Here is the question: Is it acceptable to select and give birth to a child to save another child's life? What do you think? Should we use genetic engineering to create babies and use the baby to save someone's life? Or simply leave the child to die or undergo painful treatments simply because of some ethical problems? But are those ethical problems really a problem? And who would pay for the precedure? The government? The family? Let's hear your thoughts
I recall seeing something like this on the enws a while ago. A couple with a sick baby, and the doctors said only a sibling of the baby could domate what was needed (bone marrow or something). So they ahd another baby. They love the second baby too, and it allowed the first to survive. I see no problems with it at all.
Some critics accused scientists of playing gods by designing babies. Do you think this is reasonable? If this baby can be used to save someone elses' life and will be loved by the family, this shouldn't be a problem. But why are still people criticising this? Shouldn't dismiss the impluses for saving lives just because of the large possibility that it might not be sucessful and the embryos might die? I mean, should we consider a human enbyro to be human?
I don't see it as playing "god". You have to be a christian or such to even let such a stupid phrase (playing god) into the discussion, and I don't like those idiot politicians and reports who do it. Why do they even mention religion? It's silly. It's people doing what they can to help each other, that's it. If genetic engineering means we can eradicate such things as osteo genesis imperfecta, then I'm all for it. And so is my aunt, who has that condition.
And I should add that there is, and has never been, anything wrong with the casual disposal of cells which have the potential to become human beings. If there was anything wrong with it, then all women would have to cease ovulating and men would no longer be able to masturbate. But we do. It is part of our nature, part of our lives, so it must be entirely natural. Very simple. We discard these cells all the time.
That's exactly what I thought. Let's say that a seed of the plant has a destiny to become a plant when religion is taken into considerations, but usually it's eaten by a bird, or somehow, cooked to become our food, the possibility for it to become a plant is quite low, that's why they produce so many of them. Same for human, for a famale, we have thousands of eggs and we basically waste them since only a few became human and for male, well, how many of them die each day? So rather waste all this, why not use it to save the existing human? But the question is, should an enbyro to be treated the same as an egg or a sperm? Just as I questioned, should we treat it as human? If we do, then it might be unethical to kill it for something like stem cell research, if not then it should be normal to do so, and don't we use other animals to do research anyway, since we are all animals, then why should there be a difference in the way we treat other animals like a mouse then to the way we treat human?
Once those cells (which we generally discard all the time anyway) become a fertilised embryo... I don't know. SHould we just chop them up for research? I'm not sure. It seems to me that sooner or later we'll be able to just grow huge batches of stem cells, or any other cells we want, without any embryo participation whatsoever. Hopefully current research will lead to that. If we get to that stage, the entire debate becomes meaningless. And after that point, we may find ourselves doing all sorts of good things for our species. But as for tat initial stage, chopping up embryos, I'm not sure. Does that actually happen often, or do researchers generally just use the umbilicals or something?
In Sweden it has recently been decided that therapeutic cloning, i.e. the creation of embryos for researc purposes, should be allowed and I think the laws are similar in the U.K. so I suppose it is being practiced. Swedish scientists hav actually received a large donation from an American foundation because of George Bush's recent decision on the matter. To me it's not a problem. I believe somebody who isn't against abortion shouldn't be against therapeutic cloning either.
Yes, they use the stem cells from the umbilical cord from the "designed babies". They first develop the embyro then implant it into the mother and once it is born, the stem cells from the newborns unbilical cord is collected which can be unfsed into the person's blood stream (the one to be saved). So if the procedure worked, then you'll have a healthy baby and you'll save the other, but if not, the enbyro will die, which is about 4 in 5 cases. It is still hard to overcome the embyro problem, may be it's not ethical to kill them. So there is still the problem to whether we should classify it as human or not. What do you think?
Should they be considered human? I have no idea. Depends what you consider makes us human. The blood and bones and chunks or meat, or our personality? Does the personality start from the moment we are born, from the moment we are concieved, or does it begin to gradually develop throughout gestation?
In one of my other thread, I was discussing whether humans are machines. Some argued that we are not because we have a soul, but do we really have a soul? What I thought was that we are made up of millions of nanomachines that works together and one day we will be able to build everything inside us without going through the process of pregnancy and etc. Does that make us less human? (the truth is, no one can really tell if you are "made" by machines or humans, we are all "made". Once I read that all mankind were born innocent, and it is the environment or the outside factors which makes up the personalities (from ancient philosophy), but then babies can start hearing sounds in the womb, so that is not absolutely accurate, it all depends on your personal view. Or is it? I think people try to denie the fact that genetic engineering can help people may be due to the fear from all the science fiction film that the "designed" people takes over the world or something like that, but isn't destiny controlled by us? It is just something that is more likely to happen rather than the inevitable thing which is gonna happen no matter what.
