Here’s the thing. If you accept the premise that the blastocyst is a human life (though nowhere near from having acquired physical characteristics that you and I have now), then it is immoral to “discard” it, let alone using it for research before discarding it; federally funded research. It doesn’t matter if the research is a lot more promising than adult stem cell research (which is also promising) and will lead the way to curing some pretty bad diseases. It’s not justified to achieve a good end by an immoral means.

Now, I have no idea what percentage of people want this research to be done, but I don’t think a leader is someone who always obeys the people. He should lead according to his conscience, his moral principles, his experience, etc., not his particular faith. So I think it wouldn’t be right for the President to not veto something which, if passed, would lead to practices he considers immoral.

So is embryonic stem cell research immoral? Is the question “When does human life begin?” a religious one, a philosophical one, a scientific one? Is there a definite answer? Many people say ‘yes’, many people say ‘no’. There are good reasons for both answers. If so, I don’t consider the President vetoing this an anti-scientific action on his part. If he is doing this solely on moral grounds, then it’s definitely not anti-scientific.

Will certain human rights be in jeopardy if ESCR is not given the go-ahead? Probably not. If every scientist capable of doing this research decided not to pursue it after all (eg. because they all suddenly thought it was immoral), even if it was given the go-ahead, I’m guessing they wouldn’t be sued or charged, right? It’s up to the scientists. People have the right to available cures for diseases, and adequate health care.

“We should study everything, …”
Art for Art sake, who decides what is Art?
Science for Science sake, who decides what is purposeful?
Madness for Madness sake, who decides who or what is Mad?
.
Do we need to save life?
No, I don’t want a pseudo altrusistic or non-specific generalised yes

(1) Should we keep lifers alive on life support machines, because life means life, whilst at the same time have people waiting on Death Row waiting for the Switch to be flicked
(2) Should we send in the Red Cross to places under air attack to ‘save’ lives, which may be ended by the next raid.
(3) Should we do everything possible to artificially sustain life which cannot sustain itself, whilst at the same time destroying healthy life in a womb on a whim
.
The answer appears to be a resounding Yes.
As to the why, who cares.
Just because we can, or because there are research funds to promote diversity, under the premise of ‘original’ research
or simply for the sheer hell of it
.
Now there’s a curious turn of phrase.
Who in hell came up with that one? lol!
.

I am not sure i know what Vince’s point was trying to address, since the current dispensation (under Bush executive orders) of the blastocysts is destruction, rather than some sort of moral life sustainment, thus the bill itself merely asked that before they are destroyed anyway, maybe some of them could be used for research? Alas, the veto message claims that boys and girls will live while in fact they will be destroyed en masse.

Also, i have, in my grumpy old dotage, begun to take offense at the use of the phrase “saving a life.” We have never once saved a single life. We have merely postponed that which is 100% guaranteed to happen–death. There is no life saving, saving a life, rescuing a life, or whatever. WE make amazing advances in prolonging it, in lengthening it, in providing a body with the capacity to endure while the mind/spirit/soul (you pick) has left the physicality (the house). But no, we don’t save a life.

During my travels over the last two months, i did happen into a lengthy conversation about the importance of balancing our scientific knowledge with some expectation that the general public is for the most part uninterested, and perhaps (at best) uninformed regarding that knowledge. While this particular discussion regarded consciousness research, it seemed to continue much of what others have been saying (as mentioned by Sean above) about the efforts necessary to motivate the public, and especially the media, to express greater substantive accuracy in their haphazard utterances that claim scientific authenticity. The proverbial “We all know such and such is true” needs to be challenged when it is easily shown that such and such is in fact not true at all. Hard to do, and ever much more so given these times, but still worthy of the effort.

“Also, i have, in my grumpy old dotage, begun to take offense at the use of the phrase “saving a life.” We have never once saved a single life. We have merely postponed that which is 100% guaranteed to happen—death. ”

What’s wrong with “saving a life”? When you go inside a burning building and rescue someone who collapses, you save their life. You prevent their death, which would inevitably happen if you didn’t go in there

“There is no life saving, saving a life, rescuing a life, or whatever. WE make amazing advances in prolonging it, in lengthening it, in providing a body with the capacity to endure while the mind/spirit/soul (you pick) has left the physicality (the house). But no, we don’t save a life.”

And we don’t murder either. We merely expedite which is 100% guaranteed to happen – death.

“thus the bill itself merely asked that before they are destroyed anyway, maybe some of them could be used for research?”

I’ve got an idea, since the people on death row with be destroyed anyway, why not use them for scientific research? Hey, let’s insert this gene and see if they develop the disease.

The logic is that if you accept the premise that a blastocyst is a human life, then it is wrong to use that life as a means to an end (one which involves its destruction), and not treat it with respect, just as it is wrong to use the person on the street in the same way.

In my opinion, this issue, as with many issues (as we are all aware) depends on what this thing we are experimenting on is.

Oops, the rest of my previous comment was cut off. Maybe becuase I used a “

just save a strand of the child’s hair, then you can clone him later.

“But isn’t it then also wrong to simply dispose of that life if one doesn’t need it? Apparently this happens all the time at fertility clinics. If blastocysts are human beings, they are the most innocent human beings imaginable. Why aren’t those who think that blastocyst = human protesting this merciless death sentence, this gross waste of sacred humanity?”

I don’t know.

“I think there is a vast gray area here, which can be summed up in the word “potential.” As in, a blastocyst is a potential human being.”

So when does that potentiality become actualised? Also, how does this happen? What exactly happens which causes this transformation? Why is it that exactly the same stages occur at roughly the same times in each pregnancy, whether or not the pregnancy reaches full term — a human newborn baby?

Also, if it’s just potentially a human being, what is it before this potentiality is actualised?

“Not every blastocyst becomes a baby (or even a fetus), even under the best possible conditions.”

What are those?

>The logic is that if you accept the premise that a blastocyst is a human life,

A ‘human life’ is too vague a phrase for the significant claims. The nine months of gestation represents millions of years of human evolution and as alluded above, many conditions must be met along the way. A person using such a term is on a slippery slope to try to equate a blastocyst with a fully formed human being.

Yes Paul

I remember Penrose’s change of heart?

Paul, your description closely resembles Sir Roger’s presentation from what I can remember. His idea(s) were very entropy-centric, but I cannot reproduce details. The slides he presented looked like they had been sketched by hand that afternoon. I will see if we (the University of Texas) have the presentation on-line, in which case I’ll post the link.
Bob.

Hi Sean, thanks for the nice words and the link !! Best, B.

Okay, let’s try the Unicode encoding of the em-dash:

— = —

Vince it’s pretty simple really. There is a continuum between a blastocysts and a human being. Just as there is a continuum between a four year old and an adult. Some rather ideological people tend to insist that this continuum cannot be. But it does indeed exist. Reality has a way of not caring what you or anyone else thinks.

A blastocsyst is no more a person than a four year old is an adult. But there is no clear point-dividing line between the two other than that we create. Those are the facts, and no amount of whining or arm chair amateur philosophy on your part will change them. But if you insist, then I expect you’ll also have to support treating four year olds as adults with all the benefits and responsibilities therein.

#14
Turok et-al
:http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0607164

Have a fantastic new paper detailing some aspects that tie in with Penrose “new theory”.

At the “heat-death” of our Universe (the major contributing factor would be accelerated expansion), the 2nd Law is forced to equilibriate over all Universe distances, and a Phase Transition is imminent, a big-crunch/contraction is the “last-instant” of a previous Universe, and thus is also the “first-instant” of the following Universe?