He writes back taking issue with my stance on stem cells. Here’s his point:
I wanted to comment back to you because I, frankly, found it odd that you would grant my premise-that the administration’s position is incoherent yet maintain that the stance taken is still the correct one. If the underlying precedent condition of the argument is contradictory the antecedent result cannot be legitimately rooted in that. Unless you think Bush’s position is right by accident, but that assumes that the embryos in the post are ‘alive’ when the truth is cryogenic preservation means an embryo isn’t moving towards life–it’s dying. It has a fatal condition–the lack of a womb. It can be adopted, implanted to the genetic donor, used for research or disposed of. Even if it’s the first two, the embryo is still not viable life as the millions of embryos that wash out in menses (unremarked upon) demonstrate.
You write: “Nevertheless, actually using such embryos for medical research, and creating them for that purpose, does strike me as more morally problematic.”
Ummm…. How? While discussing this with my friend I noted several observations. The issue is not the creation of embryos for research. There are hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs that are the by-product of IVF that can be used for stem cell research. So even if you are against the creation of embryos for research, that is not really the immediate issue, and this objection can be readily discarded.
Second, how can you deem destruction of these fertilized eggs as being less morally problematic than using them for life-saving experiments? They are not in the process of living-they are in the process of dying. It is not possible to oppose the use of embryos for research if you simultaneously support (or don’t oppose) IVF which necessarily involves the destruction of fertilized eggs.
Further, if it is the status of a flushed embryo than we must as readily object to the process of heterosexual intercourse, which results in this as a natural byproduct (as does IVF).
You oppose the research by supposing that the use of embryos for medical research is more objectionable than throwing the embryos into a medical waste dump.
Two things. I don’t support banning such research. I support banning federal funding for such research, which gives the imprimatur of the American democratic system to such a morally troubling area. Second, I do indeed think there’s a difference between letting organisms that are “in the process of dying” die and using them for experimentation. The latter exploits them in a way that merely letting them die does not. To take a simple and inexact parallel: would it be okay to use, say, a near-death patient for medical experimentation that would end in her death just because her death was imminent anyway? I know the embryo analogy is not exact, but the principle is similar: using some human life for the possible, but not proven, benefit of others’. Just because you’ve already crossed one line doesn’t mean you cross all of them.
The Dish 