Buried in the comments of my post "Knowing our limits (part 1) was a question too loaded to include in the original post. That was, if there are moral and ethical issues associated with embryonic stem cells, why has there not been equal concern about in vitro fertilisation, which also involves creating embryos in vitro (i.e. outside of the body, in a petri dish) and inevitably destroying those which aren’t needed. These "left-overs" are most likely going to be the source of embryonic stem cells for research.
This thought came back to me on Tuesday, as I was watching a TV interview with a 59 year old new mother of twins now the oldest woman to give birth in the US. My first reaction was to talk to the TV screen (always therapeutic), telling this woman to stop being selfish and recognise that her child-bearing years should’ve been over a long time ago. As I said in my last post, just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. But I changed my mind (almost) when she told the interviewer that her decision to have more children was the result of a dilemma over what to do with the spare embryos created from her first round of IVF. She was uncomfortable with the idea that these embryos would be discarded and thought it better that they should have a chance to become siblings to her 18 month old. If that was really her motivation, that’s a decision I admire, although she undoubtedly has some tough years ahead of her.
On a completely different note, today the United Kingdom remembers the terrorist bombings on the London Underground, 1 year ago. 52 people were killed and 700 injured. It’s a reminder to me that the War on Terror is not only "Bush’s war on terror" or even "America’s war on terror". It’s a war fought by, and on behalf of, every nation that values democracy and freedom.
Philomena
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