Good points from John which I think conclusively answer beliefs some (not myself) Christians may have that moral ideas and equality were absent pre 30-33AD.I've appreciate both standpoints in this Blog! I think the source of Jesus' & Paul's beliefs has to be founded in OT theology due to their context which was most certainly Jewish?

(James Thompson, on "Atheism and the Good Life")

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Stem cells

There are two things that make stem cells special - they can turn into any type of tissue in the body and they can keep replicating indefinitely.

Scientists are excited about the potential use of stem cells in combating diseases for which we currently have no cure, diseases which involve death of tissue which doesn’t regenerate, like spinal cord problems, heart attacks, different types of blood disorders, brain disorders like Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes, and many others. This is a very promising area of medical research, often called ‘regenerative medicine’, to which no sensible person objects.

Now many people are confused about stem cells because they don’t realise there are two types, depending on from where they are collected. Firstly there are embryonic stem cells, collected from the inner cell mass of a six day old blastocyst, a process which kills the embryo.

The second category is adult stem cells, a slightly confusing term as they are collected not just from adults, but also children, placenta, cord blood, in fact any source other than embryos. The harvest of these stem cells does not cause any lasting damage to the person from whom they are collected.

Those who value human life from fertilisation immediately recognise an ethical difference between these two types of stem cells, as one involves death of the developing human from which it is harvested, while the other causes no lasting damage. 
  Those who value human life from fertilisation recognise an ethical difference between … two types of stem cells  
 

The plan for using stem cells in therapy is that once they are grown in the laboratory, if they could be turned into the type of cell you needed for a particular patient, you could inject them and repair the problem - heart cells for a damaged heart, nerve cells for a damaged spinal cord etc. So far research has been very encouraging for adult stem cells in many areas, with progress being made in treatment of over seventy diseases. There are problems with research into embryonic stem cells as they can turn into cancers (teratomas) when injected into animals in treatment trials. Despite this problem, some scientists want to persist with the research as ES cells are easier to harvest than adult stem cells and may be more flexible. Obviously no human research will be approved until the cancer problem is overcome.  

Opposition to embryo destruction has led to some creative thinking which has led to the discovery in late 2007 that skin cells can be reprogrammed to function like ES cells. These cells, called Induced Pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells), are produced without the use of cloning, human eggs or the destruction of human embryos. They look the same and act the same as ES cells.  

Those opposed to ES cell research have no ethical objection to regenerative medicine that uses adult stem cells or IPS cells. The main reason they object to ES cell research is because it involves the destruction of embryonic humans. But there is another ethical problem they foresee in ES cell therapy, that of cloning.

Cloning

Obviously, the aim of research on ES cells is a worthy one - the development of therapies to help sick patients. But to explain the ethical dilemma, imagine this scenario. Suppose I sustain an injury to my spinal cord so that I can no longer walk. In the future doctors may decide to treat me with ES cell therapy. However, if they take one of those frozen embryos in an IVF laboratory and grow it up into a blastocyst, harvest the ES cells, turn them into nerve cells and inject them into my neck, my body would reject them. This is because my body would recognise that they have different DNA (genetic material) to my cells. 

To overcome this rejection problem it has been suggested that instead of using a frozen excess embryo, we make an embryo clone of me. (A clone is another human with the same DNA). This would be done by taking the nucleus out of a human egg, replacing it with the nucleus from one of my cells, for example a skin cell, and stimulating it to replicate. It would then be grown to the blastocyst stage, at which time the stem cells (with my DNA) could be harvested, thus killing the embryo. This time my body would accept them as they have the same DNA as my other cells. This type of cloning is usually called ‘therapeutic cloning’, as it is hoped that therapies will be developed from it. It is also called ‘cloning for research’. (Note that this procedure is not yet possible).  
  The problem is that the process involves creating human life expressly for the purpose of killing it  

But there’s a problem. Remember Dolly the sheep? (Cloning to create a live birth is called ‘reproductive cloning’). The technology used to create her is exactly the same as that used in therapeutic cloning. If doctors had decided not to use the cloned blastocyst of me to get ES cells, but instead transferred it to a woman’s womb, it could technically come to birth as my clone.  

There is no doubt that our community generally sees reproductive cloning as wrong. There are many ethical reasons for this, including confusion of family relationships. Even when cloning technology is restricted to therapeutic purposes, it remains ethically troubling for many people. The problem is that the process involves creating human life expressly for the purpose of killing it. In some ways this is more abhorrent to those of us in the opposition camp, than reproduction, where at least the clone is given a chance of life by transferral to a womb. There is also a concern that the demand for human eggs for the cloning process would make financially needy women vulnerable to coercion to donate for large amounts of money. (Currently some IVF clinics offer thousands of dollars for donated eggs).

Further, according to opponents of destructive embryo research, none of this is necessary. You can see that it is possible to have stem cell therapies developed with no ethical problems by using adult stem cells and now we also have the promise of IPS cells.

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