[AC]

I really don’t have much of a reason for this thread other than ranting, but I presume others will have a viewpoint on the matter.

In my opinion, there really is nothing stranger and more selfish right now in the medical community than the obscene reasons used by the 'Religious community' (obviously speaking in the general broad understanding of the objection) to justify the halt of stem cell research

Without a doubt, stem cell research is one of the most promising lines of research in medicine today to generate medical therapies, cures and advancements.

There are a huge number of conditions and diseases that could very well be cured, or at least have advancements made one of these days by stem cell research.

And yet, this ground breaking, immensely important field of research is facing the risk of being terminated because of illogical and essentially selfish religious reasons.

Basically, the religious fear is that in order to proceed with stem cell research, we have to kill human embryos. These embryos are killed at a 3-5 day old stage.

But really, what exactly is a 3-5 day old embryo?



To summarize an example made by the author Sam Harris;

"Well its a collection of 150 cells. Not organized into a nervous system, there’s no brain, its a sphere of cells.

Maybe 150 cells sounds like a lot of cells.

Well there are 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.

If we know anything at all about the relationship between physical complexity and the possibility of having an experience, and the possibility of having interests, we know that more suffering is visited upon this earth every time we swat a fly than when we kill a 3 day old embryo."



And yet this seemingly obvious ethical argument simply cannot be made because of the special treatment we have as a society for religious faith. We are not allowed to question religious beliefs, because they are personal, and its an offense to do so.

But frankly, the stance that in a petri dish, we could have a small bundle of cells with a 'soul', which is able to trump the suffering of literally tens of millions of people is downright ignorant, selfish, and a very scary problem in my opinion.

When you consider it, we have on one side, this collection of 150 cells, and on the other, we have say; children suffering from diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancers, paralysis, full body burns, Parkinson’s disease.

Millions of people are suffering these horrible torments which could one day be curable thanks to this research.

It really just boggles my mind that anyone can oppose the life-saving possibilities that stem cell research offers.

Its the same stream of down right offensively intolerant views that allow a religious community to claim that 3rd world countries, African populations which lose millions to AIDS should not be able to use a condom, as it is an affront to god. This stance, is downright genocidal.

But this is another topic altogether.

I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish with this thread... but I just had to rant.

I'd be very interested in hearing what others have to say on this matter.