"The religious right – backed by the President and rightwing members of Congress – believe that using a zygote to create and then harvest fetal stem cells is tantamount to murder."
(I am purposely using the medical term “zygote” rather than “fertilized human egg” or “embryo,” not because I fear use of those terms would undercut my argument but because it is more appropriate.)
The kind of research being done now in South Korea does not use fertilized human eggs. Instead they use an egg that has had its original DNA removed and replaced with DNA harvested from a different person. That’s right, Dr. Dobson, no sperm was involved. Therefore calling the South Korean-creations “fertilized eggs” or even “embryos” is not entirely accurate. But they are, unarguably, zygotes....
...Anyway, the President and his fundamentalist supporters say that using zygotes to harvest potentially life-saving fetal stem cells is wrong.
...Things get even more confusing when you try to balance this anti-fetal stem cell position with the religious right's silence on fertility clinics. These self-proclaimed "prolifers" are also self-proclaimed “pro-family” folks who apparently have absolutely no problem with fertility clinics. This very strange since the stock-in-trade of fertility clinics is to create zygotes that really ARE fertilized human eggs, embryos. No doubt about it. Those little buggers are the real deal. And these clinics create them by the millions, because the failure rate of in vitro fertilization is so high they create many times more embryos than they will ever need.
So, what do these for-profit IVF clinics they do with embryos they don’t use? Well, first they thrust these "little“people” into vats of liquid nitrogen and freeze the holy bajeebers out of them. They leave them there shivering in this frozen hell, wearing nothing by their genes, until someone decides they don’t need them any longer. Then they thaw them out, and “take them for a ride,” – a one-way ride.
“The approaches of the 175 clinics that did dispose of extra embryos varied in the extreme. Some handed the tiny ball of cells over to the couple or individual to take home, whereas some incinerated them as biological waste. Of the clinics that incinerated the embryos, four required the presence of the couple while twenty-five clinics forbade it. Seven clinics even said a prayer during disposal in a quasi-funeral, according to Arthur Caplan, a co-author of the study from the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.” (More)
"...So, let’s review. Using fetal stem cell research from artificially created zygotes is a sin -- abortion by any other name. But destroying honest-to-god embryos for profit by fertility clinics is not an issue with the religious right.
The reason IVF is not a political issue is, of course, money. Fertility clinics are insanely profitable. Fetal stem cells may or may not become a profitable business some day, but right now no real fetal stem cell business lobby is writing check on The Hill. Fertility clinics and the companies that own them are. And we are talking big money.
"On average, a patient gets pregnant only one out of three times, so many patients try IVF repeatedly. Each attempt costs anywhere from $4,000 to $18,000 for doctors' fees, plus thousands more for drugs to stimulate the woman's ovaries to produce eggs. Because patients are willing to invest that kind of money in treatments that didn't exist a few years ago - and because about ten percent of American couples have trouble conceiving - infertility is an estimated $2 billion industry annually in the United States. Pharmaceutical companies are investing millions in fertility-related drugs. Clinic management corporations traded on Wall Street are in the business of making a profit on infertility treatment for investors. Brokers are charging fees to help couples find egg donors and surrogate mothers. And the number of U.S. clinics offering IVF has been racing upward since the mid-1980s, to about 330 today." (More)
Ah, so there you have it. The real reason fertility clinics that really DO “kill” embryos by the millions are okay, but that it’s wrong to use artificially created zygotes for fetal stem cell research...."
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