Stem cells and computer-assisted learning applications

¶ … Stem Cell Research Controversy

In principle, the basis for opposition to the use of embryonic stem cells is religious belief: specifically, the religious belief that human life begins at conception. This objection is perfectly valid as a personally held belief or a personal position of opposition to embryonic stem cell research. However, it is a completely unjustified basis for decisions about law and government policy in the United States because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids the entanglement of church and state (Dershowitz, 2002).

The opposition to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research violates fundamental constitutional principles, biological science, and common sense. That is specifically because it assigns full human status and claim to human rights to a fertilized ovum despite the fact that it may consist of nothing but four individual cells. Those cells are not "alive" in any logical sense; nor are they any more "human" just because of their genetic code than a flake of dandruff (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009).

The ethical implications of formulating federal policy based on religious beliefs were directly responsible for retarding research progress in the U.S. For approximately eight years, at the expense of millions who could have benefited from uninterrupted progress in important areas of stem-cell science. Meanwhile, it is already obvious that stem-cell-based technology in medicine will eventually enable modern medicine to cure some of the most important health problems that have so far resisted effective treatment (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009). Frankly, it is a travesty not to make use of obvious sources of fetal stem cell material such as the thousands of fertilized embryos routinely discarded by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics that always create many more embryos than they can actually use (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009).