Mercatornet.com is a website based with contributors from Australia and New Zealand. They stand for "Idealism and Ethics."
Here is an excellent essay by their editor, which gets to the heart of the embryonic stem cell issue.
Health Trumps Ethics in Mid-term Elections http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=411
Why has it proved so difficult to persuade voters that creating human embryos and destroying them for their stem cells is both unscientific and unethical? The case against it has logic, ethics and science on its side. The embryo, no matter how small it is, is clearly a human being. The world's most famous stem cell researcher, South Korean Hwang Woo-suk, faked his results and defrauded his government. There have been no clinical successes with the treatment. Promising ethical alternatives are available which have worked in clinical trials. And, some scientists claim, the basic science of embryonic stem cells suggests that they will never, ever work anyway. With drawbacks like these, a business seeking investors would fail. Why, then, do mainstream voters support it?Religious bias is one reason. Whether or not to use embryonic stem cells is basically an ethical and human rights issue, despite the fact that there are well-founded scientific and financial reasons for scepticism. Consequently the churches weigh in, especially the Catholic Church, even though only reason, not faith, is required to see that a tiny clump of cells as big as a full stop (or period) is still a human being. In the eyes of some voters, this has tainted the issue as another case of superstition hobbling progress.Another is three decades of abortion and two decades of in vitro fertilisation. Millions of voters have already acted on the presumption that a foetus, let alone an embryo, does not deserve the protection of the law. It would be inconsistent for them to support life in a Petri dish when they haven't supported it in the womb. No doubt, too, the views many legislators have been shaped by their own experiences. John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 election, and his wife Elizabeth had two IVF children, probably with donated eggs. In Australia, coinciding with the vote on therapeutic cloning, a leading opposition Senator revealed that he and his wife had organised donor eggs and a surrogate mother to create their newborn child. They even had to cross borders to do it because it was illegal in the state which he represents in Parliament. The response of the Federal Attorney-General was to propose a change in the law to legalise surrogacy throughout the country.
But surely the main reason for growing support for this technology is baby-boomers' obsession with their health. Embryonic stem cell science has been surfing an unstoppable tsunami of desperate hope. Its supporters have even managed to frame their lack of clinical success as an argument in their favour. If only we had the resources, they argue, then we would surely deliver the goods. Significantly, the disease which was most often cited in campaign advertisements was Parkinson's disease, which is mostly an ailment of the elderly. Alzheimer's is often mentioned, as well, even though it is too complex to be cured with stem cells. ...This year American will spend US$14 billion to rejuvenate themselves with cosmetic surgery. If they are willing to spend this much on a war on wrinkles, is it any surprise that they do not scruple to approve destructive embryo research?
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