Proud to be 100% pure human.

It's been a good couple of weeks for life here in Bristol. Last Tuesday night at the Chaplaincy, a professor of neuroscience from the university came to give us a talk on stem cells, an event that's been in the works since our pro-life society got started last term. The professor presented in a very accessible manner the science behind embryonic and adult stem cell research. Encouragingly, even pro-choice scientists in this country and elsewhere are beginning to recognize that embryonic stem cell research is not nearly as promising as was thought a few years ago, and as alternative, non-life threatening methods have been developed to achieve identical ends, these same scientists have begun to class embryo destruction as unethical, independent of any particular religious ideas.

I don't think I've written specifically on the blog before about some of the scary research that will in all likelihood be authorized by Parliament not long from now. Here's one particularly upsetting proposal: legalizing the creation of embryos that would be 99% human, 1%...not human. That is, a human nucleus would be implanted in some sort of animal egg -- cow, sheep, gorilla, whatever -- and a new being would be created. What exactly this mostly-human would look like would never be known, because by law all such embryos would have to be destroyed within two weeks, in the process of being plundered for stem cells (such a strange hybrid would probably not be viable in the long-term, anyhow). Sound ethical to you?

It's amazing to me that the vast majority of the British public is content to let this sort of legislation pass into law unopposed, and that there is equally little objection to the state-funded embryonic stem cell research already ongoing. I'm relieved that things have not gotten so far in the States, and I hope encouraging even a small group of students to sit up and take notice of affronts to life in the UK will make a difference here in the future.