From Newsweek: A Stem-Cell Surprise

Posted by Kendall Harmon

After a successful series of infertility treatments, Kristen Cohen and her husband, Lee, had two sets of twin boys, now ages 6 and 2. They also had about a dozen embryos that they no longer needed but could not imagine going to waste. "We went through so much to create these embryos," says Kristen. "This was much more than blood, sweat and tears." The Cohens had also benefited firsthand from medical research; Lee, who has cystic fibrosis, has been helped by advanced treatments. So in 2006, when Kristen saw an article about the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, she contacted it and began the process of donating their embryos, which could be used to create new lines of embryonic stem cells. After five months of paperwork and counseling for the couple, the Cohen embryos were in the hands of researchers. "We know they might be destroyed without making a single stem-cell line," Kristen says. "I don't need to know that my embryo helped save patient X. It's the greater good."

Read it all.




Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Life Ethics

6 Comments
Posted July 28, 2007 at 10:03 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Christopher Hathaway wrote:

Wow. What wisdom and compassion, and frugality.

The Chineese are already way ahead of us on this. They’re harvesting organs from condemned prisoners who are just going to be executed anyway for the crime of….whatever.

Waste not, want not.

That road to destruction is broad and winding, and a wee bit slippery. But that makes it easier to slide on your ass all the way down.

July 28, 10:49 am | [comment link]
2. DonGander wrote:

I want to donate some otherwise wasted news reporters to science.

DonGander

July 28, 12:08 pm | [comment link]
3. libraryjim wrote:

Don,
They would be good candidates for experimental brain translpant operations, since theirs are hardly used as it is.

July 29, 1:51 pm | [comment link]
4. John316 wrote:

I want to donate some otherwise wasted news reporters to science.

Don, why would you want to harm the reporter for telling you about this couple?  This approach to the report seems un-scriptural and as un-Christian as the reported act itself.

July 30, 9:11 pm | [comment link]
5. DonGander wrote:

“Don, why would you want to harm the reporter for telling you about this couple?”

Except for one paragragh the whole article is a monolithic propaganda piece. It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth (and heart).

Those who view much mass media in this country are in general quite used to seeing it and are accepting of it. I am not.

There is no “meat” to the story at all. All sugar and spice - tastes good but leaves one ill.

DonGander

July 30, 9:29 pm | [comment link]
6. John316 wrote:

I join you in the bad feelings about the destruction of the embryos, and perhaps we should stop creating them in the first place, but I don’t agree that the reporter is at fault for telling us what is going on.  I wish that the reporter could discuss with us the limitation of magazine space and time to produce the article before we “donate” her to science.

July 30, 10:28 pm | [comment link]
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