Hi! Murray:
This is a very interesting posting.
``Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics'' argument is
very unreasonable for the following reasons:
1. The embryos would have been destroyed any way. I do not see any
moral or ethical problems in using the cells from the embryos that are
never destined to be implanted in a womans womb or becme a full fledged
human being by any other means.
I would like to give Dr. Fitzgerald a good example to think about:
The philosophy behind using the stem cells from the embryos destined
to be discarded is very similar, if not identical, to the idea behind organ
donation. The government recommends and encourages donating your organs,
or even your wholebodies for medical research, when and if you die
accidentally or otherwise (since our body is going to be destroyed without
any further use, one way or the other, just burried and let to disintegrate
or cremated), so it can be transplanted into a needy individual, without
which he/she can not live; e.g., kidney, liver, heart , lung etc., or used
for medical research. There seems to be no ethical problem in such cases.
When one wants use the stem cells from an embryo to be discarded, these
people begin to talk about ethical and moral issues.
The organ donor willingly donates the organ.
The only difference between organ donation for transplantation and stem
cell harvest from the unused embryos is that we did not get the consent from
the embryos.
However, we also did not get their consent to destory them. Did we?
2. When does a life originates? This is a wrong question to ask. A
living cell comes from another living cell. Biologically speaking, life is
a continuous process. Once dead it is gone. That is how extinction of
living organisms occurs.
Everybody defines the process of fertilization as the beginning of life.
Again this is a wrong statement. Both the sperm and the egg are living
cells too!
Fertilization, whether this happens in vitro or otherwise, is the
beginning of the life of a new individual.
" Life begins at fertilization, when the ``genetic code is complete and
operative,'' according to the group. That means that the embryos are not
just clusters of cells but ``are the tiniest of human beings.''
We all agree that the life of a new individual starts at fertilization.
But, the birth control pills block successful implantation of the
fertilized embryonic cell (a new embryonic human being has already sarted
his/her journey towards development) by inducing a process equivalent to
abortion. Just think of how many millions of ladies are taking birth
control pills. A modern woman on the average goes through 500 menstural
cyles in her life. Except a couple or a handful of the products of
fertilization, every other fertilized human embryo is routinely killed
because of the pills. Where were these ethicist when the BC pills became an
everyday thing? Except the Catholic Church, nobody else even thinks about
this issue at all. How many of these ethicists do use birth control pills?
How come killing the early human embryo by birth control pills is ethical?
Let us be honest. Don't you sense some degree of hypocrisy here?
3. If killing a human embryo is not ethical, then even in vitro
fertilizatioin should be considered non-ethhical, because one produces
several embryos out of which only one is implanted and the rest are left to
die! We can literally kill these would be human beings, but we cannot make
use of the cells for helping another indvidual to lead a healthy life? I
cannot understand why this is not as ethical as donating an organ for
helping another life to proceed, when one dies.
Assuming one half of the human population of 10 billions, if 5 billion
females all give rise to roughly even half of their reproductve potential,
with in one generation there would not be enough room to accommodate all
these human beings on this earth! That is the way Nature works. Nature
always over produces the young of the species simply to make sure at least a
few of them would survive and become adults to be able to reproduce the
species. Every living specie does that starting from plants to humans,
that is Nature's rule.
4. FitzGerald says a truly global dialogue is needed on embryonic stem
cell research, since research done in the United States, Sweden or
elsewhere has a potential worldwide impact.
I simply do not see the necessity for or usefulness in a global dialogue
on this issue. There shall be always opposing views on every issue.
Different societies (countires) are going to take different decisions. No
unanimous agreement will result on such important issues. Not one country
is going to prevent the decision on such importnt issues taken by another
country, by conudcting deliberatons on a global scale. The recent events
in the United Nations would serve as an example.
5. ``The potential for embryonic stem cells is really fantastic,'' said
Hamberger, who has ties to two Swedish companies involved with stem cells,
Cell Therapeutics Scandinavia and Vitrolife.
This is the concensus of all the scientists in the world. Every review
on stem cell applications in regeneratve medicine concludes that embryonic
stem cells have a broad spectrum of developmental and differentiation
potential than adult stem cells. The Therapeutic stem cell cloning after
somatic cell nuclear transplantation is the best compromise to induce
patient-specific embryonic stem cells without involging the process of
fertilization and will potentially avoid immune rejection of "transplanted"
cells. The regeneration based therapy of debilitating diseases, several
inherited diseases and other patological situations will help almost 75% of
the humanity within a decade or two. But, we should know a lot more about
these stem cells before we can attempt at curing diseases. Questions like
how they maintain themselves as stem cells for severl generations and how do
they differentate into different cell types (there are above 200 different
cell types in a human body) need to be answered. The studies on both adult
stem cells and SCNT-derived embryonic stem cells (therapeutic cloning) are
in their infancy. We cannot kill such studies in their embryonic stges with
total disregard to the enrmous promise they hold out to the betterment of
humanity. We are morally and ethically bund to explore these new avenues
of makkin g human life better for the same of people that are surring as we
spenmd our time arguing about obvious things.
I do not see any ethics or morality in such indiscrimminate banning of
stem cell research.
We all agree it is ethically and morally wrong to clone a human being.
We should all have a global discussion on how one can safegaurd against such
irresponsible act. Both the adult stem cell research and the studies on
SCNT-embryonic cells should be allowed to proceed without any delay, while
we put severe restrictions n stem cell research with strict guidelines
attached with severfe penalties and safegaurds against "mad Scientists" who
might be tempted to clone a human being either for money, thrill or cheap
publicity.
Raj
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