The best brief case against embryonic stem cells

First of all, when the debate goes on over stem cells, always ask which ones they’re referring to (even if you have to talk to your tv screen and the news people who fail to distinguish that vital point).

Then, when it’s embryonic stem cells being debated, ask this: Is it ever right to take human life for research?

Embryonic stem cell research may never work to help patients because of several major scientific hurdles. However, Princeton University professor Robert George said the science should be opposed because it requires the destruction of human life.

George’s comments came during a lecture at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “The fact that there’s been a lot of hyping going on and that embryonic stem cells probably will not prove to be the therapeutic miracle that they have been hyped to be isn’t fundamentally the reason we should be opposed to the use of those cells,” the law professor said.

So what’s the fundamental, right reason?

“The reason we should be opposed is a moral reason. [Embryonic stem cell research] involves, at least for now, the destruction of innocent human life to obtain the cells.” George argued that advocates of embryonic stem cell research have obscured the fundamental issue in the current debate over the practice.

So let’s clarify it, using an example.

“If we were to contemplate killing mentally retarded infants to obtain transplantable organs, no one would characterize the controversy that would erupt as a debate about organ transplantation, now would they? The dispute would be about, rather, the ethics of killing retarded children to harvest their vital organs,” he said. “By the same token, our contemporary debate is not about embryonic stem cell research. No one would object to the use of embryonic stem cells in biomedical research or elsewhere if they could be harvested without killing or harvesting the embryos from whom they were obtained or if they could be obtained from embryos lost in miscarriages.”

It’s that basic, and reasonable.