Stem Cell Research

ChezJoel bloggs Tulsa blogger Don Singleton took issue with a couple of points in my Friday post Frist, Do No Harm. First, he disagrees with my statement that IVF involves a lives for money equation:

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.

Of course I agree it is wrong to create so many embryos which will ultimately be destroyed. But I have to disagree that they should allow these doomed embryos to be used for research. To do so entails treating the embryos as non humans.

It depends on what you mean by IFV involves a lives for money equation. As you said originally

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.

There is a lot of money in IFV, but it is focused on how much money the doctors can get out of a couple that wants a child, and the reason they harvest so many extra embryos is not the cost that it would take to harvest more if the first fails, it is so that they can say "this one failed, but we have all of these extra embryos. Pay me for another implantation, and we can try again." Thus they harvest and create so many excess embryos so that they can make more money, and then when the couple has the child they want, they just want to discard all of those extra lives. The evil was in creating so many extra humans, just to discard them. Not whether they are to be dumped down the drain, or used in stem cell research.

We have precident in our legal system for protecting humans who are doomed. For example, suppose I decide to pull a Jack Ruby on a murderer on death row, just one day before his execution was to be carried out. I would be arrested, charged and prosecuted for killing a human who was going to die anyway. Or to use a perhaps more appropos example, suppose I started offing the very aged and infirm in some quick, unexpected and painless way? I would be charged with murder, despite the fact that my victims were close to death.

The point is, either embryos are human lives or they are not. If an embryo is a human being, then it has the right to protection from being killed for any reason, even if it seems expedient. If the harvesting of the stem cells destroys the embryos or even if it provides any incentive for the destruction of the embryos, and if you believe that life begins at conception, then you have to conclude Frist's position is morally wrong.

But I see no indication that stem cell research is providing any incentive for destruction of the embryos. They are going to be destroyed because either the family has the child they want, or they have decided that the woman cant carry a child to term, and thus they have no further use for the embryos.

Stem Cell Research is going to pass, regardless of what either of us think. But what I am saying is in the legislation to approve the funding of research to use the embryos that are about to be destroyed, let us insert some language to absolutely forbid ever harvesting eggs and creating embryos for any use other than implantation in a woman with the intent that it be carried to term, and perhaps inserting some language limiting the number of embryos that can be created in future IVF procedures.

We enter peril, morally speaking, when we think of people in groups and fail to consider the individual. There is a huge number of embryos destined to be destroyed. But the notion of using "them" for research becomes more palatable when you close your mind to the idea that when a lab assistant punctures an embryo with a needle, he or she is ending one human being's life. If you believe life begins at conception, you have to treat that life as a human life.