Who Can Stem Cell Research Save?
Human stem cell research is a widely controversial topic in the United States. Most controversy concerns are religious, moral, and legal contestations regarding human embryos. Research on human embryos have been approved in other countries such as Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Greece, Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands, it remains a controversy issue in the United States. In the United States the States are split on whether it’s enforcing a complete ban or allowed funding in some States for stem cell research. President Clinton passed Dickey Amendment which cut off all Department of Health and Human Services and all federal funding for stem cell research on human embryos. Private funding was still aloud for the research. In 2001 President George Bush approved limited funding because of the great outcomes it could one day give us with cures for diseases and disorders.
On the first issue, are these embryos human life? Well, one researcher told me he believes this five-day-old cluster of cells is not an embryo, not yet an individual but a pre-embryo. He argued that it has the potential for life, but it is not a life because it cannot develop on its own.
An ethicist dismissed that as a callous attempt at rationalization. "Make no mistake," he told me, "that cluster of cells is the same way you and I, and all the rest of us, started our lives. One goes with a heavy heart if we use these," he said, "because we are dealing with the seeds of the next generation."
And to the other crucial question -- If these are going to be destroyed anyway, why not use them for good purpose? -- I also found different answers.
Many are these embryos are byproducts of a process that helps create life and we should allow couples to donate them to science so they can be used for good purpose instead of wasting their potential (Bush, President