"Adult rat brain cells", that's my answer!
Funding research and development for an open-ended program with no projected time line for success takes away resources from other areas that have more obvious and immediate success. While embryonic stem cell research may be a popular idea and sounds real good on paper and in theory, we live in a real world with other real world problems that also require scientific attention and funding. Relevent to this debate, are the other exciting therapies that are much further along in development and that do not require the destruction of embryonic human beings. To cite a few recent examples: adult rat brain cells successfully generated rat muscle tissue; stems cells from umbilical cord blood became "brain tissue [when injected into rats' brains], maturing into the type of cell appropriate for that area of the brain"; cow skin tissue was reprogrammed to its stem cell state and then transformed into heart tissue; human thigh muscle from a patient has been turned into contracting heart muscle cells; and researchers have converted human fat cells obtained through liposuction into bone, muscle and cartilage cells.
More funding to stem cell research takes funding away from more successful and promising programs. In addition to the alternative technology's of producing spare body parts, are other methods that help maintain the body against diseases. Like Homeopathy and more education on the benefits of nutrition. There are many other programs that saves lives as well that deserve funding, but I think the reader gets the idea.
One thing we must never lose sight of is the fact that these embryo's would develop into human beings if their development wasn't interrupted. And it is only human for those who work on these programs for any length of time and repetition, do not really think of embryos as children to be kept or given up for adoption. They think of them instead as special property, the destiny of which should be in their hands unless and until the property actually becomes persons.
For those who embrace the view that embryos are persons, this common intuition about the status of embryos presents a challenge. They may describe stem cell research as homicide, but they must recognize that doing so entails a description of current fertility treatments as homicide as well, albeit homicide that is intimately linked to creating other lives. They would have to insist that all unutilized frozen embryos be preserved and made available to interested couples, regardless of the original couples' respective wishes. After all, one could not give up a child after birth but insist that the child be discarded or used for research.
Without getting into the afore-mentioned hysteria regarding religious arguments from those that are more faith based, there is the ethical issue of the status of the human embryo.
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Status of the human embryo
3.1 What is a human moral subject?
3.1.1 Morality and law are concerned with the respect that is due to human beings as moral subjects. People are not reducible to the sum of their physical parts or their biological drives. Mature and competent human beings can make decisions for themselves, for which they are held responsible both morally and legally. Furthermore, all human beings are members of the human community, whether or not they have come to full maturity, and all share a common humanity.
3.1.4 It may seem that in the modern Western world, there is little danger of `dualistic' ideas posing a real threat. However, there seems to be something in the Western way of life and in modern culture that encourages, on the one hand, a view of political and technological freedom as unlimited by any rules concerned with human nature and, on the other, a view of the body as purely mechanical and empty of any intrinsic human significance. |
This country is based on believing all people (humans) have inalienable rights. These rights come in the form of positive rights and negative rights.
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Respecting the embryo
4.1 Rights of the embryo
4.1.1 We have seen that there are solid grounds for acknowledging the embryo as a human moral subject: an individual who has human interests and, therefore, basic human rights. What, then, are the basic rights of human beings as they apply to the embryo? We should distinguish, first of all, between the positive rights and the negative rights of human beings.
4.1.4 As the embryo is a human moral subject, it too has the negative rights of an innocent human being. It has the right not to be deliberately killed, and not to have its body deliberately invaded in ways which do it lethal harm. The process of harvesting its cells, in the course of which the embryo dies, is no more permissible than extracting organs from a newborn child who dies as a result.
4.1.5 The embryo also has certain positive rights to shelter and nourishment from its mother. A pregnant mother has an extra reason to take care of her own health, for the sake of her unborn baby. She should also take reasonable steps to provide for the child's growth and development, by eating appropriately, for example. |
If an embryo is a human element, when does it get it's rights?