"There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples." —2001
During the early days of the Bush administration, in the final few, lazy summer weeks before 9-11, a strange policy on embryonic stem cell lines was announced. Research would continue on existing lines, but no new lines would be produced with taxpayer dollars. This was considered a naked pander to the religious right.
For the hardcore women's health hating wingnut, it somehow meant "children" would be "saved." By "children," they meant blastocysts about the size of a period at the end of this sentence. By "saved," they meant those blastocysts would be thrown out with medical waste instead of diverted to research. Like so many brain-twisting, soul-crushing ideas put forth by the usual suspects, it made absolutely no sense, saved no one, and needlessly delayed important scientific research for years. One of the first things the Obama administration did once in office in 2009 was to reverse course.
The real discussion to be had isn't whether or not unwanted blastocysts should be used for research or disposed of in an incinerator. It's far more profound than that:
As we move to change the meaning of human embodiment in fundamental ways, including the possibility of eroding species boundaries, we need to ask whether we are prepared to reduce the entire natural world to the status of artifact.
Despite the overwhelming questions of embryo status, ultimately the fundamental question raised by stem cell research is not about the embryo. Instead, it is about the future toward which biotechnology beckons us [...]
When science and technology defeat death, religion as we know it will end. Theologians will be out of jobs when there are superintelligences. Religion is always fighting the future, but the future will arrive nonetheless. And when biotechnology eliminates disease and improves the human condition, no one will care what the theologians have to say.