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July 30, 2005

don's dissent

Tulsa blogger Don Singleton took issue with a couple of points in my Friday post Frist, Do No Harm. First, he disagrees with my statement that IVF involves a lives for money equation:

I agree that life begins at conception, but the problem is not that Frist will support allowing research on the embryos that are about to be destroyed; the problem is that so many embryos were created without the intention of bringing them to term. What they should do is allow these embryos to be used, but require tighter controls over the future creation of excess embryos in future IVF procedures.

Of course I agree it is wrong to create so many embryos which will ultimately be destroyed. But I have to disagree that they should allow these doomed embryos to be used for research. To do so entails treating the embryos as non humans.

We have precident in our legal system for protecting humans who are doomed. For example, suppose I decide to pull a Jack Ruby on a murderer on death row, just one day before his execution was to be carried out. I would be arrested, charged and prosecuted for killing a human who was going to die anyway. Or to use a perhaps more appropos example, suppose I started offing the very aged and infirm in some quick, unexpected and painless way? I would be charged with murder, despite the fact that my victims were close to death.

The point is, either embryos are human lives or they are not. If an embryo is a human being, then it has the right to protection from being killed for any reason, even if it seems expedient. If the harvesting of the stem cells destroys the embryos or even if it provides any incentive for the destruction of the embryos, and if you believe that life begins at conception, then you have to conclude Frist's position is morally wrong.

We enter peril, morally speaking, when we think of people in groups and fail to consider the individual. There is a huge number of embryos destined to be destroyed. But the notion of using "them" for research becomes more palatable when you close your mind to the idea that when a lab assistant punctures an embryo with a needle, he or she is ending one human being's life. If you believe life begins at conception, you have to treat that life as a human life.

Posted by joel at July 30, 2005 05:01 PM

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Comments

Posted by: uncle jim at July 30, 2005 11:41 PM

Posted by: Don Singleton at July 31, 2005 09:16 AM

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