Obnoxious Bitch
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Trash to treasure: Embryonic stem cell research
I’m arguing about stem cell research on the G&G board, mostly with my fundamentalist foil Kmumom, who can never pass up an opportunity to proselytize for the glory of Jay-zus. She started the thread by citing this article on WebMD about the success of transplanted stem cells from the patient’s own nose in treating nerve damage.
So, because I’m a lazy blogger, I’m just going to post my latest reply to her last diatribe against my evil humanist nature.
I chose to reply in particular to one comment she made: ...your callousness is especially shocking to me. You know full well your own daughter started out as one of those embryos you are so willing to kill and harvest.
No, you’re wrong about that. Neither I nor my daughter started out as “one of those embryos.” We became embryos as a result of natural recreational sex - not extras left over from fertility treatments. THOSE are the embryos I’m asking about. There are thousands upon thousands of them stored right now that will not be used by the people who made them or anyone else, and will eventually be disposed of as medical waste just like tumors and bad organs removed from patients. THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE, nor considering their owners’ already fulfilled dreams of becoming parents by using some of their “batch-mates,” are they even potential people. They’re slated for disposal. So what I’m ASKING and you (and everyone else) keep NOT answering, is why you think it’s more moral for these unwanted embryos to be disposed of (which is their certain fate) than utilized for research?
To be perfectly honest, I’d actually prefer that this argument be rendered moot altogether by way of far fewer people engaging in fertility treatments that result in large batches of eggs and embryos that will end up doing no one any good. If it’s “God’s will” that you cannot conceive, rather than turning to the same medical technology that is responsible for abortion and contraception, you should accept “God’s plan” for you and adopt one of the thousands of children who weren’t aborted but are still unwanted.
Rather than another sermon about the moral bankruptcy of secular humanism, howzabout you answer the actual question I’m asking, which is narrowly confined to why embryos that are destined for the proverbial dustbin shouldn’t be put to use to serve humanity? It seems to me that in THIS case, *I* am the one whose position is that allowing them to be used to further medical research means their “lives” will not have been in vain.
There have been strides in adult stem cell therapy and cord blood stem cell therapy, YES. However, there are some things that can ONLY be done using embryonic stem cells, and it’s ridiculous to stop a whole subset of medical research because some people are inappropriately sentimental about medical waste.
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