Frank wrote: I'd say, and calling an embryo a human person is...dubious. Calling a newborn baby a human person is dubious too. Is it afforded other 'human rights'? What if we forbid the baby from expressing it's right to free speech?
If it is considered a human person (I'll attempt address that more fully further down) then it should be afforded the rights appropriate to it. The most basic right, is the right to life, it can quite easily be afforded that. Just don't interfere with it or bring it into existence outside of its environment - fallopian tube and uterus. It cannot express itself so a right to free speech isn't appropriate here.
The point I'm essentially making is the scales of importance which we attach the important 'bits' of humanity to. Arms and legs tend to be viewed as rather impersonal things. Similarly with sperm and eggs.
Yes quite right, but arms and legs, eggs and sperm are not independent organisms or entities. Humans beings on the other hand are. An embryo is genetically fully human, it is merely at an earlier stage of development.
Anyway, regarding a foetus or embryo or an seperate sperm & egg duet as a human is quite curious.
It is only curious to do so because the embyro and foetus are unseen to society. An embryo becomes a foetus and hence a baby, at no point in their development is there the possibility that they will become into a cow or a banana.
Assigning moral value to the embryo is, I'd say, a choice. Which is to say: Do you actually want the human, or not? We're making the choice, regardless. Perchance at the point of conception? Or was it before that: at the beginning of intercourse?
I'd say an objective truth; whether you want it or not does not affect its philosophical status. Totalitarian regimes had people they didn't want and therefore removed their membership of humanity and thereby justified their elimination. However objectively I would still say that they were wrong and no one can remove someone's humanity and justify their killing.
It's down to prudency, I'd say. Killing babies and people and all that jazz isn't widely acceptable. But what if there's only enough food left for one person to live until rescue? Do both folks die? What if you're leaving your chum trapped under an icecube on the hillside?
Prudency? I don't see how the problem you gave is in anyway comparable. This again is a utilitarian moral trap, if one person takes all the food and thereby surviving, it has indirectly killed the other. If they both eat they and both die of starvation, there is no murder there. If one freely gives the food of his own accord then that is self sacrifice not suicide, he is dying of starvation caused by an extreme situation. It would be suicide if there was plenty of food available, but still chose not to eat.
The point is: there's plenty of reasons why the death of anything isn't senseless murder. Folks who have miscarriages, are they being negligent parents? Ought they be investigated for neglect?* I'm not entirely sure what point I was making here.
Yes I agree, death and murder are two different things. Miscarriage if accidental is that, accidental. If the mother however, has been drinking, smoking, taking drugs or otherwise abusing herself and then precipitates a miscarriage, then that is a different matter.
Ah, yes, there's a few:
1- Treating embryo's (or indeed: anyone) as fully dignified and for-all-purposes as a jive, walking, hip and talking human is morally problematic. Not necessarily right or wrong, but still it complicates matters without providing (for me and the people I'm hypothetically considering as my like-minded peers) a sufficiently wholesome solution.
How would you decided who has personhood, on a case by case basis? I think it is far more logical to say that any member of the human species is a person. At the point of conception the embryo is a full member of the human species and will become an adult human being given enough time. I am an adult and given enough time I will become an octogenarian. An embyro and an 80 year-old are both members of the human species.
2- What the Dickens is wrong with embryonic research anyway?
Well if an embryo is a human person then is it morally justifiable to kill another person to research therapies that extend the life of another?
3- Why aren't we growing appropriately lobotomised-from-as-early-as-possible humans for medical research rather than wasting time on ones which present moral dilemas?
I'm not quite sure what you are referring to here.
FALSE DICHOTOMY
There are other possible, sensible answers and you know it. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they don't exist.
Such as? Whether I like an answer or not is emotional. It really depends on whether I accept it as logical and moral.
STRAWMAN, SHIRLEY?
1- The research isn't 'finished', you can hardly suggest it's a complete waste of time based on it not having produced a result yet.
Granted, but in the same amount of time and with an tiny fraction of the budget, adult stems cells have delivered 100% of all stem cell therapies. Granted eventually they might find ways around the serious technical short comings of the embryonic technique. However there is more than one way to achieve most things, but why chose the inefficient method that has so far borne no fruit? Especially when the easy and efficient method is also completely ethical.
2- Does anyone (here) really think sole endeavour for stem-cell research is for therapeutic advances? That's not the sole criterion for research. It might be particularly handy in justifying it to people outside the field, or to a research committee, but it's hardly the pure focus of all those noble, pure and brilliant folks out there stealing folks' embryos to go and poke them with electrodes and claim it as stemcell research.
That is what distresses me the most about embryonic stem cell research. I might find it slightly more acceptable if it was just to find cures for terrible diseases, but it isn't. That was the lie which won over most MPs when the HFE Act was past. Consider that we are not allowed to carry at test on primates for pure research. They may only be used if there is obsolutely no alternative and justified only if the research will likely bring about direct benefits to humanity. If you consider an embryo a human person, how more heinous is it to conduct such research on embryo, just for the research.
I am a researcher myself, albeit on plants and yes I find my research very interesting just to understand the mechanism of various things, but I much prefer to hope that my research will perhaps add another infinitesmal piece in the puzzle that is the universe and possibly help humanity even indirectly.
"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908
