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Originally Posted by Jensa
Well I'd hope you would, since I came out and said that I'd donate my eggs for that purpose. I can only donate eggs because I'm unable to produce sperm to make it an embryo. The lab would have to obtain some sperm on their own to do that.
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Yet you avoided saying that you would help create an embryo to be used for stem cell research. It's all 'donation' and 'laboratory' and disembodied sperm. You distanced yourself from the actual act.
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We already do that every day in factory farming, people just don't care. Yet for some reason people see it as more sacred and gasp-worthy when it's unfeeling, unconscious human embryos that are no more than a collection of cells.
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We should care about factory farming and the suffering of animals as well. Again, we see it (animal life) as less sacred because we distance ourselves from what is actually going on. I agree with you that there is a gasp-worthy factor at work in all of these ethical decisions. I'm just having a hard time relating to the the idea that a human embryo is 'just a bunch of cells.'
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If we can alleviate suffering without causing it, we can do it. ~100 cells don't feel pain; they're incapable of it. They're not being hurt. They don't even know that they have the potential to become something that can be hurt. The only people being hurt by this are the ones agonizing over the fate of embryos that, odds are, are going to die without the chance to become a fetus anyways.
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I agree that those cells do not feel pain or have consciousness. But I belive that they are sacred anyway. The thing that has not been sufficiently explained to me yet is why we can't develop another way of getting embryonic stem cells that would not involved embryos from IVF. As a biologist I recognize how much 'cleaner' and easier it is to use an embryo created in vitro. But if other means are possible, such as collecting miscarried embryos, then we should pursue that instead, even if it slows us down and is more expensive up front.
I compare this to GMO foods. I support, was involved in, GMO technology in agriculatural plants. I think this kind of reserach should be funded. However, in our greed and impatience we've allowed the big companies to call the shots and get things out into production ASAP. Now the genie is out of the bottle. You can't undo genes released into the environment; you can only hope that any that are harmful will also not be competetive in nature and so will eventually be lost from the natural populations. And you can try to not keep making those mistakes.
If we start down the path of creating embryos for research, and sorting embryos to select for ideal human traits, and then designer babies, and then...who knows? How long before insurance companies will not pay to help you manage your Parkinsons or cystic fibrosis because your parents should have known better than to have you in the first place.
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Consciousness is sacred. I would rather die than hurt these embryos if I thought anything being done to them would cause them pain or suffering. I'd rather die than inflict pain and suffering on anything. That's also why I support stem cell research. I'm not going to sit here and go "a group of cells that will sit in a freezer until they die is more important than the suffering you go through every day!" to the thousands of people that could benefit from stem cell research.
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Consciousness is a quality of human life. I also wish to alleviate pain and suffering. I support stem cell research too. But if I had Parkinsons and someone told me or a loved one that an embryo can either be adopted and potentially have life, or be used for stem cell research that may or may not help me (and there are other options...), I'd choose to for the embryo to be adopted.
07-21-2006, 03:09 PM
" - Iris Murdoch
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