Embryonic Stem Cells

Don't worry, I'm not going to actually discuss the issue. I just wanted to complain about a common argument in support of the use of embryonic stem cells for research. The argument goes, "Well, they're going to be destroyed anyway, so why not at least use them for research?" This argument presumes that the inference between "It's morally acceptable to destroy X" and "It's morally acceptable to do anything whatsoever to X" is valid. But this is clearly not the case. Consider another argument of the same form: Death row inmates are going to die anyway, so why not use them for medical research? Very few people would think this is a valid argument.

And it's even more problematic in the case of embryos. Starting to conduct medical research on death row inmates is unlikely to result in more death row inmates. Nobody's going to think, "Hey, since this research is so valuable, we should sentence more people to death row." But it's certainly reasonable to think that experimentation on embryonic stem cells, assuming it shows promise, will result in more embroys being created.