56 
Ethical and Policy Developments 
data about what might be achieved with human embryonic 
stem cells. ^ The greater the promise of the research, the more 
support it should receive and the more it should outweigh rea- 
sons offered for opposing the techniques involved.^ On this 
view, the concern given greatest prominence and weight in 
reaching a judgment ought to be the very great good of medi- 
cal progress toward the relief of suffering. Most of the argu- 
ments in favor of increased taxpayer funding of embryonic 
stem cell research have begun from this premise — explicitly or 
implicitly — and have proceeded by laying out the possible 
medical benefits of the research or the possible harms (to pa- 
tients or to American science) of withholding support. We shall 
review a number of these lines of argument in more detail be- 
low. But it is worth noting at the start that most of them tacitly 
assume that the policy decision at hand ought to be based on 
a reasoned balancing of crucial concerns — all of which matter 
but none of which simply overrides the others. 
Others, however, have suggested that at least a substantial 
portion of the opposition to the research rests upon the belief 
that human embryos should not be violated and therefore — if 
this claim is valid — ^that the threat to their life and worth can- 
not be justified by the promise of research.^ It follows, on this 
view, that the federal government should do nothing to en- 
courage or support the future destruction of human embryos, 
regardless of the promise of research. What remains then to be 
considered is the extent to which the government might ad- 
vance the additional aim of progress in medical research 
within the bounds of the principle.^ In this case, the moral rea- 
soning is understood to be decisively affected by an unbreach- 
able boimdary, and only the extent of some particular provi- 
sions of the policy are left to be settled by a weighing and bal- 
ancing of other priorities. Proponents of the various forms of 
this position generally argue that the claim of human embryos 
to our protection presents us with a fundamental duty, to be 
overridden, if at all, only in extreme circumstances, rather than 
with just one good to be balanced off against others.® 
In presenting the matter this way, adherents of this view 
consciously appeal to the ethics governing research with hu- 
man subjects, which obliges those engaged in efforts to ad- 
vance knowledge and seek cures to keep from trespassing 
PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION 
