06/19/2004: "Solid thinking on ESCR Make a Poster Online How to Create a Flyer Online. The Internet has changed. "

Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) is the latest Big Thing being bandied about by those whose "compassion" is deeper than their ethical understanding. A bracing retort to some of the soggier thinking going on in at least one mainline church (United Methodist) is offered in Christian Century by Duke Divinity School ethics professor Amy Laura Hall. Some excerpts:

A multimillion-dollar medical industry surrounds the supposedly simple "which of these two entities matters more?" approach. Endorsing ESCR means endorsing an elaborate, systematic, routine industry of embryo production and destruction, an industry not likely to limit itself to therapies for chronic disease. To suggest that we will not also see the emergence of more generally applicable, and more widely lucrative, products defies common sense....

Once early embryos become something less than incipient human life, once they are treated in vitro as a means toward the end of pregnancy, once they are cryopreserved in thousands of vats across the country, ESCR with "excess" embryos may be predictably the next step. Given that so many good Protestant couples have accepted the creation, cryopreservation and disposal of early embryos, it may be almost impossible for an argument against ESCR to gain traction.

It may also become increasingly difficult for any argument against any research on early embryos to command a hearing (including arguments against "therapeutic" cloning) as other procedures that involve embryo selection and disposal become more common. As use of preimplantation embryo selection grows, for example, there is a diminishing chance that anyone in the mainline will remain willing to throw the first stone at the Goliath of embryonic biotechnology....

In debating ESCR, we have the opportunity to ask anew whether we will encourage the routine, systematic creation and destruction of embryonic life. Will we continue to pursue a form of fertility treatment that has led to vat after vat of incipient human life? Will we allow for the creation of incipient human life merely for the sake of its destruction? Will we countenance the systematic and industrialized harvesting of human ova?

Read the whole piece.