Stem Cell Research: Is it Right or Wrong?

Stem cell research is a hot debate topic, especially for government officials who are up for reelection. Embryos that are just days old are frozen, and although they are fertilized and can eventually be implanted in a woman and a baby born, there is a debate as to whether they are considered a life as a frozen embryo and whether it’s right or wrong to use their stem cells.

Embryos are rich in stem cells, and stem cells have the potential to regrow just about any human body part or organ. There is the potential to help millions of people that suffer from bad hearts, liver, kidneys, and to cure horrible diseases. Stem cells that are in the embryos that might otherwise never be used could in essence provide just about all, if not all, needed body parts for so many people. But is it right to use stem cells from a frozen embryo that would otherwise be a baby?

The question lies in just where a person considers life to begin. Christians believe that life begins at conception, the moment that the sperm and egg unite and the egg is fertilized. In that aspect, an embryo that is frozen is still a life, and to use it for stem cell research would simply be wrong and considered the same as murder by some people.

Some would argue that a life beings at birth, that up until that time, the embryo isn’t alive or a life. Some say life begins when the mom feels the baby kick inside of her. Those that argue that life isn’t life at all until this time are more apt to say that stem cell research is right, that although an embryo that could be a baby later isn’t yet born, so it’s okay to use it to help other people.

But is it really okay to do away with one life just because it hasn’t been born to help others? It’s a question that some answer easily and yet other people wrestle with the humanity of it…doing away with one life to save others. Stem cells have the ability to help so many people. Helping someone can’t be wrong. But is it right for an embryo, considered as life by many, to be used to save others when it is unable to make the decision to give its own life to save others? On the flip side, as an embryo and unable to decide on its own what its fate will be, who has the right to decide whether it should be used to help save others?

The Bush administration opposes stem cell research, which has upset those who support stem cell research. This brings to up the question of how far should the government go to protect human life, as some would see it, or to prevent scientists from helping care for the human race and help cure people. Stem cell research has valued points in favor of it. But at what cost to babies that have yet to be born?