Refutation of an Argument for Stem Cell Research - by David Carrier

I find Meilaender's assessment of the stem cell research issue to be a good one. Compelling and accurate, he successfully refutes several arguments in favor of stem cell research and shows that a ban is the only reasonable course of action to take in this situation. He does this by drawing an analogy to war. With this analogy, he shows that attempts to justify stem cell research on the grounds of utilitarian reasoning, a "sliding scale," or an appeal to "supreme emergency as a permanent condition" cannot be morally supported. However, he does not consider an argument frequently put forth in favor of stem cell research, namely that the embryos used in such research (leftovers from IVF clinics) would be destroyed anyway. Proponents of stem cell research argue that they might as well be put to good use in research instead of just being destroyed.

The fallacy of this argument is evident when we consider that the medical experiments performed on the Jews under the Nazi regime were "justified" by the same reasoning. The Jews were going to be destroyed in concentration camps anyway, so the Nazi doctors chose to "put them to good use" before they died by performing experiments on them to increase medical knowledge. [I imagine it will become immediately obvious to the reader that logical extension of this analogy results in an assertion that the destruction of extra embryos for IVF therapy is comparable to destroying the Jews in concentration camps. Since I see no reason why the analogy should *not* be extended in this way, it appears that we must reconsider our practice of creating an excess of embryos in IVF and discarding them given its grave moral implications.] It appears that the near universal moral condemnation of this reasoning has been somehow forgotten, ignored, or overlooked since the argument has been repackaged in the form of the stem cell research debate. However, we must recognize that use of this argument to justify research is no more morally permissible in its new context.