robert C:

how is it they can harvest stem cells from adults and still do the same thing, i reckon there is more money to be made from embryos and aborted babies

Cher:

Although it’s from a Jewish, not Christian perspective, it has to be one of the most fascinating religious legal debates I’ve seen on stem cell
http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Is_Stem_Cell_Research_Ethical$.asp

I have wondered if people opposed to embryoic stem cell research will refuse the treatments that are derived from it.

(Judaism by & large has concluded from a religious perspective that it’s acceptable. It doesn’t just say, we want it to be okay so it is, but instead goes through the strict religious opinion to conclude it is.)

Gilbert P:

All of this research is only possible because God give man the knowledge to come up with it, So, why not place God’s gifts to use?!

no fixed address:

There are options to embryonic stem cells that are just as excellent and not immoral. Making the Church out to be anti-science is just propaganda.

OBAMA’S SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY MEMO

March 9, 2009
President Obama signed an executive order now on stem cell research; it was part of his “Scientific Integrity Presidential Memorandum.” In response, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said the following:
http://www.catholicleague.com/release.php?id=1575

OBAMA IS NOT OPPOSED TO ALL HUMAN CLONING

March 13, 2009

On the morning of March 9, President Obama signed an executive order on stem cell research that also included a statement on human cloning. Many media outlets quickly released a tale with headlines like that of the Associated Press, “Obama Calls Cloning ‘Perilous, Profoundly Incorrect.’” On the same day, at 1:40 p.m, Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was questioned about the cloning issue and he said, “I reckon the executive order—I don’t have it in front of me—simply bans human cloning.”

Commenting on this is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

“Media reports which said that President Obama banned human cloning were incorrect. So was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
http://www.catholicleague.com/release.php?id=1579

“While human life is threatened in many ways in our society, the destruction of human embryos for stem-cell research confronts us with an issue of accept for life in a stark new way,” it says.
“The issue of stem-cell research does not break down us to choose between science and ethics, much less between science and religion,” the document says. “It presents a choice as to how our society will pursue scientific and medical progress.”
The policy statement seeks to refute three opinion made in favor of permitting stem-cell research that involves the destruction of human embryos. It says proponents of embryonic stem-cell research argue:
- “Any harm done in this case is outweighed by potential benefits.
- “What is ruined is not a human life, or at least not a human being with fundamental human rights.
- “Dissecting human embryos for their cells should not be seen as involving a loss of embryonic life.”
Responding to the first line of reasoning, the document says that “the fake assumption that a excellent end can justify direct killing has been the source of much evil in our world.”
“No commitment to a hoped-for ‘greater excellent’ can erase or diminish the incorrect of directly taking innocent human lives here and now,” the statement adds. “In fact, policies discouragement our accept for human life can only endanger the vulnerable patients that stem-cell research offers to help. The same ethic that justifies taking some lives to help the patient with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease now can be used to sacrifice that very patient tomorrow.”
On the claims that a week-ancient kernel is “too small, immature or undeveloped to be considered a ‘human life’” or “too lacking in mental or physical abilities to have full human worth or human rights,” the document notes that the kernel “has the full complement of human genes” and is worthy of the same dignity given to all members of the human family.
“If fundamental rights such as the right to life are based on abilities or qualities that can appear or disappear, grow or diminish, and be greater or lesser in different human beings, then there are no inherent human rights, no right human equality, only privileges for the strong,” the statement says.
The document also dismisses the line of reasoning that there is no harm in killing so-called “emergency” embryos produced for in vitro fertilization attempts because they would die anyway.
“Ultimately each of us will die, but that gives no one a right to kill us,” the statement says. “Our society does not permit lethal experiments on terminally ill patients or condemned prisoners on the pretext that they will soon die anyway. Likewise, the fact that an embryonic human being is at risk of being abandoned by his or her parents gives no individual or government a right to directly kill that human being first.”
The document also addresses moves to permit human cloning and the “grotesque practice” – banned by the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006 – to develop cloned embryos in a woman’s womb in order to harvest tissues and organs from them.
It closes with a reminder that the use of adult stem cells and umbilical-cord blood have been shown to offer “a better way” to produce cells that can benefit patients distress from heart disease, corneal hurt, sickle cell anemia, multiple sclerosis and many other diseases.
“There is no moral doubt to research and therapy of this kind, when it involves no harm to human beings at any stage of development and is conducted with appropriate informed consent,” it says. “Catholic foundations and medical centers have been, and will take up again to be, among the leading supporters of ethically responsible advances in the medical use of adult stem cells.”

Anonymoose:

I read in the paper now that there are approximately 500 million embryos currently held in fertility clinics in the US.

I reckon the Christian Question (I’m not one) boils down to:

Door # 1
- Belief that an kernel has a soul, and that because of that to ruin it is murder

Door # 2
- An kernel does not have a soul, and therefore harvesting stem cells and destroying the kernel is not murder
- part b.. But human cloning and breeding embryos for scientific purposes is incorrect

Door # 3
- An kernel is a potential human life, and to ruin it is incorrect
- But (back to the 500,000,000 embryos) since most kernel’s are ruined, it is better to use their stem cells to alleviate human distress