Well, here we go. The Faustian journey of embryonic stem cell research is about to begin.
In order to evaluate the morality of embryonic stem cell research, how science interacts with culture, and the future of biotech, generally, one should ask: where did they get all those frozen embryos that are about to be vivisected?
In IVF, many surplus embryos are manufactured, at the cost of millions of insurance-subsidized dollars. IVF is used principally by those who are infertile from STD or abortion scarring and/or who have waited until advanced reproductive ages to form lasting relationships and to attempt childbearing.
In turn, one might ask, why do so many Americans have STD and abortion scarring and/or wait until after 35 to begin lasting relationships? Mass reliance on birth control, including abortion, since the 1960s has created an experimental/disposable mindset about sexuality and a reluctance about commitment. It's sadly interesting to hear parents of thirty year olds who favor abortion and birth control lament their child's inability to find a committed mate in our "hookup" culture.
These developments have compromised Americans' natural fertility. Characteristically, instead of re-examining, and perhaps modifying, their behavior, Americans have arrogantly transformed conception into a technological enterprise, delivered by a lucrative, lavishly supported industry.
When IVF began twenty-five years ago, who would have believed that it would soon generate hundreds of thousands of embryos that would be cut up for parts? Now that this has come to pass, why should anyone be so na•ve to think there are any limits to the biotech enterprise, as long as there is money to be made and a prevailing ethos that nature can and should be subjugated to fulfill short term, individual desires? Technology cannot be viewed in isolation: just as cars have brought us collisions that cause death and disability, sprawl, traffic, pollution and hollow, transient communities, there's an unavoidable, broader downside to commodifying life by manufacturing and destroying embryos.
Therefore, given the human harvest of embryos entailed by stem cell work, don't be surprised by anything Rather, expect to see the mining of millions of eggs from impoverished women to serve as growth medium for therapeutically cloned embryos, the harvesting or organs from IVF'd fetuses, designed humanoids and a profoundly alienated, numbly self-centered culture. One corrupt process will continue to be stacked upon another. Developing an exit strategy for biotech will be even harder than developing one for Iraq.
American individualism and hubris has already brought us across the reproductive Rubicon. Justification for abandoning notions about the sacredness and unpredictability of life that formerly held societies together will be falsely found in the notion that each new step is not much of a departure from what came before, in the potential benefits that might be rendered to a minority and in the underlying, undemocratic principle that some lives are worth more than others.
It's all about us -- or, rather, about some of us -- with no regard to context or consequence.