Stem Cell Research
Ok guys, let me start this with the caveat that I am in no way objective on this topic. I have cerebral palsy, so I see stem cell research of all kinds both embryonic and otherwise as a way that science might one day be able to regenerate the damaged part of my brain, thus healing me. Yes this is an extreme long shot because there has been so little research done.
Before I go any further let me say that I am unsure what I believe about whether or not an embryo is a human being. Yes I know that all of you are going to grill me for it in the comments section, so I am prepared for that, but that does not damage the argument that I am about to make. During his administration, Bush refused to fund stem cell research at all, which is expected, but what really got me is that he also refused to allow research to be done on frozen embryos that were going to be disposed of otherwise. While, as I stated above, I am not exactly sure how I feel about an embryo being a person, I find it hard to believe that Bush chose to allow them to be disposed of rather than turning them over to scientists and allowing them to do research on them.
Grant brought up the point that the progress seen in adult stem cell research is lightyears greater than that with embryonic research and he is correct, but I would contend that we should allow the government to at least fund research on embryos that would otherwise be thrown away and see if we could then make some progress because it honestly has not been widely funded to this point, so I believe that those statistics are somewhat skewed.
Again, I realize that to some of you any form of stem cell research is absolutely repulsive and to you I say happy commenting. I am not posting this to be controversial, but rather to spark a discussion. Fire away.
Union Public Policy Class 
I would have to say that you make a valid point about Bush being in the wrong for throwing away embryos that could have led to a great discovery. However, my problem is that what if it did lead to a huge discovery? Would people then feel they are doing a kind of “noble thing” for having their child aborte inorder to use the stem cells? I would have to say no.
Luke, just because those embryos could have been thrown away doesn’t necessarily mean that the had to be. Frozen embryos can be born.
Spicer, you bring an interesting point about what this would lead to, but my response would be that we have to get to that bridge first. If I remember correctly, the Affordable Care Act did not really address stem cell research funding, so we are really no different than we were under Bush. Seth, again, we are coming at this from two different points of view. You are saying that the embryos could have been born, and I am saying yeah but they weren’t they were thrown away so it is better to use them than it is to waste them. We are starting form a different point thus can find very little common ground.