When biomedical researchers look for moral guidance, they are turning with greater frequency to experts and scholars in bioethics. For example, the biotech firm Geron Corporation, which funded the successful cultivation of human embryonic stem cells, has established an independent ethics advisory board to develop research guidelines. But unfortunately, bioethics has in many cases lost its moorings in unchanging moral truth. By defaulting to pragmatism and situationalism, bioethics blesses harm for the few to produce good for the many and endorses the ranking of human life according to an arbitrary standard of value. The net result is that human embryos are in the crosshairs of biotech profiteers.
Respect is nice.
But for a moment, imagine the morally tone-deaf researcher about to dismember a living human embryo. Using words this way is worse than meaningless because it dulls our God-given aversion to taking innocent human life. An embryo is an individual life in every significant aspect. The cures proposed are certainly no greater goods than might be achieved by spending the same scarce dollars for research on less problematic ways of bringing healing to the sick and dying. Medical researchers have the bad habit of overselling the healing potential of their scientific achievements.