Honest Debate About Stem Cell Research

The question isn't whether we cause human death with our policy decisions but whether the good created outweighs the burden of death inevitably created. Raising the speed limit to allow people and goods to get to where they are going quicker increases the number of serious accidents. Innocent lives will be lost but we have agreed that the loss is worth the ability to drive 70 rather than 55. Universal health care would save lives but to date we have decided the cost doesn't justify the lives saved or improved. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration negotiates with industries to set Threshold Limit Values for toxins in the work place. The values are not designed to keep all workers from becoming sick, but an acceptable number considering the burden on companies to provide pollution free environment. Certainly we know that going to war will result in the injury and death to soldiers and civilians.

My point is that we agree expressly or impliedly to allow an acceptable number of injuries, sicknesses and death all the time in the name of public policy.

This makes the polarized arguments on stem cell research less than productive. The line of logic I see relevant to the debate follows the following thread:

A couple wants to have children but can't because of some physical reason. A child will not live even though separate life forms of sperm and ovaries exist in the people dreaming of being parents. They go through in vetro fertilization and a child lives who otherwise could not have shared the joy of life with his or her parents. Additional fertilized ovaries created by that process that would not have become children otherwise are frozen, sharing the inevitable fate of death unless some woman wants to implant them in her.

Stem cell research can likely create cure for children and adults who will otherwise die or live lives of desperation. These frozen ovaries can provide the material needed to advance this research.

Assume that fertilized ovaries are human life, is their death for research a result of an immoral public policy decision? If we save them from stem cell research do we then have a moral obligation to implant them in someone so that they can progress to birth? Should we stop the couples who fertilize their ovaries knowing that the result will be to take away the life of a child who otherwise could not be born? Is the use of fertilize ovaries less moral than the decision to hurt some workers, deny medical care to uninsured citizens, cause collateral damage to free Iraqis, or increased deaths on our highways?

The real argument concerning stem cell research is not whether there is a taking of potential human life but how that measures against the lives and quality of lives that are gained. We should not be like one of my friends who talks about how wrong it is to kill animals while eating a hamburger. No matter what decision is made concerning stem cell research we should make the decision honestly and intelligently-staring directly at the truth of it all-and not with clichés in a political spin room.