Researchers Want More Freedom to Exploit Embryos

This request is also addressed to the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), an umbrella organization in this field of study and whose prescriptions are recognized by researchers.

This is how the “guidelines” of this company stipulate: “any in vitro culture of an intact human embryo or of a cellular structure organized in the image of an embryo and endowed with an organic human potential is prohibited, regardless of the method of derivation, beyond 14 days or from the formation of the primitive streak” in point 2.1.3.3.

A Limit of 14 Days

This limit has sometimes been set in stone in the law in some countries. It was also brought about by the difficulty of going beyond this stage in the experiments linked to the first in vitro fertilization in the 1970s.

But there is also an ideological underpinning to this limit. To get people to agree to extend this limit to 14 days, when many countries or even researchers did not agree to set it at more than a week, they created the concept of a “pre-embryo.”

Based on the fact that the embryo settles in the uterus around the 14th day, they affirmed that one could not speak of an embryo before this limit. And since it was not an embryo, it was not a member of the human species, and therefore it could undergo all the experiments required for the progress of “Science.” This “pre-embryo” concept is anything but scientific.

And now, because researchers are able go beyond this limit, they are demanding political and “moral” sanction for their manipulation of embryos, that is, of children. Exit the concept of pre-embryo that they no longer need.

Fallacious Reasons

The authors of the aforementioned article present their request in an attractive guise: it is to better understand how errors occur in the early development of the embryo, to better cure infertility and prevent miscarriages. Who would not subscribe to such goals?

But the end does not justify the means, especially since the identification of errors in the development of the embryo today often ends in abortion.

It is also necessary to dress the request in “ethical” reasons. One of the signatories to the article wrote back in 2016: “As circumstances and attitudes change, the boundaries can legitimately be reformulated.”

This is pure relativism: there is no absolute, insurmountable limit; everything is relative to an era, to evolving mentalities, and to progressing techniques, promising the moon and the stars to future people.

This exploitation of embryos, the “creation” of which for the sole purpose of experimentation is already permitted in countries like Belgium, is undoubtedly, along with abortion, the greatest barbarism of modern times.

One last idea is undoubtedly present: the extension of the time allowed for the development of a human being in an artificial uterus, thus promoting the total export of gestation outside the female body.