William Luse takes apart Charles Krauthammer’s article where he is against cloning, but for using embryos as a result of IVF for research. This argument has been on the rise over the years as a sort of compromise, but it is logic itself and the sanctity of human life that is compromised. I could never understand this line of reasoning that using these embryos for embryonic research was reasonable. What would be the purpose of it even if it was an ethical use of those embryos? If ever embryonic stem-cell research actually developed a therapy that worked it would instantly create a demand for a quantity of human embryos that would not be satisfied by even the very unfortunate large amount currently frozen. It would produce a demand for cloned embryos since once there was an actual cure, moral problems would soon be discarded in favor of these cures. So to be both against creating embryos for research and for research that could only end in the demand for cloned embryos is totally inconsistent.
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Standards like this prove that pro-choice really means pro-death. If abortion is really about ‘a woman’s right to chose’ who’s woman’s rights are vilolated by preventing embryos from being destroyed?
I’m a little late with this, but I wrote a research paper last semester on the issue of human cloning. http://defensorveritatis.blogspot.com/2004/12/my-research-paper-ban-human-cloning.html
It’s mostly a common-sense sort of argument; I couldn’t include sanctity-of-human-life arguments.
I thought I heard Bill O’Reilly on his radio show stake a similar position – that he only opposed using stem cells when they came from an abortion, not from an in-vitro fertilization. Since I missed some of the context, he might have been quoting someone (including Krauthammer), but it struck me as a weaselly kind of compromise, regardless of the origin, which suggests replacing the standard of life beginning at conception with one that begins at implantation.
I guess it’s sufficient for some folks just that they’re less lenient than the abortion-up-to-the-303rd-trimester crowd.