Drattus, I don't think it's a false premise at all (and it wasn't my argument, by the way, it was a doctor on the President's council who proposed it). Both the Jewish prisoners and the embryos are sentenced to death. They would not die "naturally." But even if they were going to die naturally (terminally ill patients for instance) it would still be unthinkable to justify killing them prematurely in the name of science research.

The issue of what to do with left over embryos actually came up during the President's council discussions (see the links I posted above). The council briefly discussed whether it was ethical or not to destroy unused embryos but ultimately came to no conclusion since it was out of their hands: the embryos are in the care of private fertilization clinics which are currently not doing research on them. The council decided therefore it was beyond the scope of its jurisdiction since it was only focused on the ethical concerns of stem cell research.

"Living breathing person" is the term you used to describe humanity and the definition of humanity is precisely what's causing the problem here. Of course you know that an an unborn child is not breathing--it doesn't use its lungs for the first time until after birth. We can't possibly use breathing as a measure of humanity because there are those out there on artificial ventilation (iron lungs and such) that can't breath for themselves. They are in no way less human because of it, nor is a person who stops breathing temporarily due to drowning or choking.

To respond to your comment about applying the argument across the spectrum, I think it actually already is. The furor over the Terry Schiavo incident shows that there is still a very real debate about what constitutes life or death. The recent waking up of a woman who had been brain dead for 17 hours (http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=65389) further shows the need for debate about defining where life begins and ends. It seems we can't even use brain activity as a test for where humanity begins or ends.

I haven't really expressed my personal views here yet, so I'll do so now. I'm a bit of a pragmatist and somewhat in agreement with chilaxe. If our country doesn't do the research others with perhaps less than good intentions will and that could be very bad. Ethically, though, I don't think you can get around the fact that we are killing humans. The only difference between an embryo and a fully adult human is time (given all the time in the world, a clump of cancer cells will never develop into a human and thus I think we can dismiss the comparison that often gets made between embryos and cancer). But I think for now embryonic stem cell research is a necessary evil. Maybe someday adult stem cell research will become more viable, but right now embryonic research has better potential. I like to debate about issues like this because I would love for someone to be able to convince me that from an ethical standpoint stem cell research is okay. Haven't found anyone to make a convincing argument yet, though.

Reasonable people don't have unlimited wants of *physical* goods.

I state this from a certain point of view: I have yet to meet a "reasonable" person of the type you're describing. I know of no one, myself included, who doesn't desire greater wealth, health or personal happiness in varying degrees, if not for themselves then for others, first people they know and then the society around them.

Even when the basics of life are met a billion times over, there's an infinite number of intangibles: love, respect, hunger for recognition, self-importance, a little diamond with 500 on it. Why does Donald Trump get out of bed every morning to work? Have you seen his (latest) wife?

To me, an "atheist heaven" would be a world with Star-Trek level technology, where all of the basics (food, shelter, etc.) everywhere were solved with expectations exceeded. But even if you could wile away your entire life on Jessica Alba Island on the holodeck, the Big Questions will remain: what is the meaning of life? How did life begin? Etc.

Oh, and faith versus blind faith: Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
That's not true. They have simply refused to fund research into infantile stem cells. That is not what this is.


Fair enough. I was generalizing a bit. Still an important issue to be considered because they are impeding on research that can potentially save lives and vastly improve the quality of life for many people. Just my personal opinion though, I know some people have a different view on when "life" begins (even though it's okay to kill hundreds of thousands of already born Iraqis overseas, just so long as we don't harm a complex cellular organism with no recognizable human features).

Farhad, as far as I see it, the issue of whether or not a fetus constitutes a human life is the core of the whole issue. Everything else is secondary if you can't agree on whether you're killing someone or not. I think there are some interesting arguments on both sides, and some of the same accusations fly back and forth. Pro-abortionists say the anti-abortionists don't want to take responsibility for the children they fight to have born. Anti-abortionists say Pro-Abortion parents don't want to take responsibility for the children they created. The inconvenience argument flys at both sides, as pointed out by Smibbo. Speaking from a Christian perspective, I think there is a life in there being cut short. Religion shouldn't determine government policy, but this enters a gray area surrounding when life begins. That exits the realm of religion and enters the protection of human life. You also have cases which confuse the issue where murderers are tried for double homicide when killing a pregnant woman. In regards to aborting to prevent living in poor conditions, it's not our job to be the judge of whether conditions are too terrible for the child or not. Being born into poverty doesn't mean you would be better off dead.

I don't stand outside abortion clinics waving a torch and pitchfork around calling for the death of doctors, nor do I write to any government officials calling for it's ban. I just don't agree with it. I would fight against something like partial-birth abortion, but that's already banned. Ultimately, my only real involvement is that I would recommend to anyone I know faced with this decision that they should keep the baby, and I would help support them in any way I could.

well THAT was eye-opening. I know a lot more about his beliefs and policies than I did before... starting to understand why he's a fringe candidate even though he makes it to the front page of Digg every day. I wonder how many people are rooting for Ron because they only know about a small subset of his policies? Or maybe it's just a reaction to the atrophied state of American politics.

"Let me assure you as an OB doctor, and as one that has studied history, and economic policy and politics for a long time, I can assure you that life begins at conception."

WTF? What a complete non sequitur, and a despicable attempt to convince his audience that his theological views have a rational basis. (There is no basis for choosing conception as 'the moment life begins' other than a theological basis, and any philosophy undergraduate will gladly explain that there is no such thing as 'the moment at which life begins'... but I digress.)

The last thing the world needs is another religious nutbag for President of the US.

And yet... he's still the only sane choice for Republican candidate. What a sorry state of affairs.

Still trying to circle the wagons? Empty threats and name-dropping in PMs not working for you this time? Lot of cut-n-pasting and effort up there for so few interested observers. Of course, in your mind, the Choggie Show is only show in town. Must really be festering, huh? Does it bother you that your life begins and ends at your keyboard and mine doesn't? Is your life so pathetic? You need help.

Now, I won't be able to baby-sit you today. I have appointments and much to do, and quite frankly, I am not occupied by thoughts of Choggie after I hit the power button. Trust me, I do know how hard that must be for you to believe. You are obsessed now, anyway. I no longer have to instigate. It was almost too easy.

Shining through.

Have a nice day.

Your right to an imaginary friend ends where my life begins.

Man, this debate is just so silly. Of course we should research every available avenue. I think both sides agree with that, actually. The problem is that this debate is actually about something else entirely: abortion. A perfect example of how one unresolved issue effects many other issues. It is way beyond the time that this abortion issue gets resolved, but neither side is willing to yield.

How about a compromise abortion policy?

Neither side is going to agree on whether life begins at conception or not. I don't think it does, and I'm a religious man. Is a miscarriage an abortion by G-d? Well, if G-d can do an abortion, so can we. But let's compromise on the timeframe. We all agree that a life has ended when the heart has stopped beating, why not just all agree that life has started when the heart starts beating? Or use brain-activity as the test. Or just pick some arbitrary number of months, 3 or 4 or 5. Or perhaps up until the time when the fetus would actually be viable and be able to live even outside the womb with all the help from modern medical technology. Some arguments are just not worth continuing. Let us agree to disagree between the sides and then find an acceptable compromise.

For the religious folk: You don't know when the soul enters the body and you have no basis on which to make such a claim. For sure we should take every effort to preserve human life, but is a zygote a human? You don't know when it makes the transition from potential-human to actual human, nor do I, nor does anybody. Stop being so intransigent and let's find a real solution.

For the non-religious folk: You don't know either, so find some compromise timeframe. For certain partial-birth is inexcusable. What about the week before delivery when it could have been delivered by C-section? And the week before that? Keep working your way back and at some point you'll find the gray line - there's the point at which a compromise can be constructed.

To all: I read the first 30-40 of the posts here, but I couldn't bring myself to read all the rest. If this has been said before, then plese forgive my interruption.

"With all due respect, I find it curious that an extreme circumstance is the only requirement for you to make the distinction between an actual life and a potential life. If I understood your position rightly, the zygotes were just as alive as the child but when forced to make a choice between the two, the zygotes suddenly lost the right to live and, in some sense, died even before they were consumed by fire."

But an extreme circumstance is the one you presented me with, and as with extreme circumstances they involve extreme decisions and usually should not be a basis of testing a hypothesis.

Let me put it another way...If you don't believe life begins at conception, then at what point do you define life? At one month...two months..six months...eight months...eight months and 29 days? Where do you draw the line? When does it cease being simple collection of cells and become a human life? And of you're not willing to make this decision yourself, then who do you trust to make it for you?

As Wumpus believes that a human life begins at the moment of fertilization, please oblige me in answering the following hypothetical question...

If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you only have time to save either a petri dish full of zygotes or a two-year old child, which do you save?

"If you believed that the earth was flat, does that mean the earth is flat?"
The problem with that line is that the Earth has been proven to be, in fact round. It has also been proven that an egg that has been fertalized with a sperm has the same potential to become a human being as any other fertialized egg that the egg and sperm do not possess seperately. Both zygote cells are in fact living cells but they don't have the potential to become living human being until they are combined i.e. fertalized.

"If you're against ESC research because you believe life begins at conception, then do you believe that conception can occur in a test tube? I believe conception occurs in the womb, not a test tube."

That's a perfectly valid and respectable position to take. If that's your belief then you're entitled to it. But hypotheticlly speaking, if an embryo in created invitro and grown into an independantly living infant in a labratory, is that that not also considered life as opposed to an invitro fertilization that was implanted into a uterus that also results in an infant? Bear in mind that this is a hypothetical situation and only one part of the growing debate of bioethics.

To reitterate for amxcvbcv and Dag, I don't subscribe to the Catholic belief that "every sperm is sacred", because by themselves, a sperm and egg cannot create life seperately, but the human species was created/evolved (pick one or both)in a way that an egg and a sperm are combined expressly for the sole purpose of creating life and propogating the species and in my opinion, not for experimentation.

I'll give you the point on logical fallacies, wallace. My wife is an English teacher and was railing about logical fallacies last week, so I know where you're coming from.

I don't subscribe to the life begins at conception argument as a reason to be against embryonic stem cell research. The egg and the sperm are alive before conception, so why aren't we more protective of them? Everytime Joe Blow masterbates in the shower should we advocate saving it? What about the hundreds of thousands of eggs that go down the toilet or into the trash each month because a mother is taking contraceptives or just didn't have sex? Or more provactively, what about the spontaneous abortions that occur every single day? Depending on what research you look at and how you define it, anywhere from 10 to 45% of all pregnancies spontaneously abort. Where's the outrage about that?

I just don't think a government ban (direct or indirect) on stem cell research is a rational answer.

"As of now there is NO EVIDENCE that embryonic stem cells even hold promise, while other approaches, such as adult stem cells, already have yielded results."

What about all of this research done with mice and mice ESC which has shown to regenerate a mouse's damaged spinal cord. Where are these results that adult stem cells have shown, I have not seen them.

"I'll come right out and say I'm against embryonic stell cell research because I believe that life does begin at conception and thus ebryonic research destroys life. That is my belief."

If you believed that the earth was flat, does that mean the earth is flat?

If you're against ESC research because you believe life begins at conception, then do you believe that conception can occur in a test tube? I believe conception occurs in the womb, not a test tube.

Are you against IVF? The process of IVF destroys hundreds of thousands of embryos each year. I'm not talking about just the left overs that are thrown away. Several are destroyed in the process just to have a successful pregnancy.

There are other ways to get embryonic stem cells than just using left over IVF embryos. Are you against Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer to create ESCs? SCNT uses an unfertilized egg and a DNA sample (usually a skin cell) to create an ESC line matching the patients DNA. This process shows the most promise in ESC research becase the stem cells have no chance of being rejected by the patient.

People oppose SCNT because the same process can be used for human cloning, but only if the cells are implanted in a woman. This has been unproven though, and most scientist believe that the "embryo" would not develop normally even if it survives. They use the argument that the research can be abused, so we should ban it all together.

I am for researching both adult and embryonic stem cells. I've read articles from scientist that say ESC research is needed to fully understand the potential of adult stem cells.