This is (still, for the present time, at least), the law on medical procedures to terminate pregnancy, which are available (and eligible for federal funding assistance) to anyone whose personal religious beliefs allow them. Those whose religious beliefs prohibit abortion at any time after conception need never contemplate the procedure, but their religious position is not incorporated into U.S. law. Like abortion, Americans not opposed to stem cell research on religious principle should be permitted to explore its potential fully, without governmental restraint or governmental withholding of research funds available to medical researchers in general.
Before modern scientific methods allowed the more precise understanding of human gestation, both physicians and legal scholars relied on concepts like "quickening" to establish a stage of pregnancy where the fetus was considered to be a living person (Abrams & Bruckner, 1983). Modern medical techniques allow us to generate precise images of developing fetuses, and even to perform surgery in-utero long before a fetus would be viable outside the womb. Consequently, physiologists can observe fetal development closely enough to know with absolute certainty the precise point where specific anatomical features first begin to develop. The significance is that secular scientists are capable of outlining ethical principles for stem cell research based on our objective understanding of human development, not a-priori assumptions (Sagan, 1997).
Certainly, even the nonreligious understand that fetal tissue becomes a living person at some point before birth. None of them advocates research on unwanted growing fetuses. The central issue in stem cell research is research conducted on tissue that is cultivated in petri dishes long before it develops any identifiable human characteristics. To illustrate the nonsensical waste caused by current federal law, fertility clinics...
Human cloning also provokes tremendous opposition, mostly from people who do not understand what it means. Typically, it suggests images of quasi-human "clones" as second-class citizens or beings created for forcible slavery or scientific exploitation in the manner sometimes depicted by science fiction movies and literature. In truth, clones already live among us, because every identical twin is actually a clone of its twin (Sagan 1997). In reality, cloning simply refers to
Conclusion This Technology Should Be Regulated and Controlled by Government There is not really much argument that stem cell research, regardless of its origin as embryonic or otherwise should be controlled to some degree by the government as the development of this research demonstrates a potential for abuse that is startling and could essentially be highly abused. The abuse of this type of research would likely be sourced in the desire of
The media might present an issue as fact without verifying its truth via the appropriate channels, while the public in turn is eager to accept as fact what is presented to them, as this is much more simple than researching the issues themselves, or even simply verifying the truth of a stated fact. Furthermore, the authors hold that simply educating the public regarding issues of scientific controversy is far
Stem Cell Ethics Debating the Ethics of Stem Cells The term 'stem cells' can mean different things to different people. For some, it conjures images of medical miracles providing solutions for heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. For others, it terrifies with a future filled with cloned humans. Still others cringe at the thought of mass producing cultured human embryos for the sole purpose of providing organs and tissues for a paying public.
In utilitarianism, the focus is on outcomes, or the ends of an action; in deontology the actions themselves must be ethical and moral, or the outcome is moot. Deontology argues that there are norms and truths that are universal for all humans; actions then have a predisposition to right or wrong, moral or immoral. Kant believed that humans should act, at all times, as if their individual actions would
Protecting the rights of the one and sacrificing the lives of many is a sensitive subject, especially when the sides cannot even agree upon whether or not the one should have rights or not. It would seem that the establishment of researching guidelines that prevents the harming of a subject, for research purposes, has set a precedent, and that this violates right to know laws, as there is no
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