Thursday, April 12, 2007

Stem-cell breakthrough

About six weeks ago, I noted here that I find religious arguments against embryonic stem-cell research to be unavailing in light of various factors, including the points made in this explanation from neuroscientist Sam Harris:

“A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all."

Today, a friend of ours up in Madison had this news on the subject.

3 comments:

Will Pfeifer said...

Here's my take on the issue, and I'm completely serious: Any politician who votes against federal funding for stem cell research should publicly sign a pact that neither he (or she) or their immediate family (spouse and minor children) will use any stem cell-derived cures or treatments for disease. After all, if it's that big a moral crime to use stem cells, they should proudly refuse to benefit from their use, right?

Anonymous said...

The only thing embryonic stem cell research has done is cause cancer. I think anyone wanting the tax payers to dump money in this rat hole should be forced to have it used on them and their families.

Anonymous said...

How many cells does it take to make a human? What's the cut off?