An obvious argument for the affirmative is that fertilized embryos created in petri dishes are likely to be thrown out anyway, making them guilt-free usable for embryonic stem cell research. The counter argument by Right-to-Life advocates states that these embryos should not be thrown away, but given to surrogate mothers. They say that these embryos have rights due to their potential to becoming a human being. I would like to address this argument.
Fertilized embryos cannot develop into living fetuses if they remain in a petri dish. A scientist must actively implant the embryo into a womb to start the growth; the embryo is essentially dependent on the scientist to become a human. Similarly, the embryo is dependant on the scientist to become an organ. Without a trigger, it will not naturally grow into a liver, brain, kidney, pancreas, etc. The dependance, from the "perspective" of the embryo, makes it equally likely to develop into a human as it is to develop into a liver.
This is unlike an embryo conceived in the womb because, assuming a healthy pregnancy, this embryo can only become one thing - a human.
If something is equally likely to develop into many things, how can it be considered a specific one of those things? It can be a liver and a human, then it is neither. Therefore, I believe it is not a human but a manipulatable object that may be used for research.
Attack me if you must.
8 comments:
It's an interesting perspective you have but i don't agree with it. So your argument is basically as follows (if i understood it correctly): Just because it CAN become a liver, it is not immoral and not technically considered taking a human life and you believe that it's ok to use it. However, a lot the issue on stem cell research is because of the embryo's potential to become a human being. And with these discarded embryos, they still have the potential to become a human being.
So i guess what i'm saying could be simplified into a sentence. I could say the same to you; Just because it CAN become a human, it is immoral and could be considered as taking a human life.
Another thing I just found that's interesting: during vitro fertilization (fertilization in a petri dish), usually around 10 embryos are created. Left over embryos are either a) destroyed, or b) put in a freezer for either research or donation to infertile couples. However, there is a high probability that the embryos die during the thawing process, which to me suggests that preservation is not a good option. Insteadmyou can offer to implant remaining embryos to current requesting couples, but if there are none, research seems justified.
"The counter argument by Right-to-Life advocates states that these embryos should not be thrown away, but given to surrogate mothers." I don't know if I am missing something or not, but I have a hard time comprehending the practicability of donating all the embryos from IVF clinics to surrogate mothers. Arjun said that for each in vitro fertilization procedure, about 10 embryos are created. This gives me the impression that however hard we try to find surrogate mothers to donate embryos to, we are still going to have excess, unused embryos. Since these embryos would be thrown out anyways, I don't see why we would not use them for research. Also, couples may feel uncomfortable donating their embryos to another couple they do not know. Many couples choose to donate their unused embryos specifically to research and I think that we should respect their requests.
I agree with Christina that it should be more the woman's choice to give away her own embryos than the government's. The stem cell funding bill in Congress right now has certain ethical requirements that ensure that the woman gives consent for the use of her embryos, which I believe is sufficient enough to allow further funding. If a woman chooses to give her embryos to science, she should have the right to do so and the faith that they will be put to good use.
I believe that the "counter argument" on the part of the Right to Life advocates that Arjun mentioned in his post is not fully representative of their moral position on this issue. Yes, they would agree that it would be ideal if the left-over embryos could be adopted by surrogate mothers so that they would have a chance at life. However, like Christina said, there are so many left-over IVF embryos (many, many thousands), and the overwhelming majority of them will not realistically be adopted, and are essentially destined to die with time. The majority of Right to Life advocates I think would accept this reality out of practical considerations. The reason why many advocates would object to the donation of the doomed embryo to research at this point is purely ethical. If the embryo is to die in the freezer, its death would be theoretically comparable to the death of a conceived zygote or even an embryo that does not survive in the process of natural reproduction, for example because it fails to attach to the uteral lining. I'm making this comparison in the sense that in-vitro fertilization is the recreation of natural reproduction in an artificial context but its intented purpose remains the same - to create life. Basically because in that scenario the life is lost in the process of creating life, it can be labelled as an unfortunately inevitable (it happens all the time in natural reproduction) byproduct of that effort, and for that reason Right for Life advocates would find it morally permissible to have it die in that sense. However, if this embryo is then taken by scientists and experimented on, had its stem cells extracted, and killed in the process, then that death occurs unnaturally and in an objectionable manner because it is for the purpose of obtaining stem cells not for creating life as in reproducation. Either way the embryo would die, whether it is in the freezer or at the hands of scientists, but the moral difference that distinguishes the latter as objectionable from the former is due to the intent and the context of the process. The ethicists aren't examining whether or not the embryo lives or dies in this case, but how it dies. As I said it is a purely ethical debate which brings into question our attitude towards the embryo - are we to be complicit in its death, or are we to let it die naturally for the original purpose of reproduction. Not all Right to Life advocates i'm sure would make this distinction, but there are many who would, and I think it is an important part of their position on the IVF embryo issue.
Oh and here's a link to the bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-5
It is scheduled to be voted on by the Senate on March 5th and has already been passed by the House. It needs a 2/3 majority in the Senate to overcome the Presidential veto, which Bush used last year (the first of his presidency) on the same bill.
The bill to be passed by the senate needs 67 votes out of 100 to be considered “veto-proof” by the President. I have read in newspapers and on websites that political experts believe that currently 66 senators support stem cell research and will vote in favor of it. This is one vote shy of what is needed to eliminate the possibility of a presidential veto.
Each year in the United States 654,092 people die from heart disease, 550,270 die from cancer, 72,815 from diabetes, and over a 125,000 people die from accidents. If therapeutic cloning became a reality it is likely that many of these lives could be saved. Suddenly that one vote starts to look pretty big.
I'd like to respond to what Vassily said, "The ethicists aren't examining whether or not the embryo lives or dies in this case, but how it dies."
I think this is a really important distinction. While many would argue the natural death of many embryos is an unfortunate consequence of IVF clinics, I can understand how they'd have less trouble dealing with what is seen as an unfortunate side-effect rather than a deliberate action. However, I think, for a more accurately comprehensive view of the situation, we should pair 'why' the embryos wont turn into humans with 'how' they are discarded. When you add the lives of the patients into the equation, then it becomes necessary to be realistic. If they are not going to survive anyways, even if we are slightly more uncomfortable about the manner in which they don’t survive, then we should remember an obligation to patients. The reason that the embryos wouldn’t survive transforms from a simple lack of need to the ability to save lives – this should help balance out the morality of ‘how’ they die.
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