therefore, if the bill does that, I will veto it.”
—Bush, May 20, 2005
It certainly seems that, at the very least, he’s blustering about the principle: stating it in an absolute form and using that as rhetorical strong point, avoiding the fact that there are exceptions that he seems to make in other circumstances (the death penalty as a deterrent is a pretty clear and unavoidable example).
Either you are against destroying life for the benefit of others or you aren’t. You can certainly make the stipulation that certain lives aren’t worth as much and so can be destroyed, but pretending that you believe the principle in the absolutist sense without admitting that you make exceptions to suit other beliefs you have is two-faced. If you can make exceptions to the grand principle, well then maybe I have some different exceptions I would like to make, and those are the terms of the argument: hashing WHICH exceptions make sense. But you can’t very well argue that it is wrong to make exceptions when you have already made some for yourself. And you can’t simply completely avoid the question of the legitimacy of the different exceptions for the same reason.
43% seems like quite a high number. But that is not the point.
Since the President’s Aug 2001 decision, federal funding for all forms of stem-cell research (including adult and umbilical stem cells) has nearly doubled, to $566m from $306m*. Let’s not pretend our federal government is doing nothing. Just how much more do you suggest?
The private sector is busy. A consulting firm suggests the market will generate $3.6b by 2015*. Some 70 companies* are now doing research. Give me a good reason why the government should spend our tax dollars to subsidize this industry – it is ready to take off like a rocket – that is incentive enough to attract the necessary venture capital.
43% seems like quite a high number. But that is not the point.
Since the President’s Aug 2001 decision, federal funding for all forms of stem-cell research (including adult and umbilical stem cells) has nearly doubled, to $566m from $306m*. Let’s not pretend our federal government is doing nothing. Just how much more do you suggest?
The private sector is busy. A consulting firm suggests the market will generate $3.6b in revenue by 2015*. Some 70 companies* are now doing research. Give me a good reason why the government should spend our tax dollars to subsidize this industry – it is ready to take off like a rocket – that is incentive enough to attract the necessary venture capital.
None of us have ever said Bush opposes all stem-cell research. We do hold that he opposes embryonic stem-cell research.
The embryonic stem cell lines Bush approved for funding, are now corrupt and worthless. They’ve been thoroughly contaminated by the mouse cells used to culture them.
No lab doing embryonic stem cell research may use an facilities or equipment paid for, or partially paid for, by federal funds. You want to do the research, you need to build and equip a new lab.
What about all the opposition to the death penalty? the war in Iraq? Aren’t taxpayers forced to pay for those?
The question of federal funding for medical research is one debate, and I’ve made plenty of posts to this board in sympathy of the libertarian approach. But given that the feds ARE going to fund research, I don’t see any reason to disallow funding for stem cell research. That’s all. But you did make that claim that opposition by the populace was a reason to limit or ban funding. Now you’ve backed away from that argument, so I don’t think I have a substantial disagreement with your position.
Doc, perhaps you are an expert in the field. I am not. The WSJ today states that the federal government has made 22 fully developed embryonic stem-cell lines available to researchers… This seem in contradiction to your post. Maybe I am misunderstanding something. Mouse cells? Are 22 lines insignificant?
Mr. Mace… I have not backed away from that argument. Your ‘poll results’ link indicate 24% of those responding would like to keep the current restrictions on federal research funding and 19% desire no funding at all. You asked how much opposition? I say that 43% is a rather high number.
Are these new lines or the same ones Bush mentioned in his speech when banned federal funding? If they’re the same lines, they aren’t insignificant. They’re useless.
http://www.salk.edu/news/releases/details.php?id=115
Again, how many people oppose the death penalty? The war in Iraq? Taxpayers are still forced to pay for those.