NationStates Jolt Archive

There have been a few threads on the subject of stem cell research around here, and the main argument against it seems to be the argument that an embryo is essentially a human life and should not be sacrificed for the mere potential to gain insight into diseases that fully formed humans suffer from.

I have a question for those of you who feel this way--and I'm not trying to be condemnatory here--I want your honest opinion. If you feel stem cell research is wrong, do you also support a ban on in vitro fertilization?

For those who don't know, in vitro fertilization (aka test tube babies) is a procedure where multiple eggs are produced by the mother and removed, fertilized by sperm from the father and cultured until they can be implanted in the mother's womb. Thing is, the procedure has a very high failure rate, so the doctors fertilize far more eggs than they ever plan on using. According to one source I was looking at today, we're talking about 200,000 fertilized eggs per year in the US alone.

Now these are fertilized eggs that will never--I repeat, never--be implanted in a woman, and will therefore never reach maturation. They are, in effect, aborted pregnancies. That they are terminated outside the body is irrelevant, if I understand the logic of stem cell research opponents correctly.

So here's the question. Can you logically support in vitro fertilization--a program that allows families unable to reproduce naturally with the ability to have children--and yet oppose stem cell research?

Most of these are gonna be destroyed anyways. I mean, unless the republicans start a campaign that we must "free" these embryos immediately, and create thousands of children. If you believe they are "life" in fact, you must support the proposition that they be brought to fruition. Anything else would be an immoral crime.

I however, do not believe this, and I find the current conservative stance irresponsible in the extreme. Since they DON't want to bring all these lives into the world, and instead simply want to let them die or be destroyed, there is no logical reason NOT to use em in research! The gains could be monumental. I know of NO ONE who believes that an embryo is conscious human life.

The republicans in their latest rant have been stating that 1. Bush is the first pres to fund research, and 2. Potential gains are too far away, and may not be viable at all to worry about the issue. this is stupid. First, Bush was the first pres given the CHANCE to make a decision about the funding, it's brand new science! OF COURSE any gains are not in the near future. That is not a reason for not trying!!!!!! Please!

Wake up America. Don't be hypocritical. Choose your stance and your moral ground! You have two choices:
1. Embryos are life, all research has to be stopped and any current embryos should be given the full chance to develop into human beings, anything else is criminal.
2. Embryos should be used as research tools to advance science and reason. They are not intelligent life and as such do not suffer. In fact, no one suffers. We give God enough credit that he has given us this gift to better mankind. If God wishes a life to come forth, no man may interfere with his will.

Full steam ahead!!!

I don't really think so. Then again, this stem cell debate is rather irrational on the pro-life end. Extant legal abortions (however you feel about them, they're legal,) and even natural miscarriages, could provide plenty of stem cells, (which, once collected, are *cultured,* anyway,) probably for the forseeable future, and save a lot of lives and suffering in the process.

This is another case of people choosing a definition of something they don't understand, making a judgement, and stopping something that could be very, very good because they *fear* something 'bad' happenning, which thing already is happenning anyway.

I tend to think that part of the reason few opponents of stem cell research don't oppose in vitro fertilization is because no one ever links the two, not publicly anyway. It's starting to happen more recently, which is a good thing, considering the lengths to which the anti-abortion people are going to demonize anything and everything that conflicts with their conviction that life begins at conception. It's kind of hard for a pro-life person to look a grown product of IVF in the eyes and say "you should never have been born." Stem cells--those are easy to demonize because they don't have faces and biographies. Living breathing human beings are a different matter.

I am pro stem cell, and anti IVF.

IVF: let's face facts, there are just waaay too many people on this rock to begin with. If a couple can't have a child, ADOPT! For every couple that gets on the IVF program, another child is destined to spend their entire childhood in an orphanage.