[peter12]

You began with a claim of personal discomfort, and have equated the results of this research with "human harvesting". This is probably something that needs to be addressed in more detail, as AC, Thor, troutman and others have pointed out that this characterization is erroneous. Please clarify.

I'm not an expert on bio-ethics by any means. I expressed discomfort with the process given my experience in another field, namely politics. I am uncomfortable with stem cell research, IVF and other reproductive technologies because they represent a separation of the public realm and the private realm. All of these technologies promise to reap enormous benefits for the individual, such as long-lasting and healthy life, but because they are kept separate from the moral and political world, as many posters have insisted they should be, they separate humans from the human life. That is, a moral, political and cultural life dedicated to a single end, technological supremacy over the human body. Human life loses its meaning unless it serves some utilitarian purpose. This is a complicated argument that I am making and I feel personally quite tired even trying to make it as the status quo arguments are so apparently self-evident to so many people lacking in the proper context to make sound moral decisions.

You have again made a values claim and projected it as an axiom. You have not yet established that the science is fruitless or that the results are utopian, and have also failed to demonstrate why we are better off "caring and loving for the sick". What does this mean, anyways?

How can anyone demonstrate that any science is fruitless or without purpose given the current status quo? Many posters have stated that technology is merely the process by which human beings explore, expand and take control of their surroundings. This is a value statement as well even when it is passed off as having some sort of absolute merit.

I should go on to further explain that my views on politics and human life figure largely into this view. I'll expand a bit, but I really expect that people on here will just respond with more popular misconceptions about politics. Basically, politics is the highest human activity. I am not necessarily talking about "Washington, Edmonton or Ottawa" when I say "politics." Rather, I am talking about the means to answer the ancient question, "who rules?" This is a question that has no real apparent answer, but has many different and superb arguments struggling to place it within a proper moral framework. What it really means when one asks this question properly is that politics becomes an end in itself. That is, the act of governing and being governed is something that humans engage in forever. Always struggling to find moral answers in a world which lacks any morality but which humans impose moral order upon.

The "problem" or rather the dialogic issue with science is that on one hand it seeks to serve humanity but it also, whether purposively or inevitably, also extends control over the activity of politics, making science or technology an end in itself. I was reading the response to my postulate on whether or not we should explore the stars and what really jumped out at me were the supposed facts eventually mankind would have to move on or that answers to our immediate problems lie in studying the stars. The answer that many posed was essentially an untested faith that science would come up with the solutions to these problems and not politics.

My ultimate issue with IVF and stem cell research is not the potential fruits that could be reaped but rather that our concept of the good life now lies on the magic and unfulfilled fruits of an unpredictable science rather than in the fellowship and discussion with our fellow human beings.

This IS a values statement, but that's the point. Most things that we say politically are values statement and we must defend them with the moral science, of which, incidentally, rhetoric is one. What frightens me, especially, are the people who believe that this is no longer a subject for empirical discussion.