You guys are this thread.

Please, stop

Alright, I'm going to go out on a limb here. Allow me present the argument for the greater good.

It is more useful to us, as a species, to be able to take extra, non-sapient zygotes and use them for the greater good of the species by healing sapient adults. You cannot say 'they respond, therefore they must be preserved'. Viruses respond to their environment. So do molds. I don't see anyone arguing to leave the mold the creates penicillin alone, that it's immoral to use it when it's alive.

It's not like researchers are yanking almost-born babies out of young mothers and cutting them up for Frankenstein experiments. Stop emotionalizing* the issue. Very few of these 'zygotes' will ever become developed human beings. At the point the stem cells are extracted, they're like a seed: a tiny bundle that only has the potential to become developed.

EDIT: Forgot my conclusion.

Therefore, it's good for the government to fund the research, because it represents a medical greater good.

*(probably not a word, but whatever)

Your argument is still invalid, as it's from a different religion or cult from what I can gather. And it makes no real sense anyway as a responce to what he said.

Governments have no right to decide what kind of research should be or not be funded. Science is not to be held back by arbitrary morality or political interest. Either you deem the means of research illegal or unethical and ban it (Wrong anyway, because if it's illegal, there should be a law to prevent what is being done that is illegal, not a law against research involving that) or you let indepent entities decide on how research will be conducted based on utility to the public at large.

Will you elaborate on that? Let me recapitulate. You said that embryos have life. I said, "Yes, that's not an argument against killing them. We kill animals for food." You said they were also alive (What did you mean by that, again?) and I restated my position by saying we kill animals for food, and they're alive when it happens. You said I think human embryos might turn to cows. Can you clarify?

.... stop discussing Religon here, and get on with what this is supposed to be (pretty much the 2nd half of everyones post but Hazar)

Thanks Hazar for stay on topic

Religion is essential to the argument, as it is cited often by many people who are against stem cell research as an 'argument'. It is not an argument. Ideally, we wouldn't have it thrown into the argument, but Daganev has thrown it into the argument. However, we're not discussing religion, but rather the validity of religion as an argument against stem cell research (None). If this was a real argument about religion, I would have been much more vicious. Or much more surreal. Depends on my mood.

Thats it! I"M MAKING A.... -peters out-

I'm making a religon thread, religon is not to be mention unless it is a DIRECT part of your arguement
not because, "i'm a religous person" or "I don't believe in religous reasons" I want it to BE your arguement if its mentioned at all.

And i'm making a religon thread so ou 2 can go kill each other somewhere else.



and for me to be on topic: I'm disturbed by the experimenting, but I have to admit if it saves my life some day, I'm not going to be angry

Because I strongly believe that that soul will simply return again, having learned from his experience.



And yes, I know the difference between dying of natural causes and being killed. What I disagree with is that an embryo is "someone," as opposed to "something." Some of your arguments sound just as ludicrous to us as my suggestion with miscarriages did to you.

What's wrong with discussing religion? Politics has been brought into it already. And eating meat. If the discussion offends you, feel free to read something else entirely. I promise not to come to your house and kill you in your sleep.

I started a thread for you instead, go use that.

Ah. So you're a hypocrite.

Verithrax, so now your arguing that the Governement isnt' allowed to decided what it does with its money???!?!?!?!?

The argument again, is if the US Federal Governemnt, and now since yesterday the EU (whatever that technically is) should not give out money taken from taxes to pay for research which many in the population that is being governed finds unethical. Nobody is saying that you can't use private funds. (well maybe Germany is, but they are afraid of thier history)

Now, about the life/alive/cow argument.

I said its life, it was pointed out that we don't care about life in general.

I took this to mean that we don't care about animals but we do care about humans.

So, I was saying, the point is not that it is life, the point is that it is Alive. Meaning it is a Human, in early stages of development and alive, because it has life.

Then people said, we don't care about mold and plants and cows.

So I say, is there any thought in someone's mind that a human embryo will become anything other than a human? does it have a chance of becoming a plant or a cow?

Each stage of a human life has various functions that turn on or off. The Embryo happens to be the most basic stage, but there isn't anything to suggest that its not a human, or will in some way become a plant or cow or mouse if you play with it.



The argument that most embryos will not be made into people is misleading.

70% of embryos will not be viable humans. Meaning, there is something wrong with the genetics and it will misscarry, or be a stillbirth. 30% of the embryos will become a person. Sometimes a mother is lucky and her baby comes from the first 30% and sometimes it comes from the last 30%. If you could know for certain, which embryos would become humans, then sure, take the ones that don't work and study them.

However, I predict that studying embryos that don't work, will lead to bad results. Thats why, the 100 lines of stemcells arnt good enough to be studied.


Lastly, Is it ok to take people on death row and use them for medical experiements, since you know, they are going to be killed anyways?

We shouldn't have death row. If you're sentenced to death, you should be taken out behind the courthouse and hung.

Agreed on that. Although I oppose death penalty in general, they could at least be efficient about it instead of just pretending it saves money.

Ahem. No, the government shouldn't be allowed to choose where our money goes; they can choose how much goes to research, but hand-picking research projects is not a power they should have. It lets them kill research they don't care about (Loss of funding, for a lot of research, is the same as having the project killed. Don't be naive; you know not getting funding would basically kill most stem cell research, and worse, put what's left under the control of corporations, which are even less concerned about the public good than the government, and not only can, but also will abuse the patent system and monopoly law to shaft the consumer as much as possible.). The government shouldn't be able to kill research just because it is politically inconvenient (See: Global warming).

And so, you're now appropriating the word 'alive' and saying it means 'human'. That's nice. You still haven't estabilished why your definition of human (IE, "anything that carries human genetic material" as far as I can tell) has the inherent right to life (Which isn't true of, say, brain-dead people with no chance of recovery and no brain activity), why that right doesn't carry over to other lifeforms (Saying, "We have a soul" is not an argument, be forewarned), and why it doesn't apply to unfertilized reproductory cells (Sperm and eggs).

He's saying it has the chance to become human. Which is a valid argument, so long as he doesn't then also try to apply it to brain dead adults.

Then how does it not apply to sperm and unfertilized eggs?

Most people, even those who agree with the death penalty, do not agree that it is ok to harvest organs, or do medical experiments on people who are going to be put to death. If you can't understand that moral boundry, then what can I say? Try looking at things from another perspective.

People who are braindead do have an inherent right to life. The only way they can be killed is if they or thier advocate uses the inherent right to decide your own fate, and says they want to be killed. Thus the argument with Terry Shivo. It was only an argument because her parents claimed that what her husband claimed was not Terry's wishes. (and the fact that her "husband" might have been trying to kill her in the first place, and that he was with another woman which made people think he lost he right to decide Terri's fate)

A Sperm is only half a person. An egg is only half a person. However, I have the moral belief that disgarded sperm needlessly is something one should feel guilty about. Why? Because I learned in biology class that you have a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance of having two sperm with the exact same genetic material in your lifetime. Meaning, the perfect combination to make the best child I could just as easily be thrown away as the bad combination, and that isn't something to just take lightly.

I don't know, that's up to him to argue. I'm just trying to translate.

You're worried about maybe discarding the perfect sperm? You do know that it'll just die and be replaced anyway if it just sits in your body, right? That's the flimsiest argument I've yet heard on that aspect. Even if you're trying for a child, millions of sperms die, and many of them could be genetically better than whichever one finally finds an egg.

There is only a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance that it will be replaced.

Again, if you can't distinguish between something happening, and actively making something happen, then I just don't know how to explain things to you.


All people will evendually die, that doesn't mean you can decide to kill them now. Millions of people get frauded, that doesn't mean its ok to encourage fraud as a means to make money, since you know, its going to happen anyways.

I'm still amazed that you actually worry about which sperm live or die.

Life doesn't work in black and white, Daganev. I'm firmly opposed to the concept that every human is worth the same, and that there is such a sharp divide between right and wrong.

Also, you keep using arguments involving fully functional adults, and equating them with embryos which can't be distinguished from any those of any other mammal without genetic testing.

That's a false analogy. "Still alive, but going to die in the foreseeable future" is not the same as "Not alive yet."


Why? They're less conscious of their environment as a vegetable. Why exactly do we have to spend our electrical and emotional energies on what is effectively a corpse in artificially sustained 'animation', when we could be donating those organs to people that really need them?


But you have the exact same odds of getting rid of the bad ones and helping the good ones show up further down the line. Actually, better chances, as there are probably more mediocre and bad ones than really good ones.