Word: embryos
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...Embryonic stem-cell studies are controversial because they involve the destruction of human embryos," the New York Times explained in a May 6 article reporting on the shifting politics of stem-cell research. (For example, Nancy Reagan, whose husband has Alzheimer's, has gone public with her opposition to the Bush restrictions.) But that can't be right. Fertility clinics destroy far more human embryos than stem-cell research ever would, yet they are not controversial. Death or deep freeze is the fate of any embryo spared by the Bush policy from the indignity of contributing to medical progress...
...complicated. An embryo used in stem-cell research (and fertility treatments) is three to five days past conception. It consists of a few dozen cells that together are too small to be seen without a microscope. It has no consciousness, no self-awareness, no ability to feel love or pain. The smallest insect is far more human in every respect except potential...
...also ought to matter to the nonfanatic that embryos are needed only to start the research process. Most of the research and all the treatments that come out of it will use so-called lines developed out of a few initial stem cells in the laboratory. That makes the stem-cell issue different from--and easier than--the one about fetal tissues a few years ago. Fetal-tissue treatments use brain tissue from several aborted fetuses for each patient. An embryo used in stem-cell research has nothing resembling a brain...
...difficult issue is one in which you hold two or more conflicting values. Stem cells are not a difficult issue: either you think a microscopic embryo has the same human rights as you and I, or you don't. Do you believe that a woman who gets an abortion should be prosecuted for murder, just like a mother who hires a professional killer to off her teenage son? Are you picketing around fertility clinics, which kill hundreds of thousands of unborn children--if that's what you believe a 5-day-old embryo to be--just like abortion clinics...
...financial resources, his psychiatric expertise and creative talent produced the novel Creator, which not only sold well but garnered numerous critical accolades for its tale of a man who attempts to resurrect his dead wife via cloning, only to fall in love with the surrogate mother carrying the cloned embryo. With his course work finished, Leven decided to take a leave from Yale to work of his dissertation. But that was soon shelved for another novel, Satan, about the psychotherapy of the Devil, in which he again merged his considerable writing abilities with his experiences from psychiatry and neuroscience...