A web site called Right Wing Religious Wacko tries to disassemble (in the non-Bush meaning) my argument tying the ethics of in-vitro ferilization to embryonic stem cell research. I was just going to comment directly on his web site, however it wouldn’t allow me to comment (complained that I needed to be logged in, but didn’t give me a way to actually log in), so I’ll post his arguments and my responses here. For context, first read his whole argument and then come back here for my responses.

“Destruction” and “natural selection” are not equivalent concepts.

No, they’re not, but once the embryos have been artificially created, appeals to anything “natural” from this point forward are invalid. With actual intercourse, you cannot directly control how many eggs get fertilized, much less whether or not they implant. With IVF, you have direct control over most of those factors. Apples and oranges.

I understand the point that people who believe IVF is morally permissible go into the procedure knowing that some of the harvested and outside-the-womb-combined eggs and sperm may not become viable.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about viable “extra” embryos that never actually get implanted. You know, the frozen ones; the ones that ESC research folks want to use.

So, does this mean that no one should try to conceive naturally, because persons may knowingly or unknowingly be destroying (through natural selection) a newly fertilized embryo? Come on.

I have never argued this, but this isn’t a problem for someone who supports ESC research (like myself) or for someone who opposes both IVF and ESC research; it’s a problem for someone who supports IVF but opposes ESC research. That’s where the ethical inconsistency lies.

To me, an embryo that is created and never implants is not a human “life,” and that is true irrespective of whether the embryo was created naturally or unnaturally, and whether the cause of the failed implantation was natural or unnatural.

But if you argue that life begins at conception (as the most die-hard among the pro-life crowd often do), then you have to come to the realization that better than 75% of “pregnancies” end in miscarriage (through nothing more than “God’s will,” I might add), and that IVF procedures needlessly and artificially increase that number.

There are marked ethical and moral differences between IVF procedures and embryonic stem cell research. The goal of IVF is to create life. The harvesting procedure might result in embryos that die through natural selection, but the intent is for all of them to be viable.

This sounds an awful lot like “the ends justify the means” to me. I have at least one Christian friend who vehemently argues against such logic. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.

I believe that the ethical issue with this procedure has nothing to do with placing embryos into the patient (knowing some might die), but what to do with the possibility of having extra embryos that cannot be used in the initial implantation procedure (due to the ethics of not implanting too many for the safety of the patient).

And therein lies the rub. No current IVF method that I’m aware of avoids this “extra embryo” problem. And even if every created embryo is initially implanted, you still wind up with a higher embryonic destruction rate than by natural causes, because of the very nature of IVF’s “carpet bombing” approach.

Embryonic stem cell research, however, promotes life only by first destroying life (or a potential life).

At least as currently proposed, it only “destroys life” that was already going to be destroyed anyway because of someone with your high-minded “trying to create life” goals.

I patently reject your attempt to separate these two issues. They would remain very much tightly coupled, even if your pie-in-the-sky vision of how IVF ought to work mirrored reality (which it doesn’t).

We can talk about IVF how it ought to be, but that’s a separate issue. What’s before us is IVF as it exists now.