So far though, no treatment using Embryonic Stem Cells has similarly ucceeded in any sense of the word – in fact, a significant number develop into teratomas and other cancerous growths. Others are outright rejected by the recipient.

Here’s a study comparing both ASC and ESC by David Prentice – who is not a disinterested observer, but whose research has not yet failed the peer-review process if I’m not mistaken.

In Niven’s future tax cheats would have their organs harvested so as to help people obtain immortality. And you couldn’t have children without a permit. Gil “the arm” (a police officer) commented that the legal code was geared towards finding nee crimes that resulted in organ harvesting because Democracy would do anything to itself for immortality.

I miss Niven & Pournell writing Sci-fi.

As an aside, Italy prohibits the creation of “surplus” embryos; and they ban experiments on them. Germany also bans the “research” based on its similarity to Holocaust practices. There are issues of Nuremberg Code violations.

The UK has taken it an extra step, giving the nod to cannibalism by allowing experiments using the remains of aborted babies to treat diseases.

Welcome to the worker’s paradise!

Even stem cells from umbilical cord blood (the baby’s blood remaining in the umbilical cord after birth – if the mother gives permission, that blood can be “harvested” and used for research – no human life is killed to obtain this source of stem cells). There was a blurb on Fox News tonight with Nancy Reagan applauding the president for this action today – in hopes of finding a cure for alzheimers disease which President Reagan suffered from. Why does that research need to be done using embryonic stem cells? It doesn’t. Especially when so to date, there is far greater success using adult stem cells than embryonic stem cells. All government decisions are political, which raises the question, what exactly does this say about the current administration, and the value they give life? Why is it so important for them to go out of their way to ensure the needless destruction of embryos – little human beings?

Shoo.

Are you willing to go down the road that China has traveled, on which executed convict organs became so valuable that whole new crimes were defined in order to get healthier and less damaged organs to the foreigners who came to China for the organ trade? Ask the Falun Gong what has happened to them as a result.

And once you’re willing to kill for scientific experimentation, much as Josef Mengele defended his actions, why not enslave humans for similar reasons? After all, slavery isn’t as bad as death. At least you get three squares a day, right?

The problem is that your argument is indefensible on moral grounds. It will always amount to the objectification of human beings and treating them like property. And it will lead to far worse than you or I can imagine.

What could raise the demand for IVF? If a culture that valued life were promoted in the US and Europe and other parts of the world that aren’t even reproducing at population sustainment levels, then the older married women, 40 and 45 years old, who have achieved in their careers but who waited almost too long to conceive, would be a perfect market for IVF. Then we would have a situation that pro-human-life people can support, one in which IVF does bless parents with children but does not result in the killing of embryonic children.

Plus, when you adopt and older child, you get to skip all that messy diaper changing (hopefully!).

But as long as there ARE frozen embryos that are being tossed (tens of thousands every year), does it compound the sin to use them? I’m not asking this rhetorically.

Should we mandate that only one ovum can be fertilized at a time in vitro?

Corollary argument: should medical science be researching ways to reduce the number of blastocysts that are “thrown” by pregnant women? This embryonic stage is later than the single-cell stage in IVF, thus closer to being a fetus.

More than half of all pregnancies are spontaneously aborted within the first few weeks, most with the female never knowing she had been pregnant. Is there a moral imperative to save these embryos?

I do not believe that IVF is morally acceptable, but I would not outlaw it. I do believe that every embryo that “takes” should be implanted.

And you forgot one alternative — Many pro-life women (including myself) would be willing to carry someone else’s embryos to term if the alternative was to have them destroyed or frozen in perpetuity.

Sorry

Where I come from, traffiking in human beings is aborrent.

Josef would be proud of Omaba.

IVF generates more fertilized ova than are implanted, just in case the first implantation doesn’t work. If those blastocysts aren’t needed, they are eventually destroyed.

Unless you support passing a law that every one of those fertilized ova MUST be kept frozen in perpetuity, how can one argue that they can’t be used to hopefully help cure horrible diseases?