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Life is not about conception. Life is about consciousness. It's only the scientifically ignorant and/or the scientific charlatans that preach the gospel of conception equals life.

Let me make one thing clear...like it matters....I am against late term abortions. There is conclusive evidence of brain formation and thought processes in late term births. I am 100% convinced that a baby in it's seventh month starts to develop the ability to interact with external stimuli, thus resulting in consciousness.

On the other hand, I'm against the religious belief that conception equals life equals consciousness. I truly believe that life isn't vegetable, it's awareness. This is the entire argument in a nutshell..what constitutes life? I do not think that conception constitutes life. Only religious people that believe in predestined souls believe in such nonsense.

I strongly believe that embryos DON'T have any rights themselves. If they are grown to a point at which they can feel pain and pleasure, then I think they have rights in themselves. At that point, it's already a fetus.

If it's in embryo stage, I beleive it belongs jointly to it's parents, in exactly the same way as some hair off their head, or some fingernail clippings. No matter what an embryo can potentially grow into, at embryo stage it is a microscopic collection of unfeeling,, unthinking cells.

As I said before, in the course of nature, with no human intervention, 5 out of every 8 embryos DON'T make it past 2 months, and end up in the tip or sewerage works. No matter how sacred I hold human life, I just don't think an embryo is sacred in the same way that an adult, child, baby, or even a well developed fetus is.

I see nothing wrong with harvesting embryos for medical research, strictly as long as they are not grown to the point where they have a nervous system. The only reason I think we should stick to using IVF rejects at the moment is purely practical. At the moment collecting eggs from women is still a diffucult process, and since at the moment non-body identical hormones are used to induce ovulation of several eggs at a time, this can have nasty side-effects for the woman.

As soon as this practical consideration is overcome, I will applaud any couple who donate the cells of their living bodies to medical research.

Edited, Jun 9th 2007 2:11pm by Aripyanfar

The funny thing, is that I've never argued with Gbaji, just to argue with Gbaji. We just genuinely disagree about a lot of stuff.

Semantics. Trees are killed every day and the average pro-life person never protests. Oh the inhumanity.

So what? So, are you saying that if *you* believe something strongly that this means that no one else can hold a different opionion, nor expect that the laws should respect their opinions?

There are at least as many people who strongly believe that embryos *do* have rights as believe they don't. That's what makes this an "ethical dilema". It's also what makes this point a "valid ethical reason" to oppose the harvesting of embryonic stem cells.


Maybe some of you simply don't understand how ethics works? It's not about voting and the majority decides what everyone will do. Ethics is an individual thing. Each person gets to decide whether he agrees or disagrees with something on ethical grounds. You don't get to decide that since you don't agree with it, that therefore the ethical concern simply doesn't exist.

Get it? Sheesh! I didn't think I'd have to explain ethics just so I can make a simple point, but apparently a remarkable percentage of people on this forum honestly don't understand it. Look. It's valid to override a groups ethical beliefs in a democracy (happens alll the time in fact), but it's critically important to the process of democracy that we never forget that that is what we are doing in cases like this. Because if we do forget (or don't know in the first place), how are we to know when the majority is doing something horribly wrong?

We should always tread very lightly when doing this sort of thing. That so many people don't even seem to be aware that there is a valid ethical issue here is worrisome.

Nah, it's just the one lonely voice desperately shouting redefinitions and strawmen into the wind who doesn't "get it".

gbaji

Nobody's picking you for their team today.

You're the fat kid left holding the lunch-packs while we're playing ball.

And...



How do you reconcile these two statements Joph? The first gives you the reason why the second is incorrect (aside from the second being a claim of course!). The very fact that there is a debate and that there are people who'd rather the embryos be incinerated then used for medical research proves that there is an ethical reason why ESC research is worse then incineration.

If you accept this logic in the first case, why not in the second? It's the same thing. Clearly there *are* people who believe it's ok to incinerate unused embryos from IVF but it's *not* ok to use them for ESC research. You don't have to accept their position on this Joph. But it seems (to quote you) "stupid" to deny that an ethical reason even exists.




You didn't ask for that though. You asked for an "ethical reason". Those are two different things.

My whole point (if you'd bothered to pay attention) is that you can't discount someone's own ethics simply because you don't agree with them. Whether you like it or not, there is a significant percentage of the population of the US who oppose using those embryos for ESC research. Tossing in the "or incinerated" is somewhat irrelevant. They don't care if the embryos are incinerated or kept frozen for the next century or what. What they *don't* want is those embryos used for research.




Why was the revelation about Soylent Green a big deal Joph? Because it was "made out of people". Is that "rational" in this context? Of course not. But some people have ethical objections to things on purely non-rational reasons. In the same way that the average joe who might chow down on a burger made from cow will choke if he's told it's made out of dog (or people!!!). It's not rational. It's very much emotional.


And guess what? Some people are opposed to medical research that involves chopping a human embryo up into pieces and using them to make stuff. In *exactly* the same way some people are opposed to making food out of people. You don't have to agree with them, but you should at least acknowledge that their ethical concerns exist.

Edited, Jun 11th 2007 7:40pm by gbaji

*Shrug* I don't know how else to explain it to you. I'm sure everyone else here gets it but you seems stuck in neutral somehow. Good luck to ya, I guess.Yeah, luckily I have the ability to scroll down and look at the rest of the polls as well in which the ranges of support/against range from 12-30%.

I suppose this might be difficult for one to understand who has to make up his numbers, huh?

Edited, Jun 11th 2007 10:35pm by Jophiel

For the record, I'm okay with burning babies and/or dissecting them. I think there would be some mighty tough internal justification going on in order to be a fan of one and not the other, though.

O.o No-one here has said there is no ethical arguement or ethical issue. In fact, the only reason I replied to that particular post of yours was that I thought that you actually were holding a valid and very understandable ethical position in that particualr post, and, since I disagreed with it, it was worth making an arguement against it.

Since many, even most, laws are about ethical/moral issues, and which ethics are going to be enforced on everyone, society has to continually argue and reargue so many moral issues. This thread is just another round of that process.

You said you believed embryos had rights in themselves (And therefore should not be used for medical research). I took your words at face value, that is, I believe that you hold this opinion, which happens to be a different opinion to my one. I deny no-one the right to their own ethical beliefs.

What is important is who's beliefs are going to written into law, or written out of law. Since, in this instance, I believe legalising Embryonic research has a huge likelihood of alleviating suffering for millions of people in the future, whilst harming no-one, I think I have a duty to mention this position to people when it comes up, in the hope of spreading the idea, and gaining a clear majority.

I think the consequences of legalising it are enourmous, and the consequences of it remaining illegal are not only enourmous but severe. This is why I used the word "strongly", since I think this issue is important, and the most important part of the issue, is why (in my opinion) it's a fallacy that anything is protected by illegalising ESC research.

This is not like Christian Scientists refusing blood transfusion for themselves. I respect their right to their ethical position, even at the same time as I find their ethical position stupid and illogical. But in this case, the only people they are harming is themselves (and any minors they are in control of). I think they should be allowed to act on their own ethics in this case, and refuse treatment for themselves.

Now, I don't find the position that ESC should remain illegal because embryos have rights in themselves either stupid OR illogical. I think it's very understandable, but it's wrong.

And this wrong idea, if it stays law, in condemning millions to pain, misery, disability and earlier deaths, who might otherwise have been cured, will result in vast injustice, cruelty and diminishment of society. I think your ethics in this particular case will materially and strongly harm other people, not just yourself, which is why I don't think you should get your way on this.

Not only do I respect your right to a different ethical position, since the position is about a grave matter, I think you ought to fight as fiercly for your position as I fight for my position. Stop confusing people arguing against your position with them thinking that you don't count, or that you ought not to be heard, or them thinking that they should get everything their own way all the time.

In fact, if someone actually takes the time to argue with you, I think it's an indication that they take you very seriously indeed. If you want some information for free: I personally think that a lot of people hold very similar opinions to your own. In speaking to you, I am also speaking to everyone else who reads these threads who agrees with you, and disagrees with me.

Edited, Jun 12th 2007 5:59am by Aripyanfar

What we should do is redefine "harm" so that ESC research is more harmful than incineration. Should that not work, we could redefine "harm" further and so it includes random people being unhappy about ESC research even if there's no logical support to the notion that the embryo is harmed worse in one instance than in the other and the embryo was willingly donated by its parents.

Also, we should insist that this random group of people is the majority by tortured versions of false dilema polling where you demand that if you're not against something, you must be for it. And if you're not for it in all instances, it means you're now against it. But we should never, ever provide numeric support that this mythical majority exists because the numbers don't matter so long as there's one person. Then that one person is apparently the majority.

Sigh. Joph said that he'd never heard an ethical reason against using IVF embryos for ESC harvesting. He did not say "I've never heard one that I agreed with".


Those are two different things. We can't even begin to debate whether those ethical reasons are valid or not if we can't even agree that they exist.

Logic requires a step by step progression. When you leap to a conclusion and bypass a half dozen steps and then insist that since you've already come to a conclusion that those steps and any opposing positions that might exist there don't really count, you aren't using any kind of sane logic to arrive at the conclusion. You also make it impossible to ever re-assess your conclusions since you didn't actually arrive at them via a process of logical analysis.


Kinda like why Joph can't see how new studies showing alternative ways to produce pluripotent stem cells might be seen by many people as a good reason to not use embryo harvesting. Since he didn't actually go through the step of the logic where the opposition to ESC harvesting exists, but is outweighed because of the need of the science and the lack of an alternative, he can't see that when an alternative presents itself he should reexamine his conclusion.


Thought this was kinda obvious. Guess not.