Another Virgin Birth
A couple of years back, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of South Korea published false stem cell/cloning research. While his initial claim to have successfully performed the first stem cell extraction from a cloned human embryo turned out to be false, however, a BBC article indicates that he might have stumbled upon another discovery. Apparently, the stem cells that he worked with “may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called ‘virgin birth’ method, or parthenogenesis.”
The article continues:
Professor Surani [from the University of Cambridge] said Hwang’s unwitting step forward might actually prove more useful than efforts to clone human embryos, which he had claimed fraudulently.
“I’ve always promoted the idea that efforts should be made to produce embryos from human eggs - it is far less ethically challenging, and the efficiency of these cell lines is likely to be higher than those produced from cloned embryos,” he said.
“Far less ethically challenging”? Now I am no scientist, but I find it hard to believe that forcing parthenogenesis in a lab is any less ethically challenging than cloning a human in a lab. The same questions remain over whether it is ethical to actually extract stem cells from embryos in the first place (regardless of whether the embryo is created through the traditional sexual reproduction, through in vitro fertilization, cloning, or parthenogenesis). The same questions remain concerning whether it is ethical to create or force the creation of someone in a lab, even if it is something that has happened naturally in other species of animals. At root, the exact same questions are raised concerning the beginning and sanctity of human life.
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