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Science Friction

If you knew that saving one person might mean the death of another, what would you do? What if you knew that thousands could be saved, how would you act then? Would your opinions change if one of the people being saved were your mom or dad, or even you? Would you be against it if the death were of a child, an embryo in this case, which to some is considered a human being?
This is one of the major dilemmas surrounding stem cell research. Stem cells are cells found in an early stage of embryonic development. Embryonic stem cells have the potential of developing into one of 130 different types of human tissue, which are eventually found in a fully formed fetus. Such tissues include blood cells, heart cells and brain cells. In a developing fetus, numerous stem cells are found that can produce all the different tissues of an adult body. The hope is to use some of the stem cells to replace tissues of any human in certain cases where new tissue is needed. This could be a possible cure for numerous diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, leukemia and Parkinson's.
Why so much debate? Embryonic stem cells are extracted from human embryos, killing them in the process. If you believe that embryos a few days after conception have the same human rights as you or me, killing innocent embryos is obviously not acceptable. The only thing that these “pro-lifers” are missing is that stem cells used in medical research generally come from fertility clinics, which produce more embryos than they can use. In the end, only one out of these many embryos is implanted in a womb. The rest are either kept alive in liquid nitrogen indefinitely, or simply discarded. How is it that people can oversee throwing a so called human being in the trash, but find it unethical to use them for research in the hope to save others? While sitting down with Mary Sunderland, a Graduate Student of the School of Life Sciences, at Arizona State University she stated that, “Most people get their...