Stem cells research, Embyro and the origin of Life

I read in news that Bush vetoed a bill of funding for stem cells research yesterday. It is the first veto in his 5 1/2-year presidency. Then, scientists around the world reacted with anger to Bush's veto on it. Bush argued that the bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others and it crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. Mr Bush believes every human embryo is a potential life. And you?

It is not Bush alone now. Germany is also pushing for an EU ban on European funding for embryonic stem cell research. German research minister, Annette Schavan wrote: "The European Union science programme should not be used to give financial incentives to kill embryos ... The current proposal from the European Commission and the European Parliament does not rule this out." So, how many more countries will be at Bush side and how people will react is very interesting for me. Until now, California and Illinois governors have announced to raise their states fund for stem cells research against Bush.

What are the stem cells?

What do think of that? Is it acceptable for you that the taking of stem cells from Lab-created embryos. Embryo is a multicellular organism in the earliest stage of development. Once a sperm fertilize an ovum, the result is called zygote which is the combined single cell of a sperm and an ovum. Then, the zygote will begin to divide by a process to produce a multicellular organism. The stage of multicellular organism from the first division of zygote to the next stage, fetus is called embryo. Usually, the stage of embryo takes about 8 weeks. At the end of the 8th week, the embryonic stage is over, and the fetal stage begins. In stem cells research, scientists want to take the stem cells from 4 to 5 days old embryos.

Many people do believe that life begins at conception when a sperm and an egg cell combine, so embryo is a potential human life and totally against the destruction of embryos left over from fertilization procedures. Do you agree with that? It is an arguable question that an embryo is just the physical organism or it is alive. So, what do you think that when life begins?Since fertilization or zygote or embryonic stage or fetal stage or only when born. Also, how do Buddhist people believe in it? I still don't have a right answer for this now. It is related to the very old and interesting question , "When does life begin?".

THKZ
(7/20/2006)