You Call That Compassion?!?

I came across this letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle.

President Bush and those who object so vocally to stem cell research on moral grounds evidently have very short memories. About 27 years ago, there was a great outcry against in vitro fertilization as being "against the will of God."

Some of those resulting children were used this week to justify not using embryonic stem cells for research.

However, those children and thousands of others are alive because people who condemned this research were overruled and more compassionate minds prevailed.

ANN MITCHELL Houston

In vitro fertilization requires the creation of many more embryos than a couple will ever need because it fails so often. It has to be tried over and over again. If it works well and the couple has all the children they want, there will be some embryos left over. If we had never learned to do in vitro fertilization, the problem of what to do with these little children would never have come up. Now that we do have this dilemma, it seems that the right thing to do is to allow couples who cannot have children of their own to adopt them.

That also does not always work. In fact, it fails far more often than it works, but at least some effort is made to save these human lives rather than to deliberately kill them for research or just throw them away with the medical waste. I did not believe that the research into in vitro fertilization was a good thing. I do not think that embryonic stem cell research is a good thing. I do not think that human cloning, whether therapeutic or reproductive, is a good thing, but ESCR and SCNT are being pushed just like in vitro fertilization was being pushed.

I certainly don't have a short memory. True, those Snowflake babies would not be here today were it not for in vitro fertilization, but the problem of what to do with these babies would not be with us today either. Look at those little faces and then think of how many millions of such little babies have died, and will die, without even being given a chance at life. What about a little compassion for those lives?