Word: blastocyst
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...capture an embryonic stem cell, scientists must find an embryo, or blastocyst (from umbilical cord tissue, a frozen sample from a fertility clinic, an aborted fetus, or, most controversially, from a cloned specimen) ideally a few days after fertilization. Researchers then extract stem cells from the blastocyst, and, they hope, use those blank slates to create new, potentially curative, cells...
...allies. The case they (and I) have made is simple: stem cells, possessing in theory the capacity to replace almost any damaged or defective tissue in the body, have a great potential for good. Although deriving stem cells may require destroying a five-day-old human embryo, this "blastocyst" is usually taken from fertility clinics, where it is going to be discarded anyway. It's not as if--or so we have been saying--we are wantonly creating human embryos only to destroy them for research...
What next? Today a blastocyst is created for harvesting. Tomorrow, researchers may find that a five-month-old fetus with a discernible human appearance, suspended in an artificial placenta, may be the source of even more promising body parts. At what point do we draw the line...
...draw it right where it is and hold it. It is a reasonable moral calculus to use and thus derive some good from an already doomed, fertility clinic blastocyst. Moreover, federal funding would for the first time permit the procedure to be regulated...
...DAYS The embryo divides again and again and takes shape as a sphere called a blastocyst...