davidvoegtle.net

Stem Cells Without Embryo Loss – New York Times: Nevertheless, religious conservatives have already denounced the technique, and the President’s Council on Bioethics, in a white paper evaluating alternative ways to produce stem cells, declared this approach “ethically unacceptable.”

The technique would seem to sidestep the council’s main objection, that it is unethical to put the tiny embryo at risk for research unrelated to the welfare of the embryo. Instead of removing a cell purely for stem cell research, the company proposes to use cells already removed for diagnostic tests at fertility clinics.

The clinics routinely remove a cell from eight-cell embryos to screen them for possible genetic defects before transferring the remaining embryo into a woman. Now the company proposes to intercept these cells, allow them to divide in a laboratory dish, and then use one cell for the diagnostic test and the other to derive stem cells. The process would add no additional risk to a diagnostic procedure that already seems quite safe.

(Via mc_dork @ LiveJournal.)

So…let me get this straight. There is a process that already safely removes a stem cell from a developing embryo to perform genetic testing. The process to develop embryonic stem cells would not remove any additional cells from the embryo, but would only take the already removed cell, allow it to divide a little, and then take one of those cells to test, and use the remainder to make stem cells. Meanwhile the embryo is safe to continue growing normally.

And this is bad, and has to be opposed as a moral crusade.

Got it.