Advocacy12 Mar 2005 07:58 pm
Way to go: Britain talks tough on stem cell research
The Government today said: “The UN declaration is non-binding and has no legal status, but it calls on countries to prohibit all forms of human cloning. This is totally unacceptable to the UK government which strongly supports stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research which involves the use of cloning technology. Stem cell research could lead to new treatments for serious and fatal diseases that affect millions of people.”
Source: Britain talks tough on stem cell research | The Register
August 1st, 2006 at 6:40 am
If a fertilized egg is a life and using the same in research is unethical then we have lots of unethical substances more grievous in our daily life to deal with if we should call ourselves ‘ethically clean’. In the first place let’s stop eating as we are killing animals. Well for vegetarians, again stop eating. Each leaf means life too. Stop all the animals from eating too to make them ‘ethically clean’ as we have laws and vetoes coming up to make us ‘ethically clean’. The animal trials of developing drugs or even generating antibodies in animals for human needs… they should be stopped too. These are ‘ethically unclean’ modes to benefit humans. Stop killing pests as they have the right to live too. Finally stop treatments of diseases. HIVs and microbes are living.
Can we associate the term ‘ethically clean’ to our lives? It’s a big ‘NO’. And should we at all try? Well it’s a big question to debate on. One half of us will say ‘yes’ as we have developed a brain to be more humane and more rationale beings. The other half of us will say ‘no’ stating - can we deny the fact that we are animals, however social we are? In the second scenario, we have to think of ways to benefit our own race against all odds to survive. And the truth is the ethical activists fall in our race too. They too need medication when they contract flu!
If one of us develops a heart problem how would he/she feel when there’s a replacement available to get a new lease of life? Well in other words stem cell research has the potential to give a new lease of life to the human race and to ‘other animals’ too. Any scientific advancement has an evil side to it. Developing nuclear technology is essential for benefit of mankind but it has the potential to end the same mankind. Has that stopped us from research on the nuclear technology? Rather we have a stringent control on research on nuclear technology. We need a control on stem cell research too. But that doesn’t mean we need to ban the research on stem cells.
Abortion of fetus is still allowed in most of the countries if the fetus is prior to achieving a certain stage. In that case stem cell research is more than ‘ethically clean’. Finally, who decides what is ethically clean in biology? Being a biologist I would rather like to give that privilege to the leading biologists from around the world and not the so-called ‘ethically cleaner’ people.
Let the brains have brains to decide on the animal we are and not be ethically subdued with bioethics.