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Good column, disappointing comments

Submitted by Rick (not verified) on October 23, 2006 - 4:06pm.

Joe American seems unable to distinguish the difference between deliberately killing embryos and killing enemy soldiers and the consequent unintended, but inevitable, killing of civilians. His objections cannot be taken seriously because his logic is faulty.

Brandon and "Cornell '02, now MD" seem to think that the only way for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research to go forward is for it to be financed by taxpayers. If the supposedly evil, greedy drug industry thought it could make a buck on ESC cures, they would be all over it. What Hannah doesn't mention is that many successful treatments already exist using adult stem cells, and that research with ESC has been uniformly unsuccessful and has sometimes resulted in disasters.

The larger ethical consideration, however, is whether human life (and, for that matter, other life) has intrinsic value - ie. is is valuable in and of itself regardless of its contribution to the well-being of others. If so, then where does this intrinsic value come from? If not, why shouldn't we eliminate all inconvenient, unwanted human life or use it to perpetuate our own?

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