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NIH Orders Halt To Embryonic Stem Cell Research
sciencehabit writes "Responding to a court order issued a week ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Friday ordered intramural researchers studying human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to shut down their experiments. NIH's action — probably unprecedented in its history — is a response to a preliminary injunction on 23 August from US District Judge Royce Lamberth. The judge ruled that the Obama policy allowing NIH funding to be used to study hESC lines violates a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to destroy embryos."
The judge ruled that the Obama policy allowing NIH funding to be used to study hESC lines violates a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to destroy embryos."
What if the scientists just charge for the research, but present an itemized bill that throws in the embryo destruction for free?
I'm mostly kidding, but isn't there some decent way to weasel around this?
Everyone who is against stem cell research should be unable to ever benefit from the results of said research.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That's missing the point entirely.
This is more or less the same debate as over early abortions and chemical contraceptives, it's about when your genetic material becomes an independent and legally protected person. Unless you're suggesting that the libertarian approach is to let people sell their children thus making the question irrelevant, you need to set some defined boundaries of personhood and embryohood.
Why must your beliefs mandate that another individual fund (via mandatory taxation) research they view as fundamentally unethical?
I think the answer has to simply be: that's where we've chosen to draw the line in our Constitution.
That is to say, we've set it up so that (in theory), the majority doesn't get to take your individual rights away, but they do get to decide what we collectively spend money on. (And in that context, I don't consider anyone to have a right to not have their tax dollars spent on something the majority agrees with, excepting, of course, when it abridges another individual right.)
Overall I think that strikes a pretty good compromise between a government that can't do anything (even when it should) and a government that can do too much. It's not perfect, but it beats any alternative we've tried so far.
It's not necessarily that. The belief that a fertilized embryo is a human isn't necessarily linked to religion (and I'm not sure how anyone can assume that link). I'm personally not religious, but I do hold that belief.
We're not talking creationist "maybe some guy in the sky created everything but we can't prove it" sort of ideology here. We're talking about a BIOLOGICALLY IDENTIFIABLE marker in the stage of the creation of a new life: the fertilization of of a cell and the forming of a unique DNA sequence. To me as a non-religious person that is actually a much less vague point of definition as to use birth as the marker is too variable - a baby can be born at 5 months into the term or 10 months into the term and still survive in some cases. Some say viability outside of the womb, but the reality is that NO baby is self-sufficient outside of the womb (all of them need additional assistance from others). Even if you take it down to the level of "able to survive with external assistance outside of the womb" then you have a situation that will vary depending on the technological environment present. A baby born in a well-equipped modern NICU can survive MUCH earlier than one born into a 3rd world backwater.
In short, completely aside from religion, fertilization seems to me like the most obvious point to declare a human life as started without getting into judgement calls and gray areas. Now, that may make certain research topics difficult, but that's the way things are. Experimentation on live humans would likely allow much faster progress too, but we as a society have agreed that the ethical implications of such research outweigh any potential gains.
Indeed I find it much LESS scientific of a matter when many people's definitions basically boil down to condition that "it's not a human if I can't hear it complain", which to me is more of an emotional definition than a scientific one.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain