Arguing for embryonic stem cell research often places one opposite a person of fervent theocratic convictions who will wrap their ideology up in swaddling clothes and haloes while real people suffer and die from disorders that may someday be cured. We need to deal with the flaws in their thinking. And, although I may think of them as dangerously ignorant, cold-hearted, fringe fanatics, John Kerry demonstrated that we need to treat them with respect while still arguing full force.
First of all, those opposed to embryonic stem cell research funding are a small minority. This link shows that, on July 30, an ABC poll showed 63% of the public in support of stem cell research including that into embryonic stem cells (I've heard even higher numbers in support, like 78%).
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/poll010803.html
(more below)
And indeed, it is a minority even among people of faith. If 84% of the public believes in God, and at least 63% support embryonic stem cell research (we'll use that number in order to be conservative), then, multiplying the 37% who do not support embryonic stem cell research x 84% who believe in God, and you get a mere 31% of people of faith who opposed embryonic stem cell research. Even if all of the people who do not support embryonic stem cell research are religious, then it is still a minority of people of faith, as only 37% oppose, but 47% support it.
These folks tend to be anti-choice folks for whom even birth control is problematic. There is lovely talk about a "seamless garmemt" of life. They resent their taxes being used to finance birth-control pills, morning-after pills, abortions and embryonic stem cell research.
But one might ask, why is it that we who have a problem with optional wars, capital punishment and the proliferation of weaponry can't force everyone else to bend to our ethical demands (and why do we have to pay for it)? We happen to see every human being as, well, a human being, worthy of existence. So why should a far weaker argument, that a tiny clot of 50-100 undifferentiated cells no larger than a pinhead about to be washed down a drain is more valuable than living breathing humans with nervous systems and an exquisite capacity to suffer, prevail over all of us?
The opponents of embryonic stem cell research say that they are opposed to experimentation that involves the destruction or damaging of balls of cells which, if implanted, would grow into a human. The operant words here are "if implanted". Blastocysts in petri dishes, frozen, or washed down a drain will never become a human. Indeed, it begs the question: Where will the advocates for these blastocysts secure the thousands of uteruses required to make these blastocysts into human beings? Are we looking at a future of reproductive slavery utilizing unwilling women? Barring this hideously nightmarish option, the incorporation into a living person's body as a therapeutic tissue is the best chance for survival for these embryonic cells.
People who are opposed to embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning can, like Christian Scientists, choose not to avail themselves of the benefits the research. But to attempt to deny it to those who have no such beliefs (and remember, it's only a belief, not a universal demonstrable truth) is an unjustifiable tyranny of an illogical minority. The logical extension of these beliefs would be to revere human DNA, even that found in skin cells sloughed off into house dust, because it is theoretically possible to create a blastocyst from it using a donated egg. This is, in fact, what therapeutic cloning seeks to do, to create genetically matching embryonic stem cells.
One argument given is that adult somatic stem cells, or those found in the tissues of adults, are sufficient, and that embryonic stem cells are not needed. Adult stem cells have been used for 40 years, in the form of bone marrow transplants, while embryonic stem cells were discovered in 1996. Adult stem cell research has no limitation on funding and thus is not relevant to the issue at hand. However interesting and promising adult stem cell research is, it does not substitute for embryonic stem cell research. Adult and embryonic stem cells are different in their capabilities and their potential uses. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent (can become any type of tissue) and immortal and can create large quantities of cells, while adult stem cells appear to be more limited in the tissues they can become, and they are rare in the body and thus it is difficult to obtain sufficient cells for therapeutic applications.
Diseases that may be treated by transplanting cells made from human embryonic stem cells include Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, diabetes, traumatic spinal cord injury, stroke, Purkinje cell degeneration, Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, heart disease, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and vision and hearing loss. Additionally, the immortality of embryonic stem cells can teach us much about the nature of cancer cells.
Resources to learn about stem cell research:
International Stem Cell Forum
http://www.stemcellforum.org/about_stem_cell_research/what_are_stem_cells.cfm
Nucleus Medical Art
http://catalog.nucleusinc.com/displaymonograph.php?MID=118
In my opinion, these are people for whom domination of the scope of scientific research is the real goal. They have a profound distrust and distain of science; they must not be allowed to succeed. It is instructive to recall that it took 1500 years to advance anatomy and medicine from Aristotle's dissections because the religious establishment had qualms about dissecting corpses, which both Christians and Muslims regarded as sacred. Today, however, chances are that theocons avail themselves of the knowledge so hard won by scientists, many of whom died at the hands of the loving and merciful "people of faith", such as Michael Servetus, discoverer or pulmonary circulation, who was burned alive by Calvin.