If we stop every project with the fear of failure, then we never accomplish anything. Of course the process is incomplete thus far; that's why it is called
research. It is not uncommon for a new medical procedure to fail many, many times before it is perfected. Consider
Kidney transplants and the failures leading up to the technique. While the surgery itself was a success, there was the unintended consequence of having the immune system eventually kill the recipient. What would have happened had we stopped research for fear of the unknown consequneces? Nine thousand patients a year, starting in 1986, would be out of luck. Currently, there are
91,000 patients awaiting donated organs for transplant . The wait for these organs is 4 to 5 years, currently. By 2010, that wait is expected to double. The benefits of researching stem cell lines for organ farming are clear to anyone waiting on that list. Trepidation and fear of "unknown effects" are hardly luxuries for those facing death because currently the organs just simply are not there.
With proper oversight and constant ethical analysis of the research procedures, human stem cells can make a huge impact on our medicine. My opponent obfuscates the real issue with hysteria and scare tactics about "sterile forests" and irrelevant reference to full cloning of human beings. They are irrelevant because it is already agreed upon by medical ethicists that cloning a full human being is a bad idea at best.
Legislation has already been passed that stops the reproductive cloning of human beings. However, the current administration has severely limited the advancement of stem cell technology by confining government research to only
11 existing stem cell lines. Further, it is widely agreed that the existing stem cell lines used for government research cannot be used for human testing because they were grown on mouse cells which could expose humans to animal viruses indefensible to our immune system.
So now, I ask the question to my opponent: Knowing that legislation is already in place to stop reproductive cloning, and knowing from the past that the development of medical techniques is subject to a process of refinement through failures and research; what is the objection to developing further human stem cell lines to continue research that could possibly save millions of lives?