Science’s Rightful Place Redux

vjtorley, Thank you for the excellent discussion on pro-life issues. Do you have a paper that repeats what you've written here, in a form I can possibly pass along to others? Thanks, AtomAtom

March 8, 2009

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Part C Finally, I would like to criticize the common view that fetuses acquire a right to life when they acquire sentience. Sentience has nothing to do with having a right to life. It is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for having such a right. It can hardly be sufficient, or otherwise you would have to concede that mammals and birds (which are also sentient) had a right to life. Even most animal liberationists don't go that far; most of them (including Peter Singer) assert only that animals have the right not to have suffering intentionally inflicted upon them, in order to further another agent's ends. In any case, the statement "X can suffer" does not logically entail "X has a right to live." You can't distil a right to life from mere sentience. Nor can sentience be a necessary condition for having a right to life. If it were, then conditions such as hibernation (should it ever be achieved in humans - think Alien 3), coma and vegetative state (a condition from which people have been known to recover) would deprive a human being of his/her right to life. It would be OK to kill him/her, so long as he/she could not be awoken. (People in these states sometimes cannot be roused for months or even years.) "Ah," I hear you object, "but these unconscious people still have brains." That may be so, but if having a brain is the criterion for having a right to life, why not just say so, and dispense with the sentience requirement altogther? "Yeah, but they at least have a kind of capacity for sentience - they just need time, and maybe the right kind of neural jolt, before they can start feeling again." Wait a minute. Sentience is the capacity to feel. Now you’re saying that having the capacity for a capacity to feel is what gives us a right to life? And what about a fetus? Doesn't it have a capacity for a capacity to feel? "OK. Scrub that. Let's focus on the brain. Brain death equals the death of a person; so brain waves mark the beginning of one." But the problem with a purely neurological criterion for having a right to life is that it doesn’t do the trick. "X has a brain" does not entail "X has a right to life." Neither does "X has a complex brain" or even "X has a complex, functioning brain." Besides, which neurological marker should we pick? (A three-week-old embryo has a primitive brain; and a six-week-old embryo has primitive brain waves.) Perhaps the most alarming implication of the brain criterion for personhood, however, is that it destroys human equality. Einstein had a better brain than I do. If brain function is what gives us a right to life, then shouldn't the better-endowed have more of a right to life than the rest of us? What else follows? Babies matter less than children, who matter less than adults. My moral intuitions are precisely the other way round: killing a baby is worse than killing an adult. Whom would you instinctively have saved first, if you had been the captain of the Titanic? Princeton philosopher Peter Singer contends that we could still all have an equal right to life, after all. All you need is the ability to have a concept of self, with a life in front of you. A four-year-old has that concept just as surely as Einstein. Yes, but not a newborn baby; and as Singer himself acknowledges, humans do not acquire a right to life until they are at least one year old. We are forced to conclude, in the words of Paul Ramsey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, that "Every good argument for abortion is an equally good argument for infanticide." This is a point which Singer himself admits. He thinks parents should be able to kill their newborn babies if they elect to do so. Usually, he cites severe disability as a ground for killing a baby, but his own position that newborn babies are not persons with a right to life would imply that even if a newborn baby is healthy, it has no right to life. Need I say more? Well, Allen MacNeill and George L. Farquhar, I hope I've convinced you that the pro-life position is at least intellectually defensible, and that opposing views have severe problems of their own.vjtorley

March 8, 2009

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vjtorley, let me suggest a test of your ethical position. You are the only adult in a burning building. In the building with you are two week-old human babies and two portable freezer cases with 100 zygotes in each. You can carry, at maximum, (1) both human babies, (2) one human baby and one freezer case, or (3) both freezer cases. So: save 2 lives, 101 lives, or 200 lives? If you object that the frozen embryos are not in "run" mode, substitute embryos being cultured for IVF. They may be near the blastocyst stage. You might be able to carry a couple of dozen cultures in each arm. Still, it's a lot better than saving a mere two babies, isn't it? I submit that you, like me, would save the two babies and leave the frozen or cultured zygotes to the fire.David Kellogg

March 8, 2009

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Part B Common Objections to the view that embryos are people with a right to life. 1. The twinning argument: zygotes sometimes split in two. Big deal. All that means is that humans have two modes of reproduction - sexual and asexual - and that the parents of identical twins are really their grand-parents (their parent - the zygote from which they both developed - having died). What's the metaphysical problem here? There isn't one. Nature has killed the parent, but sadly, nature kills children all the time - that's just the old problem of evil. Bad things happen. The recombination argument is no more problematic than the twinning argument. Two individuals die; and a new individual, with its own developmental program, comes to be. That’s sad, but that’s life. 2. The cloning argument. A scientist clones a baby. When does its life begin? Even a clone cannot develop unless the donor’s nuclear DNA is inserted into a (denucleated) human ovum, whose development then has to be artificially triggered (e.g. by an electric shock). My response: if the trigger turns all the epigenetic switches on, so that the human development program is in run-mode, then that's when the baby’s life begins. 3. Deformed human embryos. What about an embryo whose DNA is so damaged that it will never develop into a self-aware adult? Is it a human person? Yes. To illustrate this, consider a thought experiment. A scientist from the 22nd century travels back in time and repairs the genetic defect of a deformed embryo, enabling it to develop properly. Has the scientist added anything of value? I would say not, any more than someone repairing a crack in the "Mona Lisa" adds value to it as a work of art by restoring it to its original condition. (The deformed embryo may never have been in such a condition, but that is the condition that it should have been in, from a "programming" perspective.) There is a difference between adding or creating new information and restoring damaged information. The former adds value; the latter does not. Thus if a scientist from the 23rd century were to come back and tinker with the genes of a chimpanzee embryo, so that it developed a brain like ours, he/she would have thereby altered its value and created a new kind of entity, which would acquire a right to life only when it acquired the genes for developing a human brain. 4. The hydatiform mole argument (a reductio ad absurdum) - these non-viable embryonic growths seem to meet conditions (1) to (4) in Part A, so are they human beings too? My answer: probably not. With complete moles, all the genes come from the father, so the full set of instructions for developing into a human being is never present (in other words, condition (2) is not met). Partial moles, on the other hand, do have maternal as well as paternal genes (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydatidiform_mole ). The question would then be: are the epigenetic switches fully activated? (Condition (4).) I would guess not; if they were, I'd be prepared to entertain the possibility that some moles are severely deformed human beings. 5. A few people are chimeras: their bodies have two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes. Chimeras may be formed from four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fuse together) or from three parent cells (a fertilized egg is fused with an unfertilized egg or a fertilized egg is fused with an extra sperm). If chimeras are people, then why aren't moles? My response: obviously these individuals have all the instructions they need to develop (or they wouldn't be alive); and luckily for them, the fusion event in their development did not turn their switches off, so they clearly meet all four conditions. Individuals resulting from the fusion of two zygotes are new entities, whose immediate parents (the zygotes from which they formed) are now dead: two developmental programs merged and formed a new third program, which happened to be viable. 6. The mortality argument - embryos die in large numbers, prior to implantation. True, but so did children until 200 years ago. What does that prove? 7. The vagueness of conception as a starting point: the process takes 24 hours to complete. My reply: when can we speak of the fertilized egg as having a single developmental program, and when are the epigenetic switches turned on? That's when conception truly begins. In any case, I can live with a slightly blurry boundary. If we can't pinpoint exactly when conception occurs, we can always play it safe and refuse to experiment with any egg that is in the process of being fertilized. We're only talking 24 hours, after all... 8. The breast-feeding argument. Breast-feeding inhibits implantation, so breast-feeding mothers who have intercourse are guilty of murder if zygotes are human beings. Reply: murder is ordinarily defined as intentional killing. In this case, we are talking about a tiny human being whom the mother isn’t even aware of. The objection is puerile. 9. The "unwanted embryos" argument. What are we going to do with the thousands of embryos in laboratories? My reply: we don't have to do anything, except refrain from intentionally killing them. We owe them that much. As I said, regardless of whether you believe in a soul, the pro-life position on human rights makes a lot more sense than the "sentientist" position that we acquire rights when we start feeling pain, or even later, when we become self-conscious. Those positions are fraught with ethical peril: they destroy human equality and harden our hearts to such a degree that we fail to recognize babies as people. Finally, anyone interested in reading articles by doctors and philosophers in defence of the pro-life position might like to peruse the following: "Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: What's Wrong With It?" by Professor David Oderberg in Human Life Review (Fall 2005):1-33 at http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/ld/Philos/dso/papers/What’s%20Wrong%20with%20HESC%20Research.pdf . "Life: Defining the Beginning by the End" by Professor Maureen Condic at http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=485 . "When Do Human Beings Begin? 'Scientific' Myths and Scientific Facts" - by Dr. Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D. at http://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html .vjtorley

March 8, 2009

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George L. Farquhar and Allen MacNeill Both of you have raised substantive ethical objections to the view that embryos are human beings who matter as much as you or I do. I'd like to respond to your arguments in thre parts. Part A - A Summary of My Own Position I maintain that any entity satisfying all of the following four requirements is a a human person with a right to life. [Note: Before readers rush in to accuse me of speciesism, I recognize that there may well be persons belonging to other species, but this does not touch on the issue which I am addressing, which is: which entities should be treated as human beings, with the same right to life as you or I?] Anyway, here are my four conditions: (1) The entity's developmental end-point is a human adult. (Chimps fail this condition, by definition.) This characteristic is empirically verifiable, simply from inspecting the entity's DNA. Why is this requirement necessary? Well, anything that's not even on its way to becoming a rational human being (roughly, a human adult) can hardly be entitled to human rights as such. If it's Martian, it may have rights as a Martian, and for all I know, some other animals (including chimps) might also possess a right to life, but that’s another matter entirely; (2) A complete set of genetic instructions - i.e. a program - for building a human being. Without a developmental program, the entity is not even a human-in-the-making, let alone a human being; (3) A biological embodiment for those instructions: in other words, the entity is an organism. This is important: I could put all the instructions for making a human being on a CD, but that certainly wouldn't make it a person. In fact, it wouldn’t even be alive; (4) The developmental program in for building a human being has to be in run mode - i.e. the epigenetic switches are fully activated. Here, I agree with Professor Peter Singer that a mere potential for becoming a human person does not endow an entity with the rights of a person. If it did, then every skin cell which my body sheds would be a human person. This suffices to rebut George L. Farquhar's objection relating to dandruff. I've briefly argued for why I believe the four requirements listed above are necessary for having basic human rights (especially a right to life), but that doesn't prove they’re sufficient. Before I answer this question, however, I’d like to address the question of which entities actually meet these criteria. In short: zygotes, embryos and fetuses do, as well as children who have already been born. Ova and sperm cells don’t. Adult stem cells don't, either. Let's start with a zygote. A zygote possesses the following combination of characteristics: (1) A human telos or developmental end-point. It's a developing entity, and the biological end-point of its development is a human adult. We can say the same of a fetus, a baby and a child. Could we say the same of an unfertilized ovum? Well, yes, if it's about to be fertilized, we might. What about an adult stem cell? Yes. (2) A complete set of genetic instructions - i.e. a program - for building a human being. Note that all of the instructions are internal to the zygote. During pregnancy, the mother gives the embryo/fetus nutrition, warmth and love, but the one thing she does not give the embryo/fetus is information on how to develop. It already has all of that information. An ovum flunks out here; it only has half the instructions. Ditto for a sperm cell. On the other hand, adult stem cells have all this information, so they are still in the running... (3) A biological embodiment for those instructions: obviously, it’s an organism. An ovum and a sperm cell satisfy this condition too. So does an adult stem cell. A robot does not. (4) Fully activated epigenetic switches, which mean that the program for building a human body is in run mode. This disposes of the standard objection, "Every cell in my body has human DNA, so why isn't it a person too?" The answer is that in skin cells, and other body cells, most of the epigenetic switches are turned off, which is why skin cells can only turn into skin cells. What about adult stem cells? They're pluripotent, not totipotent. That's precisely why advocates of embryonic stem cell research don't like them. Although they are able to turn into a variety of different cell types, an adult stem cell, if implanted into a human uterus, will not develop into a human being. The only way to make it do so is to reset its epigenetic switches, essentially turning it back into an embryo again. If a scientist did that, then he/she would indeed have created a new human being, but until the switches are reset back to "embryonic mode", an adult stem cell is not a human being. Note that all of the four characteristics listed above are actual characteristics, rather than potential ones. "What about the first one?" I hear you object. No problem there. The question is simply: what is the organism's developmental end-point? We can know the answer to that question by looking at an organism’s DNA, long before it matures. So much for the old canard that the pro-life case is built on the potential qualities of the embryo. It is clearly not. Please note too that there’s nothing about an immaterial soul in these conditions, either. Now, I will acknowledge that Professor Singer has a valid point about personhood: rights are only exercised when we make choices, which is something that only a self-aware entity can do. My first point in response is that that a living organism which has a built-in and fully switched-on program whose terminus or end-point is a mature, self-aware adult, is the same entity as the adult it becomes: it has not only material continuity (same body), but also continuity of form(same program), continuity of process (it's been running the whole time) and telos (same developmental goal). My second point is that during the course of its development, nothing is added to this entity that would enhance its value. As it develops, certain features (e.g. complex brain function) may emerge, but they are not added from outside. The instructions for building these features all came from within, and what's more, these instructions were fully switched on from the beginning (conception). All that was needed was time for them to run, and a supportive environment, which however adds no new information. (Readers who are still inclined to think that the emergence of sentience in a fetus or self-consciousness in a baby somehow confers additional value upon it should see Part C below.) Now let V be the value of a mature adult. We have determined that the value added to the embryonic organism from which it develops is zero. Thus the value of this organism must be V minus 0, which equals V. Thus an embryo must matter as much as the human adult it becomes. But anything that matters as much as a human person, IS a person. Therefore, an embryo is a human person. Putting it less formally: a zygote is a living organism, with the complete genetic program that it needs to develop into a human adult, and the program is switched on and in run mode. Is there any good reason, then, to deny it the same right to life that an adult enjoys? I cannot think of any.vjtorley

March 8, 2009

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Hi Allen,

Not yet. However, this is exactly how “Dolly” the sheep was cloned, it is how thousands of domestic animals are cloned every day, and given the pace of cloning research, it is only a matter of time (i.e. not a matter of technology) before it becomes possible to do this with human adult stem cells.

I don't think so. I think that you are talking about adding adult stem cells to either eggs or embryos. I don't think you are talking about implanting adult stem cells and having them develop into babies. As you refer to the thousands of animals already cloned I think that I am right.

When (not “if”) this happens, the ethical conundrum that I posed becomes all too real.

I don't think it does and I think you have invented this ethical conundrum - I'm just not sure why. Unless I am missing some serious piece of the puzzle this is where you go far off track: To consider that neither embryonic stem cells nor adult stem cells are “human beings” until they are implanted into a mother and are born as human babies.Who considers ither ASC or ESC to be human? Anyone? I believe that there are those who consider embryos to be human. They might object to having one stripped of its ESC to have them replaced with ASC. Is this what you are getting at?

This, of course, would require defining “human life” as beginning at birth (or the onset of independent viability at the end of the second trimester, as decided in Roe v. Wade), rather than conception (regardless of where or when or under what conditions that “conception” took place).

I think, rather, it would require that we not call stem cells human beings. Is anybody doing this? Does "embryonic stem cell" fit someone's definition of "human being"

The only other logically consistent alternative is: To consider that all stem cells are “human beings”, which would require that all stem cell research and treatment and all forms of in vitro fertilization be declared unethical and presumably outlawed.

By placing "all" in italics you seem to be saying that ESC are considered human beings by some. Is this the case?

Indeed, as a commentator at my blog pointed out, embryonic blastocysts are “potential human beings”, and so should be accorded all of the ethical and legal rights given to actual (i.e. already born) human beings. But frozen egg cells and frozen sperm are also “potential human beings”, and

Blastocysts are not "potential" human beings, are they? Are they not already human beings?

Ergo, following the logic of the second alternative, all forms of “artificial conception”, including egg donation, sperm banks (and perhaps even “matchmaking”, since it meddles with the production of “potential human beings”) should be outlawed.

Perhaps a facility that creates human beings which must later be destroyed ought to be outlawed. MAybe you have actually scratched out an ethical conundrum. But it's not because they freeze eggs or sperm.

This is what reductio ad absurdam looks like from my vantage point: Every sperm a wanted sperm…

Yes, I thought this was why you were exaggerating the irony and conflating ESC with "human being".Charlie

March 8, 2009

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If the embryos are either going to sit in a deep freeze forever, or just be destroyed, it seems to me that they could serve a higher purpose by being used in this research. At no point in the process does stem cell research create a sentient being. There is no "mind", no consciousness, which becomes self-aware and is then killed. These are entities that will sit in eternal oblivion anyway, so they might as well be put to good use and benefit humanity.Patthew

March 8, 2009

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-L3JMk7C1A Warning: Monty Python is an equal opportunity satirist.Allen_MacNeill

March 8, 2009

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"The adult stem cell is not an embryo, a blastocyst, or anything of the equivalent." "You cannot implant adult stem cells into the uterus and get a baby in 9 months. "

Not yet. However, this is exactly how "Dolly" the sheep was cloned, it is how thousands of domestic animals are cloned every day, and given the pace of cloning research, it is only a matter of time (i.e. not a matter of technology) before it becomes possible to do this with human adult stem cells. When (not "if") this happens, the ethical conundrum that I posed becomes all too real. And so, the solution to this conundrum needs to be addressed now. As I see it, there are only two logically consistent alternatives:

To consider that neither embryonic stem cells nor adult stem cells are "human beings" until they are implanted into a mother and are born as human babies.

This, of course, would require defining "human life" as beginning at birth (or the onset of independent viability at the end of the second trimester, as decided in Roe v. Wade), rather than conception (regardless of where or when or under what conditions that "conception" took place). The only other logically consistent alternative is:

To consider that all stem cells are "human beings", which would require that all stem cell research and treatment and all forms of in vitro fertilization be declared unethical and presumably outlawed.

But this would also require that we outlaw all developmental research, because somewhere along the line some researcher somewhere might find out how to regress any human cell to the embryonic stem cell stage, and then simply scratching your head or drinking a cup of too-hot coffee would be equivalent to murder. Indeed, as a commentator at my blog pointed out, embryonic blastocysts are "potential human beings", and so should be accorded all of the ethical and legal rights given to actual (i.e. already born) human beings. But frozen egg cells and frozen sperm are also "potential human beings", and so the same ethical and legal considerations should be extended to them as well. Ergo, following the logic of the second alternative, all forms of "artificial conception", including egg donation, sperm banks (and perhaps even "matchmaking", since it meddles with the production of "potential human beings") should be outlawed. This is what reductio ad absurdam looks like from my vantage point: Every sperm a wanted sperm...Allen_MacNeill

March 8, 2009

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tragic mishap

“Well the Nazis are going to kill all these Jews anyway so we might as well use as many of them as we can for scientific study.”

You are joking right? Tragic (and your name has never been more apt) do you also think every sperm is sacred? As stems cells can now be created from skin cells should we revere our dandruff too?George L Farquhar

March 8, 2009

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Allen must have had something strange done to his blastula when he was an embryo. Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells are not the same thing, nor are iPS cells. You cannot implant adult stem cells into the uterus and get a baby in 9 months. Also, the ethical dilemma exists just as much for the in vitro fertilization process that produces embryos that are eventually killed as using those embryos for research. It hardly matters whether the embryos are destroyed, used for science, or left in liquid nitrogen. Eventually, even in liquid nitrogen, they will die. Allen's argument used in a different context goes like this: "Well the Nazis are going to kill all these Jews anyway so we might as well use as many of them as we can for scientific study."tragic mishap

March 8, 2009

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At # 3 Hi Donoman, I think you encapsulate the dangers of unregulated science extremely well here. A friend of mind compared stem cell research to pandora's box. Once we start, we have a whole new eugenics movement on our hands.Platonist

March 8, 2009

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Thkanks for your respnse, Allen, but you are just confusing me again. Yes, you've already described in your previous post, and I think most are aware of how embryonic stem cells are obtained. The ethical problem here is that the embryo is considered to be a human being and it is being destroyed. The problem is not that some potent cells are being used.

Embryonic stem cells would be genetically and developmentally identical to adult stem cells that have been artificially retrogressed.

Say this is true. This has nothing to do with the destruction of the embryo.

Ergo, any ethical dilemma attached to embryonic stem cells would also extend to any adult stem cells, regardless of source.

This conclusion does not follow logically from the problem. Nobody is saying anything about the fate of the stem cells. The question is very much its source. Your non sequitur leaps right over the exact problem as you declare it irrelevant. This is like saying it is equally unethical to kill a person and transplant his heart as it would be to harvest a harvest a heart from a deceased donor.

This means that with sufficiently advanced technology, any stem cell could potentially be triggered to undergo development as an embryo, and therefore any process that destroyed adult stem cells

But the ethical problem does not lie in the equivalence of the cell but in the destruction of its involuntary donor. The adult stem cell is not an embryo, a blastocyst, or anything of the equivalent. In order to make it the equivalent you would have to take an already-existing embryo and replace its own stem cells with the adult cells. Or, you would have to create a nuclear replacement clone, i.e., create an embryo (human being) with those adult stem cells. The fact one could go to extraordinary lengths to create an embryo using, as one ingredient, the adult stem cells, does not make adult stem cells embryos anymore than a somatic cell is an embryo just because it can be used to provide the nucleic material for a clone; or anymore than the transplanted heart is, itself, a person just because it can be used to make a failing person viable. It still seems obvious to me that you are exaggerating the irony and equivocating between stem cells and embryos.Charlie

March 7, 2009

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Most stem cells are obtained from embryos that have been produced in order to implant them in women for in vitro fertilization. Since extracting the stem cells destroys the embryos, the ethical dilemma arises from destroying viable embryos that could otherwise be used to make new humans via IVF to obtain stem cells for medical research and treatment. The irony arises from the fact that, if such frozen embryos are not used for IVF, they are usually destroyed anyway, so using them as a source of stem cells can mitigate such destruction. Embryonic stem cells would be genetically and developmentally identical to adult stem cells that have been artificially retrogressed. Ergo, any ethical dilemma attached to embryonic stem cells would also extend to any adult stem cells, regardless of source. This means that with sufficiently advanced technology, any stem cell could potentially be triggered to undergo development as an embryo, and therefore any process that destroyed adult stem cells (such as scratching your scalp or drinking a too-hot cup of coffee) would then be the ethical equivalent of murder (of the unborn).Allen_MacNeill

March 7, 2009

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Hi Allen, Your discussion of the ironies involved in developing adult stem cells is confusing to me. Why are you equating the stem cell itself with the embryo/ blastocyst as though implanting a stem cell in a mother's body would somehow result in the birth of a human being? What is it about "regressing" adult stem cells to something of similar potency to that found in an embryo somehow the equivalent of destroying the embryo? Why are you equating the stem cell itself to a human being? Are you not greatly exaggerating the irony? If so, why?Charlie

March 7, 2009

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I don't think the policy would allow embryos to be created for purposes of research. I think it would just allow IVF embryos that would otherwise be discarded to be used in federally funded research. If a person thinks life begins at fertilization, then the ethical problem is with the destruction of all those embryos in the first place. (Would such a person hold that everybody who conceives through IVF and doesn't use all the embryos is a murderer?)David Kellogg

March 7, 2009

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Currently, embryonic stem cells are derived from human egg cells that have been fertilized in vitro (that is, outside of the body of the egg-donor mother) as part of the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF) whereby childless couples can conceive of a baby using their own genetic material. IVF clinics generally fertilize multiple donor eggs and then let them divide by mitosis until the blastula stage is reached. During this process the inner cell mass is formed inside the blastula, from which embryonic stem cells are derived. The point to this process is not to produce the embryonic stem cells in the inner cell mass, but rather to produce viable blastulas, which can then be implanted in the uterus of the egg donor (or, in rare cases, a surrogate). The way this process is carried out necessarily produces multiple unused blastula-stage embryos for every one that is implanted. These unused blastula-stage embryos are usually frozen in liquid nitrogen, in case the egg donor requires a repeat implantation. Currently, there are almost half a million such blastula-stage embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen in IVF clinics in the United States. Which leads to the first ethical question:

What will become of the unused frozen embryos?

Here is what generally happens:

Any embryos that you do not use in your first IVF attempt can be frozen for later use. This will save you money if you undergo IVF a second or third time. If you do not want your leftover embryos, you may donate them to another infertile couple, or you and your partner can ask the clinic to destroy the embryos. Both you and your partner must agree before the clinic will destroy or donate your embryos. Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/470281

So, should the "parents" (i.e. the egg and sperm donors) have the right to decide that their unused blastula-stage embryos be destroyed? Despite some political efforts to deny them this right, there is no legal jurisdiction in the U.S. in which this right has been abrogated (yet). One way to solve this particular ethic dilemma is to "adopt" the frozen embryos by having them implanted in an "adoptive" mother. There is a program that advocates this, and has arranged for some of these frozen embryos to be "adopted" by being implanted in "adoptive" mothers who are members of a medically infertile married couple: http://www.nightlight.org/snowflakeadoption.htm According to data at that website, the current number of successful "snowflake adoptions" is approximately 202 since the program was started in 1997. That works out to around 17 per year, or 0.0034% of the current half-million "snowflake backlog". At that rate, all of the frozen embryos currently in cryogenic suspended animation will be "adopted" by the year 31421. However, this is a gross underestimate of how long this backlog will persist, as it assumes that no new "snowflakes" are generated by new IVF procedures. Currently, the rate of production of new frozen blastula-stage embryos at IVF clinics in the US is approximately 18,000 per year. the current rate of "snowflake adoption is approximately 20 per year, so unless IVF is permanently stopped, it is mathematically impossible for the current "snowflake backlog" to eventually be adopted. One way to avoid the use of embryonic stem cells taken from frozen blastula-stage human embryos is to use adult stem cells instead. There are many different tissues in adult humans that qualify as stem cells (that is, cells that can continue to divide by mitosis). Recent research has made it possible to "regress" adult stem cells almost to the embryonic stem cell stage, which raises the possibility of using adult stem cells instead of embryonic stem cells. Personally, I strongly hope that adult stem cells can be used for all of the scientific and technical uses that most scientists originally thought only embryonic stem cells could be used for. However, this will then lead to two new, unforseen ethical dilemmas: • What will be done with the "snowflakes" that are currently frozen at IVF clinics, if they are not used for stem cell research and medical treatment? • What will be done with the adult stem cells that have been regressed to the embryonic stem cell stage, since these would then qualify genetically and developmentally as "snowflakes" themselves? Clearly, one irony of the development of adult stem cell regression will be that the "snowflakes" now frozen in liquid nitrogen in all of those IVF labs will now almost certainly be disposed of (I suppose they defrost and incinerate them), rather than contributing to the advance of medical technology and human welfare. The other irony, of course, is that by regressing adult stem cells to the embryonic stem cell stage, there would be many, many more "snowflakes", rather than less, thereby necessitating the destruction of many, many more "potential human beings" than is currently the case. There are two other solutions, both of which avoid the ethical dilemmas outlined above: • To consider that neither embryonic stem cells nor adult stem cells are "human beings" until they are implanted into a mother and are born as human babies. But this, of course, would require defining "human life" as beginning at birth, rather than "conception" (regardless of where that "conception" took place). • To consider that all stem cells are "human beings", which would require that all stem cell research and treatment and all forms of in vitro fertilization be declared unethical, and presumably outlawed. But this would also require that we outlaw all developmental research, because somewhere along the line some researcher somewhere might find out how to regress any human cell to the embryonic stem cell stage, and then simply scratching your head or drinking a cup of too-hot coffee would be equivalent to murder...Allen_MacNeill

March 7, 2009

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George L Farquhar

If it is immoral for scientists to create and manipulate embryonic stem cells why is it OK for the designer to do it, as some ID proponents believe intervention by the designer happened at that stage?

1. It is immoral to manipulate and destroy human embryonic stem cells, as these stem cells are human beings who matter just as much as you or I do. Some ID proponents may believe the designer mainpulated embryonic cells of other animals, but nobody is arguing here that the manipulation of these animal embryos is immoral in all circumstances. 2. Even if we suppose (as some ID proponents do) that the designer engineered the first human embryo, this would not be the same as scientists creating a human embryo. On the proposed ID scenario, the first human embryo would still have arisen as a result of a natural process (copulation between two hominids who were genetically very close to humans) and would then have been "enhanced" by the designer, as it were. This is quite different from creating a human embryo by combining two gametes in a petri dish - which is really tantamount to treating human life as a nothing more than a mere object.vjtorley

March 7, 2009

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Do you think the designer has a different set of morals to mortal men? If it is immoral for scientists to create and manipulate embryonic stem cells why is it OK for the designer to do it, as some ID proponents believe intervention by the designer happened at that stage?George L Farquhar

March 7, 2009

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By the way, part of what I said is based off of what Hitler wrote within his book, Mein Kampf:

If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

Basically Hitler allowed scientific thinking to rule over the government, as opposed to the government ruling over science (that is, the government keeping what "science" morally allows us to do, in check).Domoman

March 7, 2009

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It seems like such ideas could lead to further Holocausts. After all, it was Hitler's idea that he should, as if by the will of Nature herself, exterminate, based on scientific "knowledge," those that were deemed "lesser beings". If the government, or somebody doesn't keep supposed "science" in check, who will?Domoman

March 7, 2009

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"I find this to be the height of arrogance and, frankly, its a bit scary. A science morally and ethically unrestrained by government will ultimately take the mentality that anything that is possible should be." It looks as if Wells's prediction may be comming true.Platonist

March 7, 2009

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I know H.G. Wells isn't too popular around here, but I always felt that The Island of Dr. Moreau was an excellent depiction of science with no boundaries.Platonist

March 7, 2009

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