Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
59 
thawed out and discarded and destroyed, or used to poten- 
tially benefit mankind? 
One form of this argument, heard increasingly over the past 
few years, begins with data about disease prevalence and 
suggests that anyone who obstructs public funding of research 
that might someday help patients suffering from such diseases 
must bear some of the responsibility for their future suffering 
and (perhaps) death/^ Some opponents have countered that 
any assertion that makes relief of human suffering the highest 
moral principle to this extent might logically impugn any and 
all deflection of resources into less ultimate concerns such as 
recreation, beautification, or social ceremony. Others respond 
more directly that an unwillingness to violate one’s moral prin- 
ciples in order to help relieve the sick does not make one re- 
sponsible for their sickness. 
In most cases, however, the arguments for grounding fed- 
eral funding policy in the importance of biomedical research do 
not blame opponents for the suffering of the sick. Rather, they 
focus on the promise of bringing relief to those who most need 
it. They point to the immense benefits already delivered to us 
by modem medicine and argue that the federal government 
should advance this cause in whatever ways it reasonably can. 
Many advocates of this view agree that nascent human life 
should receive respectful treatment, but they argue that the 
claims of our duties to human embryos — ^whether in general or 
in particular circumstances, like those stored in fertility clinic 
freezers — cannot simply trump the claims of promising medical 
research and our duties to suffering humanity. The obligation 
to aid the sick, they contend, and the fact that the research in 
question might relieve the pain and terrible suffering of count- 
less patients and their families, should lead us to do all that 
can reasonably be done to find treatments and cures, and to 
offer help. This does not mean simply ignoring the significance 
of human embryos, or taking lightly the decision to destroy 
them in research, but, they suggest, it should mean taking se- 
riously the moral calling to help the suffering, and deciding 
how to proceed based on more than one sort of obligation. 
In response, one commentator has argued in broad terms 
against the underlying assumption that the demands of bio- 
medical research should somehow be seen as "imperative." 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
