What to do with destroyed embryonic stem cells?
Posted on August 24th, 2004 in General, Stem Cell Research by tavaresforby ||
This stem cell topic never seems to go away. It came up again at work yesterday. Maybe it was I with my passion about this topic, that brings it up subconsciously. Well anyway, I was forwarded an article with more information about embryonic stem cell research from Times Magazine. I cannot blockquote any excerpts from this article because the article was scanned and was forwarded to me as a jpeg file. Well instead of blockquoting excerpts, I’ll post the image file:
A friend of mine (Kevin) and I were discussing stem cell research and its issues in my office yesterday. While discussing this topic, I brought up the main point of this article: “Since fertility clinics destroys far more human embryos than stem cell research ever would, why not use the embryonic stem cells that are thrown away or frozen for stem cell research?” I did not say this in exact words, buy my argument was close enough. Kevin then made a good point saying that if we used these destroyed stem cells, that would then create motive for the clinics to sell the stem cells to researchers. This is a common argument. But I, the BLACKPUNDIT, think I have a solution for this. The main motive for this issue is money. If we controlled motive by forbidding monetary exchange for destroyed embryos, this will then solve the motive issue. If the clinics donate embryos to researchers instead of selling it, this will then be a choice and not a motive.
August 24th, 2004 at 1:07 pm
That is still not the “solve all” solution. For one, because it still doesn’t escape the killing aspect, it is still killing, just a different “killer” now. But, another point is this one,
http://www.techcentralstation.com/082404D.html
“There are an estimated 400,000 frozen embryos in fertility clinics in the United States, but only three percent are unwanted, and thus available for research. According to the Rand Institute, that translates into just 275 potential stem cell lines. If cast away embryos can’t fulfill the need, then they would have to be created in the lab, either through cloning or in vitro fertilization. Either way, an embryo is created and destroyed for the sake of science.”
August 24th, 2004 at 1:23 pm
I know that it is still killing, but they are going to be killed (destroyed) ANYWAY. So you have to take away the fertility clinics killing (destroying) first before you take away my argument. Til then, my argument is still valid.
August 24th, 2004 at 9:15 pm
Where did the argument that the embryos will be destroyed anyway come from? Really, who came up woth that argument? And why is it viewed as a good argument for pursuing embryonic stem cell research? Is it not a better argument for better control over what goes on in fertility clinics? Is it ethical to create a whole mess of embryos that you know you are not going to allow to develop into babies?
August 24th, 2004 at 9:47 pm
Hello Samantha,
From reading this article, I do not think it is an argument, but a fact that embryos will be destroyed. The first paragraph of this article states “Modern in-vitro techniques generally involve creating multiple embryos in the laboratory, transferring two or three and hoping that at least one will make it through to birth. Successful or not, the process creates many more embryos than babies.” The only way that the clinic would create excessive embryos that they know will not make it to birth is if they had a “motive” to do so. My argument is if you kill the motive, there should be no reason to create excessive embryos.