On Killing Snowflake
'Snowflake' babies bring the debate to life
Embryos are "human beings from conception," Houston native Tracy Jones, 32, said Tuesday. She proudly showed the first picture of her child ? when he was just a mass of cells.The Joneses were among more than a dozen families who traveled to Washington this week, with the children they bore from unused embryos they "adopted" from other families, to protest a House bill that would expand the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research.
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The couple was matched with and adopted 10 unused embryos from a family in Michigan. Three survived the thawing process (the survival rate is about 50 percent), and were implanted in Tracy's womb. One took hold. The whole process cost them about $7,500.
The Joneses shared their story Tuesday in a private meeting with their congressman, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Austin who has five children and whose wife, Linda, served as a surrogate mother for her sister's child. McCaul voted against the stem-cell bill.
"This is human life from the very beginning," he said.
The Joneses nodded in agreement.
Getting to the emphasized part first ... what I'm reading is that, by their own definition, this couple just killed 9 lives to create one. That's hardly the best pro-life case for banning federal funding of embryonic stem cell research if you ask me. Yet the case that the Jones family makes on the initial point seems to dive head first into the cement pond of logic when the numbers are crunched.
Beyond that, the real pro-life issue at stake here is that research benefits more lives. Not that there's a binary choice at stake here, but the short shrift given to research is wholly unwarranted by anyone consistent in their concern for human life. It's not quite playing Solomon with the 400,000 excess embryos, either. As the article quotes, about half of these embryos survive thawing alone. If we're going to be consistent and argue that this represents the ending of human life, then shouldn't the donating families be put on trial? It isn't as if researchers are taking the embryos out to the firing range and using them for target practice, either. These are used for medical research that are widely believed to hold the key for many of the most debilitating illnesses and conditions. This is a life issue for them, too.
Great post Greg. It just pissed me off even more that the story quotes my idiot congressman.
Not to criticize here, but your case isn't so impregnable either. The fact is that if you create human beings in a petri dish, it's nearly impossible to get them out safely with anything better than a maybe a 10% or 20% survival rate.
It's like a mining accident where 10 people are stuck underground. Trying to get them out will be dangerous, they might all die, and it's likely only one or two will survive. Of course the alternative is to just leave them there until they all die eventually. So if you go ahead and try to get them out, but several die, are you guilty of "killing" them?
Semi-fair point there Jeff. Here's where I think it's not a perfect comparison:
Your analogy assumes that the Smiths tried to have 10 babies. Not to put words in their mouths, but I'm not sure that was exactly Plan A.
I think somewhere closer to reality might be this scenario ... let's say you have 100 seeds for a plant of some sort. None of the plants presently exist in nature and there's not a lot known about whether the seeds will actually grow or under what conditions they grow best ... you just know it's a seed. For the sake of argument, let's say you know that the seeds have some beneficial purpose. They're not seeds for a crack tree or a tree with some hideous odor that affronts anyone in a 100 mile radius.
How to get the most seeds for all involed? Some should be planted (just as some embryos get adopted by families) just to see what happens. But if you plant 10 seeds and only 1 survives, there's a great loss here in terms of seeds and also an opportunity cost for what you could have learned by studying the seed to determine where it might best grow. There's also a place for studying what can be studied of the seeds without planting to avoid just such a loss.
In this case, if research of the seeds indicates that growing it with trees makes them less likely to suffer from certain diseases and other tree-like afflictions, a greater good is accomplished than just the one seed could accomplish on its own.
Jeez, I feel like playing a Rush song now ....
Congressman Smith (R-NJ) was on C-Span this morning. This same question was asked in another form: why do you support fertility clinics if you know most of the embryos will be destroyed?
He danced around the issue, brought up the Snowflake program (skipping over the survival rate) and basically said, we're trying to outlaw abortions now but fertility clinics are on the hit list.
BTW, the 400K embryos is a guess, according to Congressman Smith I've seen 180K on the NRO web site. And of the 81 healthy births, 145 children have been born through embryo adoption nationwide since 1988. I assume the 64 others had some physical problem or were aborted. They aren't mentioned in print.
Thanks for the added info there, EG ... for my own sake, one strong selling point comes from this tale:
Jim Langevin, of course, is the pro-life Democrat that various Hollywood types were so vastly offended by. He also voted for lifting the restrictions, apparently understanding how this life issue affects him.
You raise an interesting point with that last comment Greg. A pro-Life Dem can support this research mostly because it has little or no relation to abortion in my view. One of the great coups of the Republicans are in linking the two issues together.
The sticking point really is the "life begins at conception" stance. I'm not here to really bust that, but if we equate embryonic stem cell research with abortion using this frame, then just about every woman is guilty of committing abortions. Many fertilized eggs are lost through menstruation that are no different from the embryos we're talking about.
Logic flies out the door for some people when we begin debating abortion, so we should not cede ground to them by letting them link these two totally separate issues together. Not when so many lives can be helped and so much can be learned.
You're right that, even in thawing ten embryos, the Smiths probably did not intend to have 10 kids, but we don't know how they did it. They might have decided they wanted to implant 3 and thawed them one by one until they had three living ones. If they implanted all three that survived, then it certainly seems like they were being very careful and respectful of the embryos, since even in the unlikely event that they all took hold it would still have been possible to carry them safely to term. Fertility clinics by contrast are typically pretty careless and make more embryos than will likely be implanted (they either kill or freeze the extras, the reason we have so many extras in the first place), and implant such a large number that, if all or most take hold, the woman will probably abort a few early on.
The fact that only 30% survived the thawing process will be just as bad if they are used for research, because the researchers can only use thawed, live embryos just the same.
I am also a little confused about your analogy. You say, "None of the plants presently exist in nature and there's not a lot known about whether the seeds will actually grow or under what conditions they grow best ... you just know it's a seed." But, analogously, we know that adult humans exist in nature, that human embryos grow into adult humans, and that the conditions under which embryos grow best are those of the human womb. So did I misunderstand your analogy?
As imperfect as my own analogy was, the point I think I was trying to get at there (perhaps superfilously) was that there was no other means by which to procure more seeds, thereby placing a hazy comparison between a tree that could only grow from the seeds to a couple that is unable to conceive on their own.
I do somewhat better analogies after a hearty breakfast.
And Nate, People understand that there is a difference between having a miscarriage and getting an abortion. Similarly, there is a difference between losing an embryo that happens to not implant in menstruation and creating or thawing one to use in a science experiment.
It's always interesting to me why so many of the pro-life people are strong supporters of the death penalty and big supporters of G. W. Bush's wholesale slaughter of 100,000 citizens of a country that posed no threat to the security or interests of the United States.
Now retired General Tommy Franks said shortly after Bush invaded Iraq, "We don't do body counts." While it's impossible to know the exact number killed in Iraq, not to mention the well-documented 1,650 or so U.S. soldiers who came home in bodybags, independent studies and surveys by hospitals, the International Red Cross Committee and Johns Hopkins University estimate between 30,000 and 100,000 deaths were caused directly due to Bush's Iraq invasion and ongoing military action since May 2003 when he declared "Mission Accomplished" aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln where he bragged that major hostilities had ended in Iraq.
I will assume that some of the Iraqi women who died in these bombings and hostilities were also pregnant. But of course, their babies will not be born, nor will those of the dead 1,650 or so U.S. soldiers, thanks to Bush's war.
My position is quite simple: put the hypocrisy aside and allow stem cell research to go ahead. It will anyway, with or without government funding. Other states, including California and Connecticut, to name just two, are going ahead with stem cell research. Connecticut's Republican governor M. Jodi Rell said she will sign such legislation stating, ?In my state budget address in February, I made it clear that any investment in stem cell research would be critical to the future of our state. That is why I thank members of the State Senate for taking swift action on this legislation today and I encourage the state House of Representatives to show the same level of bipartisan support. I would be proud to sign the bill when it reaches my desk."
The idea that a couple can go to a fertility clinic like the one in Fullerton, California,
Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency, have a fertilized egg implanted in the womb, then say nothing about the 20 or more other fertilized eggs that are allowed to die is not only puzzling but appallingly hypocritical. Not only that, but Nightlight is subject to zero government regulations or standards, operating their business with a free hand and zero requirements that past and present donors of embryos are screened for sexually transmitted diseases (STD) or other possible genetic abnormalities. And who's to say that these people, foisting themselves off as pro-life, have the best interests of prospective parents when stacked up against their zeal for increasing their bottom line profits?
But even private research would be banned if Bush had his druthers, stating recently that "embryonic stem cell research is unethical."
Of the 12,000 U. S. military who came home wounded in action over half of them suffered injuries serious enough to cause permanent disabilities. Many of the roadside bombs, according to statistics I have read, caused major brain damage, paralysis, loss of vision and dismemberment.
To deny these young soldiers a chance at living a full and productive life because of a monstrously hypocritical, but powerful minority of religionists and ethical purists, is unconscionable. Help may be on the way but it will be slow coming.