You know, some who are arguing for "potential life". I believe that whatever human embryos are used, some might be conceived exclusively for the purpose of using the stem cells. You can have sex and have a potential life quite easy, it doesn't really matter. The fetus you abort isn't concious(or at least has a very low concious), has no sort of personality, history, or relationships with anyone. You are taking this potential life and using it for much bigger deals, like giving someone a new leg, or curing their alzheimer's disease.

I was an embryo once, guys. So were you. You were not one sperm, or one egg, but you WERE an embryo once those things combined. THAT EMBRYO WAS YOU. Thus this embryo whose stem cells we are harvesting could have been my life or yours. It is not about weighing the utilitarian morality, but an empathetic sympathy for the actual human life that exists in this embryo that could have grown into someone like me or you. Sentient, capable, pre- or post-natal or not, its a people. And you can't tell me that its not or define away that fact because it actually has just as many chromosomes as I do, and thus should be allowed the same rights and choices that I have. If you include sentience, a nine month gestation, and a full set of body parts in your definition of what it measns to be human, its hard to see how you can include the disabled, premature, and hadicapped in your definiton of humanity.

I was an embryo.

Yeah, dude, difference is, the embryos used here are leftovers that will spoil anyway.

I was an embryo once, guys. So were you. You were not one sperm, or one egg, but you WERE an embryo once those things combined. THAT EMBRYO WAS YOU. Thus this embryo whose stem cells we are harvesting could have been my life or yours. It is not about weighing the utilitarian morality, but an empathetic sympathy for the actual human life that exists in this embryo that could have grown into someone like me or you. Sentient, capable, pre- or post-natal or not, its a people. And you can't tell me or define away that fact because it actually has just as many chromosomes as I do. If you include sentience, a nine month gestation, and a full set of body parts in your definition of what it measns to be human, its hard to see how you can include the disabled, premature, and hadicapped in your definiton of humanity.

I was an embryo once.

There is no mourning for the damned. There is no loss of potential life here. You speak as if the government is running around and harvesting babies people wish to keep.

Whether or not you believe life begins at conception or not is irrelevant, for those are your own values. Hold them sacred, and follow them all you like; but when the values of some decide the futures of those who may not only strongly disagree with you, but resent you for preventing them from living their own life... Well; then thing's have gone too far. The fact alone that it is up for debate is reason enough to allow this science to move forward.

It's really too bad these things have to come from aborted fetuses: I'd give a ton of eggs away if it could help stem cell research. I mean, it's not like I'm going to have a hundred thousand babies anyway.

It sounds sort of, I don't know, callous, but when people make the argument "that fetus could be you", I can't help but think "...well, it's not me." Sure, another couple decades could see that fetus be someone like me, but another couple decades could see hundreds of people die/suffer who could have been helped by the research that the fetus could be a part of. If they don't want the kid, why not put it to some good use? But, hey, what say should I have if some woman wants to donate her aborted fetus to a medical cause? Same thing with abortion: ethically, there's some discrepancy, but it's not my baby, so I shouldn't have any affect on some other woman's decision, whether it be for stem cell research or otherwise.

who would've guessed your dad is for abortion


scientists and doctors aren't paragons of morality. doctors have to hurt people everyday and assess how much peoples lives are worth.

does no one have any problems with these arguments? dude is gonna die might as well experiment on him; he's in a coma he won't feel it; children don't matter as much cause they can't conceptualise feelings; he's got a memory disorder he won't remember this anyway

what are you even talking about?

doctors have to hurt people everyday and assess how much peoples lives are worth.

especially this part

scientists and doctors aren't paragons of morality.

just to clear this shit up a bit: im not sayin they're paragons of morality (whatever that means) or anything like that, but i do believe especially my dad's opinion is worth a FUCKLOAD more than people goin in here goin "but hey, isn't this wrong because [RANDOM ][/RANDOM]" because yeah, he's seen a lot of fucking DEATHS that might be unnecessary. fuck, he even told me on ONE NIGHT ALONE three kids under 3 years old DIED right there under his watch when he was the one responsible for saving them (although he of course got no heat coz they didnt have a chance to begin with).

if you're used to GETTING TO KNOW HUMAN LIVES, GETTING TO KNOW THEIR FEAR OF DYING and you witness them being brave as fuck, going through medicines and then one day they get their death sentence because HEY research hasn't advanced enough because some fucking christian idiot is sayin "ya aborted fetuses are human beings can't be researched on" then you'll pretty fucking fast learn to curse anyone who opposes that kind of research. and this is the kind of shit my dad has to work with in the hundreds as his speciality is DISFUNCTIONAL HEARTS (you figure this field has a lot of mortality? you figure this JUST MIGHT benefit from stem cell research?). if you're used to getting to know every one of these human beings in a doctor-patient relationship and you have to be there for them over months and years trying your best to make sure they can live life 2 da maxx and might get rid of it, and then SHIT transplantation either didn't work because the body rejects it or SHIT they can't have transplantation and SHIT there might exist an alternative that can send that 40 year old dad home to his kids that he's talked so much about to my dad and how he never wants to leave them alone and then my dad has to tell him "I'm sorry you got two weeks again to live because research has halted in this area because of ethics" but in his mind he knows that bullshit because there's no fucking ethics behind it, only empty principles and lies and people that hate humans and basically suck satans cock every other day

so yeah what the fuck exactly are you talking about?


edit: i got angry and when i get angry my english drops quite a few notches so try and ignore all the errors (lol foreigner ​)

edit2: ok i took a dump to cool down so here's pretty much what im sayin:

people die because medicine isn't as far as it could have been if stem cell research had been legal from the start. this is true and i guess people dont give a fuck about it, and to be honest you know, it's pretty far from me as well so i dont care either. chances are quite a few members here will be casualties to the consequence of not allowing this kind of research in the future but that's speculation, right?

my thing is: when you decide to shut down that kind of research and basically say "yeah well too bad for these folks they have to die" it's people like my dad who has to sit down with the patients they have been seeing for weeks, months or years and say: "listen, im sorry, you're gonna have to say farewell to your family and loved ones because you're not gonna outlive this." of course he leaves out the reason for this is the strict research on the field to the patients, but he has told me this many times that countless of these lives could be saved if only they had gotten a bit further. he's the one who has to tell them their life prognosis equals zero and they have to die because there's not much else to do.

i mean fuck, i feel guilty for bringing steel's condition into this, but how fucking heartbroken did ya'll feel when he got his 50/50 to survive prognosis? just imagine how he felt himself being told that. imagine TELLING that to people over and over again and knowing the reason you have to tell this to people is because people with no fucking idea of what they're talking about decides 'this is immoral because it's a potential life'.

so yeah, fuck anyone who's against stem cell research. seriously, fuck them. my dad has an excellent reason to hate anyone who opposes this and knows much better what it actually means than you sayin "YEAH WELL HE'S NOT A PARAGON OF MORALITY OH AND LOL NO WONDER LARS' DAD IS FOR ABORTION [POSTS ][/POSTS]".



edit3: i hope you can forgive me for that steel

your dad's opinion is worth way less because of this actually

having experience with what the issue is REALLY about makes the opinion worth less? being distanced and not fathoming we're talking about actual lives is a better ground for making opinion? that's like saying people who have never met people of other races have better opinions when it comes to racism and integration.

doctors do horrible things to people every day to make them better. weigh up the chances of survival when deciding treatments, or who gets organs, levels of pain etc etc.

doctors as in very few doctors i presume? because most doctors never make a single life/death choice or anything similar during their whole careers.

it's pretty silly asking a scientist for ethical opinions anyway imo

scientists study the scientific method and history of science. they KNOW what progress means. sure, my dad, as a scientist, has killed off hundreds of dogs in his studies. he has also saved hundreds of humans lives and has made (along with his colleagues) breakthrough in the heart transplantation field that'll lead to countless more lives saved. it's ambivalence at it's best, of course, but considering the appreciation for human life is what weighs more heavily than dogs being killed i'd say they're pretty excellent for ethical opinions. they know what it takes. it's never "heh lets not do anything that could be dangerous/unethical and hope medicine progresses on its own B)". medicine, although a huge field, isn't organical and won't progress unless you give researchers what they need to make it progress. and since my dad has been a part of making medicine progress, isn't he far ahead of you or me or anyone at gw as to know the ACTUAL ramifications of ethics in research?



edit: also the gif posting can be pretty easily interpreted as "heh he got you i guess he wish he had aborted that one!" or something of the likes, and it's pretty fucking insulting in case you don't know, and I'm pretty fucking sure you're completely aware that that's how most people (including me) would interpret it.

edit2: I know the first edit is a bit of a soft subject so I'm sorry if I offended you but really, that's how it came across for me and I get pretty angry when people say shit like that. Yeah I actually am really, sincerely, sorry if I kind of opened a wound that was closing or anything of the likes. That's not my intention at all, I have respect for the shit you've gone through and I am not fucking joking (using correct grammar for the first time is a pretty good sign I'm serious) that if that remark in any way hurt you. That was, however, the way I interpreted your comment and I'd also call it the most likely interpretation so yeah that remark is pretty offensive to me nonetheless, man.