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Re: My take on embryionic stem cell research

From: Priestly to Morgan
Date: 11 Jul 2001
Time: 21:19:55
Remote Name: 64.91.171.144

Comments

Morgan,

> "Stem cell research has been likened to lampshades made of human skin during the Nazi holocaust."

Not by anyone whose intellectual skills I would respect. This is so false an analogy that it would be laughable, were it not so grisly. The "Bitch of Berlin" was a sadistic mass murderer whose sole aim was the degredation and destruction of a race of people for the entertainment which that exercise of power provided. To liken the research into stem cells to such atrocities is intellectually dishonest at best and vastly more likely simply the raving diatribe of the extreme pro-life elements, looking for a good sound-byte.

There is some line between zygote and infant where I would draw the line and say, "This is a person, and therefore, should not be destroyed and parceled out for the benefits that the parts might provide for another." That line, however, is not near the zygote end of the spectrum for me.

Perhaps it is my agnosticism which discourages my acceptance of the notion that conception (the instant of fusion of ovum and sperm to produce a potentially viable zygote) is the moment at which the label "human being" is properly applied. Maybe it is my subscription to principles of situational ethics, empiricism, and utility theory that allows me to perceive an embryo nearer the zygote stage as "fair game" in the search for cures of innumerable health problems of existing human beings. Until someone shows me a soul at least as convincingly as I can be shown an electron and demonstrates the timing with which the lump of differentiating cells of the embryo becomes imbued with this hypothetical property, I shall likely maintain the apparently locally unpopular view that the research under discussion is acceptable.

I do not hold all life to be "sacred." I hold it to be worthy of considered respect. I take responsibility for the killing and eating of plants and animals to consume some of their substance and recycle the inedible parts into numerous useful items. I do not identify humanity as somehow fundamentally distinct in its status from the rest of the physical universe. The contention that the "ends don't justify the means" is based in a two-valued, Aristotelian system of logic which I find useful only in the abstract realms of mathematics. The world but rarely displays a strictly two-valued face. There are any number of inordinately unpleasant means which I find to be quite fully well-justified by the ends they achieve. The prosecution of wars is the largest and least pleasant example that leaps to mind.

Given the nature of the stem cell research, if the ovum/sperm donors don't object to the method in which their germ plasm is to be applied, I certainly shall not.

Regards, Priestly

P.S. This stance should disabuse everyone of any mistaken impression that Bill and I are "twins."

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From: backgammon rule
Remote Name: 202.88.129.254
Date: 27 Mar 2006
Time: 02:54:02

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