SDGundamX, I don't argue the problems with defining that line in the slightest. At exactly what point do they become a "living breathing person"? It's a debate I've had before and I don't see a clear line which is why I do have some sympathy for those uncomfortable with the subject and little tolerance for those who write off any concerns to religious motivations. In real terms though it's easy enough to say that an hours or days old embryo is hardly up there with the holocaust victim and the comparison deeply flawed since they are already being destroyed and have been for as long as the clinics have been producing extras. Decades. Making use of them for research instead doesn't cost a single life, potential or realized. It just offers the potential to save some. If they want to debate what the clinics themselves have been doing and for years now or if that should be changed that's another issue entirely.

As technology and society changes over time we've moved lots of moral lines based on race, sex, or our medical ability and this one has and probably will move again as well. Past that some aren't even comfortable with transplants yet, it's more of a cringe factor than religious, and those same types of issues could carry into this as well I'd guess. I'm sure psychologists would have lots of interesting theories on what motivates it but for me it's enough to just recognize that it's there.

That's why I like the fertility clinic argument in particular. It skips those issues entirely and just deals with things as they are today. If things weren't already like that I'm not sure where I'd stand but given the rate at which embryos are being destroyed already it makes absolutely no sense to just waste them when we could learn to save lives with them instead. We don't even need to keep taking them, once you have a productive stem cell line you can just reproduce that and leave the rest be if we come to a solution later.

If someone has solutions which would solve the excess embryo problem I'm all ears and I've asked for options in the past but so far there don't seem to be realistic solutions offered which don't leave us with those embryos, they seem to want us to trash them instead of use them if they object at all and that gets hard to defend. It's the single solution I've found which both the stem cell advocates and those who are uncomfortable with the issue can come the closest to agreement on. If we're to end up with productive lines in the US I can't think of a better/less controversial source offhand.

Sorry if I came off a bit strong yesterday, been reading and debating too much politics on another board recently and that hasn't been good for any of us this time around I don't think.

edit to add this... and reedit to remove it We'll get into that later if need be, this is long enough already.

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.

>> ^chilaxe:
Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)
Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.


The key phrase in what you said is "given the right conditions." The embryos are already in fact growing into humans, whereas the skin cells on the end of your finger after picking your nose are not. Saying potentially, under the right conditions, those skin cells could become a human needlessly confuses the argument. In the embryos the process of new life has already begun. In the skin cells on your fingernail it has yet to begin. Like I said before, it's apples and oranges. It reminds me of the old Biblical argument against male masturbation: the idea was that you were killing off thousands of potential children every time you "spilled your seed upon the ground." But of course that view is entirely wrong since sperm in and of themselves cannot sprout new children (nevermind the fact that biologically the testes are constantly replacing old sperm all by themselves).

Your statement that cloned humans are just twins separated by time is interesting. Isn't an embryo then a fully formed human being just separated by time? That's really the big argument that's going on here.

Finally, I'm a bit chilled by how casually you threw out your last statement about "bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind." Certainly there must be limits to this. Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

>> ^drattus:
The best argument for stem cell research I can think of is that we're already destroying more than we'd ever need as medical waste from fertility treatment. The choice to me is more one of do we make use of what's already being incinerated as waste or do we try to save some lives with it instead? No need to get into the rest of it, it's a distraction.


You should read the President's Council on Bioethical Research Transcripts from 2002: http://bioethics.gov/topics/stemcells_index.html

and in particular, this transcript where a similar argument is made by Dr. Outka: http://bioethics.gov/transcripts/apr02/apr25session3.html

One of the doctors on the council astutely points out that the Nazi's used the same exact logic to experiment on Jewish prisoners. To put it bluntly, they were going to die anyway so at least they might contribute to science in some way before they did.

Again though, it all goes back to defining at what point a human being is (or ceases to be) a human being. The President's Council has pretty much stated that biology can't answer the question. It'll be up to philosophers, ethicists, lawmakers, and the citizens themselves to come up with an answer.

>> ^enon:
Gundam and Drattus, you both missed his point by a mile-- he's referring to POTENTIAL life.


Enon, are you fucking stupid? In case you didn't notice I'm FOR stem cell research and wasn't arguing that point, noted it in the post and noted why I made the comment. It's a distraction to accuse people of positions they don't hold and argue issues they don't object to.

That doesn't mean my point of view is the only one, that I can't see why some would question it, nor that the only valid argument is the soul, and unsurprisingly your argument isn't the only one either. In the SINGLE respect that he spent so much time talking about an argument which sometimes doesn't apply as if it was the only possible argument, I didn't agree or find it helpful.

If you can't follow even that much I think you missed the point by a mile. If this is unfair I will apologize if needed, but personally I'm pretty tired of people telling us who we are, what we think, or why, and I don't care if it comes from Bill O'Reilly, Sam Harris, you or anyone else.

His best argument is the one he spends the least amount of time on: that the embryos in question still have the potential to become multiples and then a single person again. If one believes that a soul is unique to an individual, then this would destroy his/her argument.

None of it should matter. As far as the government is concerned, you're a person once you've been born. Unless they want to start giving tax breaks every time a woman misses a period, stem cell research should be federally funded.

I posted a video with the same talking points (almost verbatim) a year ago.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Sam-Harris-Stem-Cells-and-Morality

>> ^shuac:
Soul, conscience, the mind: they're all products of our intelligence, nothing more. The only reason an aardvark doesn't have a soul is because he didn't think of it.


I nominate that for one of the best quotes i've seen on videosift.

Unless you stole it.

SDGundamX said it well enough. I'm an atheist or something pretty close to it as well and to me the whole "soul" argument is empty. I can see a legitimate concern that has nothing to do with religion, but more with wondering where we do draw the line.

The best argument for stem cell research I can think of is that we're already destroying more than we'd ever need as medical waste from fertility treatment. The choice to me is more one of do we make use of what's already being incinerated as waste or do we try to save some lives with it instead? No need to get into the rest of it, it's a distraction.

Hmmm. I'm an atheist, but the arguments he's making here are kind of illogical. First, he makes it sound like we don't know when conception occurs. Actually, from a biological standpoint it seems pretty clear--as soon as the egg and sperm nuclei fuse you get a human zygote with unique DNA. From that point on it's going to develop (barring interruptions) into a unique human being. There doesn't seem to be any vagueness about that at all.

Next, he tries to justify stem cell research by saying a fly would feel more pain than an embryo. This is kind of a strange argument. The logical conclusion here seems to be that it's ethically okay to kill humans if they don't feel any pain. So, suddenly it becomes okay to kill people who are in comas or who are heavily sedated since they won't feel a thing. After all, we might need to harvest their organs for research.

Finally, he makes an argument about potentiality that doesn't make any sense to me. He basically compares dead skin cells scraped from your nose to a developing embryo. The argument rests on the idea that those nose cells could be developed into a human clone. This seems like a vast overstatement of our scientific abilities at the moment. But leaving that aside, those nose cells have no innate potential to develop into a unique human being, unlike the embryo which would naturally develop without any help into a unique person. It's comparing apples and oranges.

I can understand him being frustrated by religious nut jobs who try to shove their beliefs down other people's throats, but there's a very real ethical debate here about what constitutes a human being and I don't think he contributed anything helpful to it.

Full video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1232718550543562442&q=sam+harris+end+faith&ei=Heg5SPTWA6TAqwPc7ZHbAw

In reply to this comment by fizziks:
good clip, but is it supposed to cut out at 3 minutes? I want to hear the rest!

Stem cell science is still in very early stages, but scientists in 2006 restored the ability to walk in rats with injured spinal chords by growing new nerve tissue across the entire injury site.

Stem cell-based organ replacement is already being done today, and interesting work has been done on hearts, bones, breasts, penises etc (long list in that link).

In that view, head transplants seem pretty crude.

Beyond absurd metaphysical arguments I don't see why this should not be a last ditch option for people with terminal conditions that don't effect the head. I'll take a working head over a dead head. Sure Being Quad sucks relative to being not, but compared to being dead?

If we had a few hundred people who were head transplants they would probably be making a major stink about the limits on stem cell research...maybe that's the slippery slope we are trying to avoid.

Make love not war you two :-D I'd like to look at it as "speak softly and carry a big stick" . We can work on stem cells, cancer, aids, poverty, and twinkies once we are nice and safe behind our exploading weaponry, deliverable through any/all means necessary. WOULD YOU LIKE SOME BOMBS WITH THAT? :-D

>> ^Raigen:
The standard response for seeing such a waste of ingenuity, resources and money should be:
Still no cure for Cancer.
No stem cell treatment.
No interstellar travel and interplanetary colonisation.
No end to poverty.
No end to hunger.
Oh yeah, and no end to poor, deluded, low-brows that sit at home watching this tripe going "heh, ehehehe, hehehehe, hehehe, it went 'bang' and blowded something up".
I won't downvote, but I certainly won't upvote.


Oh, right. I forgot that NASA'a Jet Propulsion Laboratory doesn't exist. And for someone who thinks we need to focus on Humanity's problems (hunger, cancer, poverty) What the fuck do we need intersteller travel for?

>> ^Raigen:
The standard response for seeing such a waste of ingenuity, resources and money should be:
Still no cure for Cancer.
No stem cell treatment.
No interstellar travel and interplanetary colonisation.
No end to poverty.
No end to hunger.
Oh yeah, and no end to poor, deluded, low-brows that sit at home watching this tripe going "heh, ehehehe, hehehehe, hehehe, it went 'bang' and blowded something up".
I won't downvote, but I certainly won't upvote.

Well excuse us for being so beneath your mighty solutions to world problems. Perhaps when you live in an ideal world your ideal wishes will be granted.