Part 3. A radio debate.
Keywords
moral, aborted fetal tissue, medical.
Vocabulary
abort, fetal tissue, Reverend, graft, alleviate, abortion, fetus, grave, flip side, full-fledged, condone, legality, Organization of Physicians for Responsible Research.
A. Listen to a radio talk show which is on the topic of using human fetal tissue for medical experimentation.
The debate takes place between a leading scientist and a religious leader. As you listen the first time, try to answer the following questions.
Good morning, and welcome to today's broadcast of "Seeing both sides."
Today we have something very interesting for you, a very controversial topic.
Is it a moral use of technology to take advantage of aborted fetal tissue for medical experimentation?
Our guests today are Dr. Jasmine Farnazeh, head of the Organization of Physicians for Responsible Research, and the Reverend William Cooper.
They are here to discuss the moral and medical implications of this new area of research.
Good morning, Doctor and Reverend. Good morning.
Good morning. Dr Farnazeh, Let's begin by hearing the arguments in favor.
Well, scientifically speaking, it's clear that aborted fetal tissue is quite a gold mine.
It is been proven to be extremely successful in grafting new tissue for use with burn victims.
Research is being done into other potential uses as well.
Reverend Cooper, how do you respond to that? What about these benefits?
Well, of course I see the doctor's point, and it is extremely important to do everything possible in terms of research to alleviate human suffering.
however, you can't ignore the fact that fetal tissue is a product of abortion, which many consider to be an act of murder.
Just as we hope you would not kill another person to benefit yourself, it is immoral to use the life of a fetus in this way.
Yes, Reverend Cooper, I suppose some people could say abortion is an act of murder, but it's really important to clearly seperate issues here.
You can't ignore the fact that abortion is legal in this country at this time.
Certainly while we can recognize that as a grave human tragedy, it is a fact that it happens frequently, thousands of times every day.
If this is the case, it makes good medical sense to derive any benefit from it that we can.
Isn't the tragedy perhaps minimized if this tissue can be used to further human life?
And, indeed, in terms of using this tissue to create new, living healthy skin for burn victims, are we not in some small way allowing that life to continue?
That's one way of looking at it.
However, another way of looking at it is to say that the life of that fetus deserves every opportunity to grow and develop as an individual, that using these victims is simply adding insult to injury.
And really, Dr. Farnazeh, can you seriously mean to imply that the benefit this tissue provides for skin grafts for burn victims balances the fact that a human life and all its potential has been taken without its consent?
Maybe you have a point there, and I'm sure many people would agree with you.
But the flip side of the tissue is that our greatest moral obligation is to the living.
As long as abortion is legal, as long as those fetuses are not developing into full-fledged human life, it seems we must devote our energies to concentrating on and helping in every way possible those who are alive and suffering.
What exactly do you mean, Dr. Farnazeh? Are you condoning abortion?
It doesn't matter whether or not I condone it.
On one hand, we could spend a great deal of time arguing about the moral implications of abortion.
On the other hand, this would be a waste of time since our opinions don't change the fact that it's legal. We may as well simply accept the legality and go from there.
You've both raised a number of very interesting points.
I'm sure you've given our listeners a lot of food for thought about this complex and controversial issue.
Let's take a short break now and when we return, we'll take some calls from our listeners.