Xislakilinia
18-06-2006, 06:12
I'm not a fan of religious morality. No moral system is perfect, of course, and religious morality not only sometimes depart from reality, but also is not even internally consistent.
The controversy here is the embryonic stem cell. Isolated from a 5-day old human embryo, a hollow ball with a grand total of about 64 cells. These spherical cells are undifferentiated, meaning that they have no specialized role yet. Their job is to divide.
And wait.
Until the placenta is formed.
Then they will proceed toward gastrulation, where the three embryonic germ layers are formed, beginning to resemble something like the public image of an embryo. If not, they just keep dividing, like on a culture dish. A good, self renewing resource with potential applications for cell transplant therapy and drug testing.
To scientists these are cells.
But to religious moralists these are people. Mind you, with equivalent rights to a fully grown human adult. If you destroy the 5-day embryo, why, even the one-cell embryo, these moralists claim they have authority from God to oppose it. Elevate it to "murder" status.
Let's look at it from the reality angle first:
These cells have no specialized function. No organization yet. Not nerve cells, heart cells, blood cells, liver cells, whichever one of the 200+ cell types that make up any vertebrate animal, or even Human.
5-day embryos don't always implant. Many 5-day embryos simply disappear down the uterus. And get flushed down the loo. Society doesn't call a failed implantation a "tragedy" or "a misadventure". No. Society call this "not pregnant". People don't search frantically for missing 5-day embryos. There no funeral wakes for 5-day embryos.
Embryonic development is not magic. It is a process. This is the reality. Sometimes the embryo is miscarried before it completes development. Sometimes it develops life-threatening malformations. Sometimes you have conjoined twins, embryos with two arms or even two heads. The developmental process is usually quite reliable, but it is FAR FROM PERFECT. There is no divine oversight in this common process.
Thus there is no magical angel watching every embryo from the one cell stage. The human embryo is not made of magic. It doesn't contain a miniature full-grown adult inside, read to pop out when expanded to full size. It is a gross departure from reality to confer the rights of a fully-grown human individual, with organ systems, with trillions of nerve connections, with an emergent consciousness and social identity, to a ball of 64-cells.
Now let's look at internal consistency:
If the one-cell embryo is already a full adult human, why isn't an egg a full grown human? Or a sperm? All this talk about when life starts is ridiculous - life has always propagated in cycles, hence "Life Cycle". Every existing cell in your body came from a previous cell.
So when does full grown human rights apply? Every time someone ovulates? You have to send religious police to protect the precious eggs which has every chance to be a person? Or send them to arrest a guy for wanking off millions of potential human lives? It's mass murder!
Next, what about the billions of 5-day human embryos stored in liquid nitrogen, left over from assisted reproduction clinics? Now, I'm SURE the religious moralists were not aware of the science when these technologies emerged in the 70's. Now they are still not aware of the science, but they CAN now use their moral system retrospectively to indict these IVF clinics. Did they advocate closing down these clinics? Did they send religious police to rescue billions of human beings brutally tortured by liquid nitrogen? No.
If you believe in magic, use your magic to bring about solutions in human congenital defects, liver disease, heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and many others.
If your magic doesn't work, should you stand in the way of others who can bring about improvements to human life by understanding and using processes?
I say NO.
The controversy here is the embryonic stem cell. Isolated from a 5-day old human embryo, a hollow ball with a grand total of about 64 cells. These spherical cells are undifferentiated, meaning that they have no specialized role yet. Their job is to divide.
And wait.
Until the placenta is formed.
Then they will proceed toward gastrulation, where the three embryonic germ layers are formed, beginning to resemble something like the public image of an embryo. If not, they just keep dividing, like on a culture dish. A good, self renewing resource with potential applications for cell transplant therapy and drug testing.
To scientists these are cells.
But to religious moralists these are people. Mind you, with equivalent rights to a fully grown human adult. If you destroy the 5-day embryo, why, even the one-cell embryo, these moralists claim they have authority from God to oppose it. Elevate it to "murder" status.
Let's look at it from the reality angle first:
These cells have no specialized function. No organization yet. Not nerve cells, heart cells, blood cells, liver cells, whichever one of the 200+ cell types that make up any vertebrate animal, or even Human.
5-day embryos don't always implant. Many 5-day embryos simply disappear down the uterus. And get flushed down the loo. Society doesn't call a failed implantation a "tragedy" or "a misadventure". No. Society call this "not pregnant". People don't search frantically for missing 5-day embryos. There no funeral wakes for 5-day embryos.
Embryonic development is not magic. It is a process. This is the reality. Sometimes the embryo is miscarried before it completes development. Sometimes it develops life-threatening malformations. Sometimes you have conjoined twins, embryos with two arms or even two heads. The developmental process is usually quite reliable, but it is FAR FROM PERFECT. There is no divine oversight in this common process.
Thus there is no magical angel watching every embryo from the one cell stage. The human embryo is not made of magic. It doesn't contain a miniature full-grown adult inside, read to pop out when expanded to full size. It is a gross departure from reality to confer the rights of a fully-grown human individual, with organ systems, with trillions of nerve connections, with an emergent consciousness and social identity, to a ball of 64-cells.
Now let's look at internal consistency:
If the one-cell embryo is already a full adult human, why isn't an egg a full grown human? Or a sperm? All this talk about when life starts is ridiculous - life has always propagated in cycles, hence "Life Cycle". Every existing cell in your body came from a previous cell.
So when does full grown human rights apply? Every time someone ovulates? You have to send religious police to protect the precious eggs which has every chance to be a person? Or send them to arrest a guy for wanking off millions of potential human lives? It's mass murder!
Next, what about the billions of 5-day human embryos stored in liquid nitrogen, left over from assisted reproduction clinics? Now, I'm SURE the religious moralists were not aware of the science when these technologies emerged in the 70's. Now they are still not aware of the science, but they CAN now use their moral system retrospectively to indict these IVF clinics. Did they advocate closing down these clinics? Did they send religious police to rescue billions of human beings brutally tortured by liquid nitrogen? No.
If you believe in magic, use your magic to bring about solutions in human congenital defects, liver disease, heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and many others.
If your magic doesn't work, should you stand in the way of others who can bring about improvements to human life by understanding and using processes?
I say NO.