NEW YORK, November 20, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the harvesting of so-called "spare embryos" for human experimentation is ethical. "The Ethics Committee believes it is ethically acceptable to derive and use embryonic stem cells in research to develop cell replacement therapies" and "if it is likely to provide significant new knowledge that will benefit human health and if it is conducted in ways that accord the embryo respect," says the group's official statement in the November issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Typically, media simply caricature the position of "opponents of embryonic stem cell research, including the Catholic Church," by reporting that such groups "afford [sic] a human embryo the same moral status as a person."
The statement comes as little surprise given that the doctor's group already supports in vitro fertilization that results in the routine discarding and destruction of vast numbers of human embryos as if they had the same moral status as waste by-products, used needles or soiled gloves. It is unclear how this could ever "accord the embyro respect," as the doctors put it.