Why Pro-Lifers Sometimes Question Scientists (and Media)

The media told us a few weeks ago that embryonic stem cells could now be harvested for research without killing the embryos. This was hailed as a great thing, and I too was cautiously optimistic.

While I can't endorse creating life in the lab for research purposes, I might be able to go along with limited research on those human embryos that have already been created in fertility clinics, etc. and have not been adopted--so long as the sanctity and dignity of human life was not compromised. Contrary to what secularists think of a "Bible thumper" like me, I believe scientific advances are a good thing...as long as we retain our ethics and respect for life in the process.

But I was cautious because, well, I've been lied to before. Countless times. Both by scientists with an agenda and by "objective media" sources with an agenda.

Then when George Will said that the report wasn't true, that all 16 embryos in the experiement had been destroyed, of course the Leftist media pooh-poohed Will.

It now seems Will has been vindicated. From the Philadelphia Inquirer and Mercury News:

The California biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiments.

and

Normally, embryonic stem cells are extracted when they briefly appear in a 5-day-old embryo, which has about 100 cells. This kills the embryo.

Lanza's team intervened earlier, dismantling eight- to 10-cell embryos, then signaling the individual cells to transform into stem cells. This transformation was a breakthrough, but it was highly inefficient: Of 91 individual cells, only two ultimately made new stem-cell colonies.

See why people who hold life to be sacred are inherently suspicious when new "breakthroughs" are hailed?

The report does go on to say

Here is where the paper turned speculative: The 16 dismantled embryos might have survived if only one or two of their eight cells had been removed.

Indeed, infertility clinics occasionally perform ``embryo biopsy'' on an eight-cell embryo to screen for genetic diseases before letting the embryo grow to about 100 cells, the size normally implanted in a womb.

The Nature paper showed a picture of a 100-cell embryo that Lanza's lab had biopsied at the eight-cell stage -- implying that it was part of the stem-cell experiments rather than separate, related research.

Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells ``can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo.''

Wednesday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.

It sounds like from this report that stem cells have been successfully harvested in fertility clinics. But I have to ask: if it's been done successfully in fertility clinics, why have research scientists not adopted this technique?

I have to ask myself, based on experience, are they lying to me here, too?