No societal consensus exists based on the ethics of destroying a human embryo in collecting stem cells. However many religious groups have voiced their disagreements with therapeutic cloning .
To prove that this pre embryo is a human being, they suggest that one needs only to implant it in a woman's uterus. It would then have about one chance in four of developing into a fetus. If it is lucky, then nine months later, it would have developed into a newborn.
They find a therapeutic cloning laboratory to be the ethical equivalent to the Nazi death camps at Belsen or Auschwitz. They believe that it is immoral to kill one person in order to save or extend the life of another.
- Some conservative Christians and others believe that human person-hood starts at conception. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is similar to a conventional conception process in that both produce a pre - embryo . Thus they believe that the pre - embryo produced is a human person. Therapeutic cloning requires the murder of this person in order to extract it's stem cells.
To prove that this pre embryo is a human being, they suggest that one needs only to implant it in a woman's uterus. It would then have about one chance in four of developing into a fetus. If it is lucky, then nine months later, it would have developed into a newborn.
They find a therapeutic cloning laboratory to be the ethical equivalent to the Nazi death camps at Belsen or Auschwitz. They believe that it is immoral to kill one person in order to save or extend the life of another.
- "...some argue that the embryo requires and deserves no particular moral attention whatsoever." 1 They believe that an embryo is simply a collection of cells containing DNA, not much different from skin cells that each person sheds by the millions daily. It is not a human being, not a person. It is composed of a few cells with no internal organs, arms, legs, sensory organs, brain, self-awareness, awareness of its environment, memory, thoughts, etc. It may eventually become a person, but only if allowed to mature in a woman's uterus. They believe that human personhood comes later in gestation, perhaps when the fetus "looks like" a human, or when its brain develops to the point where it becomes conscious of itself, or at birth.
- "Others accept the special status of an embryo as a potential human being, yet argue that the respect due to the embryo increases as it develops and that this respect, in the early stages in particular, may properly be weighed against the potential benefits arising from the proposed research."
- In therapeutic cloning, the pre-embryo is not allowed to develop to the embryo stage.
- Location of the pre-embryo is immaterial. How the pre-embryo was created, and what is to be done to the pre-embryo are the key factors.