The Imperfect Community

[Petulant Pixie]

OK, I totally do NOT understand what the issue is with using embryonic stem cells from fertility clinics. They aren't creating new embryos to research on, and from my understanding embryos that are created in fertility clinics and are not used are just thrown away. Am I right? Or is there a service for them? A baptism/funeral sort of deal with clergy and a little procession to a cemetary where they can be buried in consencrated ground? I'm only half kidding here folks, I really don't get it!

[Elizabeth]

Makes no sense to me, either. I don't get equating a bunch of microscopic undifferentiated cells with a living breathing human being.

[Petulant Pixie]

Well, IMO there needs to be a clear distinction about when human life begins. I am a big supporter of the movement to get it redefined as happening at the moment of implantation. I think that's a very logical and trustworthy reference point.

However, given that opinion, I think about this embryo adoption that I read about--wheras people who have embryos left over from fertility procedures give them away to couples who are not able to conceive. Now....EEEK! See, that bunch of cells WOULD grow to become a child with my (and dh's) genetic makeup, and to me that would be the same as giving away one of our own. So, I can understand the weirdness of that.

But, if they're going to be just tossed anyway, I don't understand why beneficial research can't be done on them. I see it like donating organs. It would be horrible to imagine the procedures that go into donating organs of a very young child, (I say that because I hear from the pro-life people about the "slicing" of the embryos for stem cell research, since often it seems important to them to try to illicit the most gruesome imagry imaginable), but given the circumstances that organ donation occurs (donating person is recently dead), the benefits of retrieving those organs for another child to use (which I'd imagine involves some "slicing") outweights what our minds don't want to imagine being done to the donating person. Does that make any sense?

[Shrimp&Grits]

I don't get it either. We have eggs in deep freeze we'll donate to science when we're done having children.

[prescott]

[Petulant Pixie]

[Petulant Pixie]

[prescott]

[Elizabeth]

[prescott]

[Shrimp&Grits]

Kind of OT, but we have a picture of Atticus as a blastocyst prior to implantation. It's kind of cool to see.

[DietCokeHead]

guess I don't see this as a huge hot button issue, because a) if you really read the research, we are nowhere near the "brink" of finding the magic bullet for all these diseases, and b) the faucet of federal funding can easily be turned back on again by a new president/congress.

Yes, I love how this is such a huge issue when really it will be like a million years until any big breakthroughs are made with stem cell research. But then again, it does have to start somewhere, ya know? If we never start, we can never get to where we are curing horrible diseases I guess.

Kind of OT, but we have a picture of Atticus as a blastocyst prior to implantation. It's kind of cool to see.

I'd like to see Melissa create a theme-scrapbook page for a blastocyst!!!

[prescott]

[honeybee]

[prescott]