The president of the United States, George Bush, held a press conference concerning the legal, moral, and ethical issues on stem cell research in general. The press conference was held on august 9, 2001 at the Bush ranch in Crawford,Texas. In the beginning of the press conference President Bush talked about how the American people as well as the government is at odds with this issue although there is research already being done through privately funded programs. President Bush has to decide whether to allow federal funds to be used for scientific research on stem cells derived from human embryos, a large number of those which already exists. Many embryos are frozen in laboratories as a product of in vitro fertilization. Scientists are arguing that some unused embryos will not even survive during long storage and many others are just destroyed. And a number of embryos are already donated to science through private funding why not through government funding also. There are tow major questions involving this issue. First, are these frozen embryos human life, and therefore, something precious to protect. And secondly, if they"re going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn't they be used for a greater good, to potential to save and improve other lives? Scientist argue that a five day old cluster of cells is not an embryo, not yet an individual, but a pre-embryo. He agrees it does have the potential for life, but it is not a life because it cannot develop on its own. .
President Bush talked about the United States" long and proud record of leading the world toward advances in science and medicine that improves human life and the world's highest standard of upholding good ethical practice. Many ethicists dismiss the scientist's arguments as a callous attempt at rationalization and believe that that cluster of cells are the same way everyone on earth started there lives. And doing research on embryonic stem cells raises profound ethical questions, because extracting the stem cell destroys the embryo, and may have potentially destroys life.
