WHICH JUST INCREASED WETNURSE SALARIES BY A FACTOR TEN:

Breast milk contains stem cells (Catherine Madden, 2/11/08, Science Network)

The Perth scientist who made the world-first discovery that human breast milk contains stem cells is confident that within five years scientists will be harvesting them to research treatment for conditions as far-reaching as spinal injuries, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

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Embryonic Debate: A Reply to William Saletan, liberal bioethics writer, former embryo. (Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, 2/11/08, National Review)

In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, William Saletan of Slate reviewed our new book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. Saletan is a deservedly respected bioethics journalist. While he is a determined defender of legal abortion and the public funding of embryo-destructive research, he is not unsympathetic to the concerns of those opposed to these practices. Unsurprisingly, then, his review of our book, though critical, was neither ungracious nor even unyielding on some important points. Saletan praised the book’s “essential and timely message.” He conceded that embryos have a certain moral standing — one that is, presumably, not enjoyed by mere gametes, tissues, or organs: “We should never create and destroy embryos lightly. We owe them our respect.” Yet the respect to which embryos are entitled, Saletan evidently believes, is not inconsistent with what he himself describes (in considering cloning) as “the mass production, exploitation, and destruction of human embryos.”

In attempting to resist our conclusion that human embryos ought not to be exploited and killed, while at the same time acknowledging their moral standing and the special respect they are owed, Saletan gets himself into a jam. To meet our argument that a human embryo is, as a matter of scientific fact, a developing human being — i.e., a living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stages of development — and thus, as a matter of basic justice, a possessor of inherent dignity and a right to life, Saletan is driven to deny that human embryos are whole entities, as opposed to mere parts (such as gametes, tissues, or organs). He denies that embryos are determinate individuals, and he seems to doubt that they are organisms at all. But if these denials and doubts are warranted, then there is no rational basis for believing that human embryos “deserve our respect” or that “we should never create or destroy them lightly.” Saletan is trying to find a plot of solid ground lying between the views of radical liberal bioethicists, on the one side, and defenders of the pro-life view, on the other. The failure of his effort shows that the middle ground is nothing but quicksand.