Stem Cell Research

WaPo reports Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced yesterday that he now supports legislation to lift President Bush's restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, a shift that infuriated religious conservatives and turned a spotlight back on the White House.... In the face of a presidential veto threat, the Tennessee Republican with White House aspirations of his own said he will support House-passed legislation to repeal the Bush restrictions and allow research on stem cells donated by couples who have completed in vitro fertilization and no longer need their remaining frozen embryos. He hopes to schedule a Senate vote in September, though he acknowledged widespread disagreement on how to proceed with a debate that could involve up to eight competing bills.

joel blogged The ethics of IVF (in vitro fertilization) is based on expediency: it does help couples who are having trouble getting pregnant to have children. But it creates many more embryos than the couple will use, mainly because creating embryos one at a time would be prohibitively expensive. If you believe, as Frist claims he does, that human life begins at conception, then IVF involves the hideous equation of lives for money.

I agree that life begins at conception, but the problem is not that Frist will support allowing research on the embryos that are about to be destroyed; the problem is that so many embryos were created without the intention of bringing them to term. What they should do is allow these embryos to be used, but require tighter controls over the future creation of excess embryos in future IVF procedures.

Once you accept the morality or at least the expediency of IVF's lives-for-money equation, Frist's frozen embryo exploitation scheme is a relatively small step, involving only piddly issues like privacy and the lack of "strong ethical and scientific oversight." To put it another way, as long as the parents are ok with it, and as long as the doctors and scientists give it the nod, it's ok to take an innocent human life. Frist, you give new play to the phrase "hypocritical oath."

I disagree with the characterization. The problem is that the embryos were about to be destroyed; not that some use was made of them

Michael blogged he believes that parents should have the option of destroying their unborn children if it's for a good cause.

Would you prefer that they destroy their unborn children for no good cause? Because that is the alternative.

Stem Cell Research is going to be approved. What we should focus on is not trying to block it, but bundling in

• restrictions on the creation of so many excess embryos with no expectation of bringing them to term
• absolute prohibition of creating any embryo with the intention of harvesting it's stem cells, or doing anything with it other than bringing it to term
• spending an equal amount of money on adult stem cell research