An opinionated comment on this.
Although it's difficult to get reliable numbers, it seems likely there are between one half and one million in vitro fertilized embryos frozen in clinics in the US alone. Its estimated that of these, tens, probably hundreds of thousands are unclaimed. It seems inevitable that the fate of these forgotten embryos will be to remain in frozen homostasis or to be thawed out and destroyed. Of the claimed hundreds of thousands of embryos in frozen storage, a significant percentage would not survive the freeze/thaw cycle prior to implantation, were that even to be attempted. Each time a couple enters a clinic upwards of twenty embryos are produced in vitro. Of these a few are used to attempt implantation. The majority are immediately destroyed.
The religious/political right apparently has no problem with any of this. Yet they have a serious problem with using a small number of embryos, only 4 to 8 cells large, for the generation of embryonic stem cell lines that may one day be used to alleviate people of the ravages of degenerative disease; perhaps to cure them.
Tell me again just how this fits in with their "Culture of Life"?
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3 comments:
Makes you want to slam your head against a wall doesn't it?
'Culture of Life' my ass.
More like 'Culture of you will do what we tell you dammit!'
I can understand some having issue with stem cell research because there are some avenues it could lead down that we should not go, but the knee jerk reaction and stubborn refusal to even consider the cost if we don't look into the benefits drive me nuts!
Anytime you throw those religious zealots into the mix (I don't care how educated they claim they are) the completely muddle the issue, and make hypocritical statements.
Maybe they're so busy telling other people how to live their lives that they don't stop to look at the big picture. *sigh*
Well, I'm religeous, and somewhat conservative, but I do have to agree with you..it just doesn't make sense, does it? I do have a few problems with the conservative "religeous zealots", and this is one of them. Gay marriage also.
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