Hmm
posted by jess on March 23rd, 2004 at 3:28PM

#1 - Even if you did obtain stem cells from an umbilical cord, do you have the right to take them from the mother? Technically, the umbilical cord is hers and taking it without her knowledge to extract stem cells from is like stealing. If you were to ask for her consent and tell her exactly what you were going to do with it, then maybe she'll agree to it, maybe she won't.

How is there no slippery slope? Growing a kidney would be great in order to save people, but some people are still iffy about the process. A kidney can save a life, yes that is true. What can you say for the people who want to clone a human in order to save the life of another?

An article was brought up in class that talked about a family who's son had a rare life-threatening disease where only a bone marrow transplant could save his life. However, since transplants have the risk of being rejected by the body, the couple decided to bear another child - a daughter in this case for their son's disease is only carried by the Y chromosome - so that she can donate bone marrow to save her brother's life. The daugher was born, a few years later, they performed the transplant and up to the dated article, the son is happy and alive. Now think about this, the daughter was conceived and born solely for the purpose of saving the son's life. In this case, the couple didn't clone another human being, but they might as well. They used their daughter to save their son's life. It's a double-edged sword here.

#2 - What I've said is not wankery. At least not under the feminist care ethics theory. This theory has five central ideas to it: moral attention, sympathetic understanding, relationship awareness, accommodation, and response.

/Moral Attention/
- appreciates the complexities of life
- one becomes aware of all the details of a situation that will allow for /sympathetic understanding/
/Sympathetic Understanding/
- identification with the individual
- maternal ability to have the person's best interests in mind
- to be aware of what this person wants from me
/Relationship Awareness/
- basic relationship of fellow creatures
- immediate relationship of need and ability to fill the need
- need to preserve and nuture all of the patient's primary relationships in the health-care setting
/Accommodation/
- attempt to accommodate the needs of all, including myself
/Response/ - an ethics of care requires a reponse on my part
- it is not enough to be sympathetic - an action is required

#3 - No, I'm not creating an arguement in order to bring it down. I'm bringing up points that were discussed in my ethics class. We discuss a different topic each week and debate on all sides of the topic. This just so happened to be one such arguement.

And one last thing, I wasn't looking to reply to Dave's question. I was replying to your post, not his.

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