Writing in a syndicated column today, conservative Cal Thomas says that embryonic stem cell research is wrong in all cases. He backs up his argument with religious reasons, observing, "Who are we -- evolutionary accidents upon whom any and all experiments should be tolerated for the 'greater good,' or are we something else and someone else's? Who made us -- a scientist in a laboratory dish, a cosmic accident, or 'our Creator'?"

Stem cell research has the ability, sometime in the future, to find cures for diseases we have now. The diseases which stem cell research would repair have to do with organic, cell-based problems, in which cells which should be healthy are missing or damaged. While all body cells are specialized, stem cells -- cells which exist in the embryo stage, as well as in umbilical cords -- have the ability to adapt and become like the cells around them. An injection of stem cells into a brain would cause the cells to become neurons. This particular feat would be tremendous, since everything we know about the brain so far suggests that neurons cannot regenerate or replicate. A stroke victim permanently loses all of the neurons that die in a stroke. An injection of stem cells could cause those stem cells to become neurons, effectively replacing the neurons that died and restoring normal brain function.

Critics of embryonic stem cell research say, "There's always hope with adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells." They also say that the federal research ban is only on federally-funded research and not private research. But there is not as much hope with adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells. These stem cells are different and are not as versatile as embryonic stem cells. As for federal money, that's how most research gets done. Private companies, it is true, do a lot of their own research, but a goodly amount of biomedical research happens at universities or other institutions, and these places get their funding from the National Institutes of Health and other federal sources. The fact is that most of the medical research going on in this country is funded by the government, and the government saying that it will not fund a particular kind of research effectively puts an end to that research, since there's no money to support it.

But what about other countries? Europe is far more advanced in their stem cell technology, an if we want to bring this argument down to the pragmatic level, then picture thousands of the United States' brightest biomedical students studying in Europe because that's where there's funding for stem cell research. Now imagine that these people live there, work there, and pay taxes on their six-figure incomes there. Not only have we lost brilliant minds, we've also lost tax revenue.

The logical leap from "embryonic stem cell research is murder" to "embryonic stem cell research should be outlawed" is "embryos are a form of life that should be preserved at all costs." But what are embryos? Fetuses they are not. Embryos are not fully-formed, tiny versions of cute babies. Embryos -- which exist in the period of human gestation from one to three months -- are not cute. They're smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, and they're a mass of cells. (Could you spot the embryo? Was it cute?) They have no discernable organ systems, they do not feel pain, they cover the most basic definition of "life." An embryo is only slightly higher on the food chain than a bacterium, and we kill the latter every day with Lysol. The "breath of life" that God infuses into a zygote when it is formed can be replicated in a laboratory; we have already created human life in a laboratory, and those "test-tube babies" are no less human than you or me (unless you're a test tube baby, in which case, you're less human than me). There is nothing special about the creation of human life. There are embryos living in freezers at fertility clinics around the country. Let's ask them how they're doing, and how they feel about being frozen. Let's also ask them how they feel about taking up space and doing nothing useful when they could be used for stem cell research.

Can destroying embryos really be called "killing," as Cal Thomas calls it? In the sense that we can kill a bacterium, a housefly, or the yeast in my beer, then yes, we can. We can kill all of those things, and we should be ashamed of it.

Can we destroy an embryo and call it "killing" in the same sense that we can kill something sentient (or possibly sentient), like a fully-formed baby, a dog, or a dolphin, then no, it is not killing. While it may be debated whether or not a dolphin has a concept and awareness of itself (sentience), we can be sure that a human embryo will never contemplate its own existence. A baby is even aware of what is going on around it -- and more importantly, it is recognizable as human. Put a late-stage human embryo, chicken embryo, and monkey embryo side-by-side-by-side and I dare you to correctly identify the human embryo. I bet it will be really hard, since they are practically indiscernable from one another.

Certainly life has a value, but not inherently. Only when we can assign value to life is it life. Hence the death of Terri Schiavo. Sure, she was alive, but was she living? We have no idea how aware she was of anything as she lay in that bed for ten years. Sure, she was breathing, but what kind of life was that? What if, somewhere inside of her head, she was screaming to be killed because she was trapped inside a useless shell of a body? In the business, we would call that torture.

What if we stopped killing bugs because they might be alive? We have as much evidence to suggest that bugs are sentient as we do to suggest that embryos are sentient. Let's not talk about the "soul" because that isn't empirical. Find me hard data that human embryos have souls, and I'll write every congressman I know to stop embryonic stem cell research. Until then, the possibility that embryonic stem cells can be used to cure illnesses is far outweighed by the much more remote possibility that they are somehow more valuable than the stuff in my yogurt. If people want to keep their own embryos safe from harm, then that's fine for them. But don't prevent people who want to use embryos for research from doing so.

(If possible, I'd like Elizabeth to weigh in on this, since she has far more experience in both zoology and working in a laboratory than I will ever have.)