I was riding my bike home from work last week when a man with a petition stepped in my path, forcing me to stop. "Do you have a moment? Just a moment for a petition! It's about stem cells."
I had been asked once before to "sign a petition to cure diseases." After seeing it was about legalizing stem cell research, I declined. This time, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was blowing off, so I started asking some questions about it.
Are they adult, umbilical, or embryonic, I wondered. I was told "they get them from the baby and from the mother." That didn't answer my question, so I asked to read the petition. The petitioner kept talking, trying to worm out of two questions now. I again asked for the petition to read it, and he said this:
"You can read all you want man, but I just explained it to you."
Damn right, I wanted to say! I'll read what I want (this is America, after all) and I'm not going to have you, a person I've just seen for the first time in my life, "explain" it to me. I have no reason to take your word, I would have liked to say. But there was no point in being antagonistic.
I saw it was indeed about legalizing embryonic stem cell research, to which I am vehemently opposed. One phrase caused me to stop and think, though, and that was the stipulation that embryos used in this research would be those that are not suitable for implantation (think of Snowflake Children) and would otherwise be discarded.
But this was more designed to appeal to an individual's distaste for waste, rather than his or her distaste for disrespect for human life. Clever.
I again declined to sign the petition. I have no problem with adult or umbilical stem cells, but creating an embryo - a human at one of its most basic and vulnerable stages - with a purpose that prevents it from doing what it is genetically programmed to do, destroys a life. (Yes, I believe an embryo is a life, but I'm not going to defend that belief right now).
This experience left me with this conclusion: What about curing social diseases, like this proposed biocannibalism? I understand why the argument is made that these embryos will otherwise be discarded. However, allowing such embryos to be used for stem cell research will only promote those enterprises which produce those embryos in the first place. Ending practices that create human life only for it to be destroyed will be much harder, if embryonic stem cell research is to become legal. I think most people who share my position - that embryos are indeed human life - would agree also that it is desirable to end practices that produce embryos that are ultimately to be destroyed.
