We all respect workers rights but what about the rights of embryos?
The House of Commons is about to consider the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill which raises a number of profound ethical questions some of which this viral seeks to allegorise.
Specifically, (among other things) the bill allows for the continued creation of fully human embryos for research up to 14 days (which has been legal since 1990) and also makes provision for the creation of animal-human hybrids embryos for research up to 14 days (which the bill would make legal for the first time).
At 14 days both the fully human embryos and animal-human embryos must be terminated. Since 1990 2.2 million fully human embryos have been destroyed as part of research and IVF treatment programmes.
To date fully human embryonic stem cell research has given rise to no therapies whilst adult stem cell therapy research - which does NOT involve the destruction of human life - has given rise to more than 80 therapies and over 350 clinical trials are currently underway. It is a field that remains latent with potentiality. Scientists want to create animal-human hybrid embryos to take forward the failing human embryonic stem cell research project in the context of a lack of human eggs by using animal eggs – hence the animal-human hybrid. However, if attempts to generate therapies for disease are struggling in the context of fully human embryo research this will only be more the case in the context of animal-human hybrids where there are real questions about whether hybrid entities will cohere long enough to provide any useful services. To open up this ethically troubling line of research at a time when there is so much latent potentiality in adult stem cell research which is delivering for patients, is perverse. To find out more about animal-human hybrids please look at the appropriate sections of this web site.
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