Editor,
Some scientists think they might have found the fountain of youth - too bad for the young.
As an undergraduate student at UNM, I worked with a very intelligent professor in the medical field. We studied the pluripotency of the stem cells in the quail embryo. As most people already know, early in the development of many organisms, there are stem cells. Stem cells are pluripotent, which means they have the ability to transform into multiple types of cells.
Early in development, the stem cells are triggered to become specific types of cells and lose their pluripotency. They go on to become parts of the body such as the heart, lungs, jawbone or something else. The hope in this research is that you can take the pluripotent stem cells from one organism and make them become the type of cells the recipient organism needs to become healthy.
One of my jobs in the laboratory was to take the quail embryo after several days of gestation, dissect it under a microscope, remove its forming spinal cord and apply solutions to extract the stem cells. I did this many times. I vividly remember watching the quail embryo under the microscope. Often, I could see the transparent heart beating and watched the blood circulating through the forming body. Once in a while, I felt bad killing the quails, knowing full well that if left alone, they would develop into full-grown birds.
Based on my research experience, I am utterly opposed to human embryonic stem-cell research. Human embryos are human beings in an early stage of development. Every person alive today once lived during the embryonic stage of life. Also, taking stem cells during this stage of life results in the death of a human being.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
This research violates two fundamental moral principles that must be followed when the recipient of our actions is another human being: Do not kill and do not steal. A human being is killed during the process of removing the stem cells, and what one human being needs for his or her development is unjustly taken and given to another.
The other negative consequence of this research is that human beings, especially the very young, are looked upon with a distorted utilitarian vision. The young are not recognized as human beings in an early stage of development; instead, they are seen as objects to be used for research and for the benefit of others at the expense of their lives.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" stated that one consequence of an unjust law is that human beings are given the status of things. This is a fitting description of President Obama's executive order to increase funding for human embryonic stem-cell research. The very young are looked upon as things to be used rather than as individual members of the human species with inalienable rights arising from their dignified human nature.
Will humans ever recognize the full humanity of each other and act accordingly?
Benjamin Sanchez
Daily Lobo reader
