Paula, I have stayed out of the ESC discussions, past and present, because I have one concern that nobody but a very few scientists or doctors will acknowledge (one of them being Andrew Weil) but which I feel is huge. Here it is:

According to my research, approximately 1/3 of pregnancies end in miscarriage. My own doctor has told me that many women do not even know they were pregnant. This is nature's way, as we all know, of weeding out the embryos with which something is not right. I don't belittle miscarriage, I have had several myself (all wanted pregnancies, by the way) so I know the grief associated with one. But the issue is that these "eggs" they are using for ESC research have no guarantee that they would have been carried to term, in other words, that they would have gone on to develop into a healthy baby.

I have not been able to find any research where they are able to guarantee that a 3-5 day old embryo is free of any of the zillion things that can cause a miscarriage (or harder to consider, the fetus makes it to term but is born with health issues), or that they even do testing for the known things, like chromosome irregularities, etc. So how can tests done with such cells, of unknown quality (for lack of better words), be really valid?

Additionally, it is my understanding that most of the embryos at fertility clinics are from folks having problems getting pregnant to begin with, ie older parents (I am an older parent myself, so again, not belittling anything or anyone), and it is common knowledge that older eggs have more problems, that is why it is harder to have a healthy baby the older we get. The rate for Down's Syndrome alone skyrockets past the age of 40.

I hate to sound cruel, but are those really the cells these experiments should be done with? I would hate to see taxdollars, and valuable TIME, the most important thing, expended on experiments with ESC, only to find out later that the results were questionable because the ESC would, had they continued as a fetus, not made it to term (ie, miscarried) or been born, but not as a healthy baby, for any of a zillion reasons nature has.

Again, not being political, moral, or religious, just scientific. I guess I would feel better about the science of this if the ESC were from a pair of healthy 25-year-olds with no known health issues (including fertility issues).

I'm all for progress, just not sure steps have been taken to make the most and best use of this knowledge.