President Bush, on the occasion of his first ever veto, used to quash a bill seeking to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research: “Yet we must also remember that embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed themselves. Each of these human embryos is a unique human life, with inherent dignity and matchless value. We see that value in the children who are with us today. Each of these children began his or her life as a frozen embryo that was created for in vitro fertilization, but remained unused after fertility treatments were complete. Each of these children was adopted while still an embryo, and has been blessed with the chance to grow up in a loving family. These boys and girls are not spare parts.”
What a mendacious bastard. As if using one of the 90% of IVF embryos which would otherwise be destroyed to advance life-saving research is the same as ripping the liver out of a 7-year-old child for a cirrhosis patient. Talk about moral equivalence…
Meanwhile, Ezra’s got a good question: “In what sort of moral philosophy does conducting research on unfeeling blastocysts slated for destruction rank as ethically off-limits while conducting research on feeling, sentient, higher-order animals is totally fine? I recognize that some folks see the very potentiality for humanhood as a categorical difference from man to animal, but really, thinking about it, would they rather see some scientists fiddling with a test tube or a monkey wasting away from an excruciating, induced cancer?”
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