Stem Cells and Ethics

It's morally wrong to take advantage of something that's going to be destroyed anyway?I don't get it. When we ask you "what's the problem", it's because we don't understand why what you call a "problem" is a problem.These embryos are slated for destruction anyway. If you have a problem with that then your beef is with the fertility industry - as well as with the natural process of female menstruation, which destroys far more embryos yearly than stem cell research and fertility treatments, combined.

Then explain how you don't oppose fertility treatments and female menstruation. Did you not read that part of my post?

Does it escape your attention that, once, you didn't even exist?Clearly at some point we go from non-existence to existence, but I don't see why conception is that point. It's certainly never been considered that point by any nation or society, including our own - which still continues to measure age from date of birth, not date of conception.But this is just the abortion debate, redux - which you never, ever finish. Is this going to be just another debate from which you retreat in shame? I'll see your position, and raise you every single rebuttal that you never respond to whenever we have this debate. So you've never grown a crystal, then. But the cells we're talking about aren't in utero, and never will be. They're in vitro and will be until their destruction.

...extracts it from what, exactly? The test tube? The freezer?Do you understand that we're talking about embryoes that at no point have ever been inside a woman's uterus? ...wha?Who on Earth do you think is going that, NJ? Is that really where you think stem cells come from?Bwa ha ha ha ha! No, seriously. Are you pulling our legs, or what? By the combination of sperm and egg - in a petri dish. That's why they call it "in vitro" fertilization - because it happens in glass - in vitro.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I disagree. I didn't exist, at that point. I had no name; certainly I have no memory of that point. The precise moment that event occured passed completely unremarked by anyone - so nobody even knows when it happened.Nothing that makes me who I am was present at that point. So in what sense can I be said to have come into existence? Yeah, really. Pull out your wallet and look up your birthdate if you don't believe me; it's printed right on your driver's license. Call up your mom and ask her if that was the date you were born or the date on which she was having sex.I'm sure your mother will be happy to clear up your confusion. I don't recall saying "they were never alive to begin with." The zygote is very much alive.I'd ask you to direct your rebuttals to the arguments I'm actually making, not the arguments of a hypothetical strawbortionist. Oh, poor baby! Do you find that your relentlessly anti-woman attitudes are offensive to the rest of us?Sack up. They get bigger, don't they? What, that's an optical illusion? Get real. Crystals grow. No, I'm saying that "growth" is not the definitive character of what it means to be a human being. Do you? This would be the first I've heard about it, despite asking you several times.Do you think you could clarify your stance on in vitro fertilization as fertility treatment? Since this is the main source of the human embryos used to harvest embryonic stem cells.Also - could you specify your stance on female menstruation, which terminates far more fertilized zygotes than any fertility treatment or stem cell researcher? They're not embryonic stem cells, and they're not pluripotent. Surely these will be great sources for totipotent stem cells, and used in a number of treatments - but they don't have the same potential.Research on adult stem cells doesn't obviate the need to research on embryonic stem cells.

The thread is about embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from embryos that have never been implanted. So, no, I'm not "assimilating" anything. Surrogates aren't always used; in fact its rare that a woman requires a surrogate.In vitro fertility treatments fertilize several embryos at once and then implant only one or two into the mother. The extra embryos are typically stored for some period in deep freeze until the pregnancy can be confirmed, and then they're either stored for future pregnancies or destroyed. Don't be disingenuous. There are no sources of embryonic stem cells except for cultures harvested from embryos - embryos that were already slated for destruction. What "aborted babies", NJ? Abortion isn't a source of stem cells. It never has been! You can't get stem cells from aborted fetuses, because they've long since passed the state of having embryonic stem cells! Oh, for god's sake. Since you can't harvest embryonic stem cells from aborted fetuses, this is perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever seen you write.You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

Do you understand that embroynic stem cells can be cultured? You don't need to harvest an embryo every single time you want a stem cell.You do have to harvest from an embryo when you want a new line of stem cells, and since none of the research lines are suitable for human implantation (because they've all been contaminated with exposure to mouse-cell substrate), that's something that's going to have to be done if there can be any cures developed from embryonic stem cells. I don't know about you, but my genetics don't really make up too much of what I consider "myself." I mean, if genetics was all that it took, wouldn't you have to consider identical twins to be the same person?I doubt that you do, of course. So it should be obvious to you that you already see that human beings are a lot more than just genetics - that, indeed, genetics has very little to do with what we consider "ourselves." It's just that you've decided to ignore what you already know for purposes of argument.Which is somewhat disingenuous. NJ - nobody's come down against harvesting placental cells. But the fact that totipotent cells can be taken from the placenta doesn't obviate the potential embryonic, pluripotent cells have - and it doesn't obviate the need to research such cells.