My understanding is that embryonic stem cells are no longer needed for today’s stem cell research. If a domain expert sees this, call me out if I’m wrong.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-stem-cells-... (Human Stem Cell Breakthrough: No Embryos Required, 2007)

This treatment was actually done with stem cells from an adult donor.[1] (Stem cell research is a bit of a black eye for liberals in my opinion. W. Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem cell research were not particularly draconian. It was limited to use of federal funds, and even then only restricted creating new embryonic stem cell lines. And the left was just wrong on how much could be done with adult stem cells. That is not to say that adult stem cells are an alternative in every case, but rather that a lot of the folks calling Republicans anti-science were themselves wrong on the science of how promising adult stem cell research was.)

[1] I'll also add: the question of whether destroying embryos for research is moral is not a religious one, but rather a political issue on which religions have strong opinions. So long as the government makes it illegal to kill people, it must as a purely political question define what a "person" is and what the exceptions are to that rule. Thus, the death penalty is a political issue rather than a religious issue, even though e.g. the Catholic church and several protestant denominations officially condemn it.

That seems like a post-hoc rationalization. Because in hindsight it turned out that — at least as they're understood today — embryonic stem cells were not the holy grail some thought they would be, it was therefore perfectly fine for Bush, for obviously religious (not secular political) reasons, to restrict use of federal funds in certain ways relating to embryonic stem cells?

The rationalization against embryonic stem-cell research, or against first-term abortion as commonly expressed, is in almost every case drawn from religious motivation. I don't know why you're claiming they're primarily political. They're political in that people of faith will export religious dogma into the political sphere, but that doesn't make it primarily a political issue like you suggest.

It's possible to make a (tenuous) secular argument against abortion (though it's pretty rough going and is easy to demolish), but... can you put forward any plausible secular argument against embryonic stem cell research, except by assuming the conclusion you want — which is that embryonic stem cells are largely problematic, and adult stem cells can be made to work pretty well, for most things?

I don’t think it’s a hindsight issue. People discounted the potential of adult stem cell research because they needed to in order to be consistent with their political objectives.

As to the secular argument against embryonic stem cell research: embryos are both human, and alive. Both facts are undisputedly true as a matter of biology. So the general rule against killing humans should apply unless some other exception is implicated. What those exceptions are is a political issue, even if it happens to also be a religious issue.

Note also that the secular justification for abortion doesn’t carry over to stem cell research. With abortion, there is the argument that, whatever the nature of the embryo happens to be, it doesn’t outweigh the mother’s right to bodily autonomy. But these embryos are already removed and frozen. Destroying them for research requires a different justification than destroying them for purposes of abortion

Tumors are genetically human and biologically alive at a cellular level. Does God want us to stop doing cancer surgery? Do tumors have souls? Embryonic stem cells tend to create tumors, not humans, if attached to existing human tissue. Do some tumors have souls while others don't? Where did the soul go for an embryonic stem cell tumor if it doesn't have one?

The pain and suffering argument (not that you've raised it) is nonsense as well, since pain and suffering during the murder of other animals in socially acceptable contexts is not regarded as very serious, except (sort of) by the Jains. And those animals, even insects, have more cognitive/sensory capacity than a human embryo (which has zero).

The only foothold the religious argument can rely on, without falling to oblivion, is the notion of future potential of a human embryo. But that raises other issues. The embryo won't get there on its own. It requires 9 months of symbiosis with another human with her own interests, or perhaps in the future there will be some option of 9 months of extremely expensive artificial incubation.

When you descend into the insanity of judging based on (uncertain) future potential, it's unclear why, as a matter of religious doctrine, destroying/wasting embryos/zygotes is forbidden, but wasting gametes is perfectly acceptable. If a woman's interests, ability to support a child, and relationship with (potentially) a spouse (who will co-raise and co-support the child) are not relevant in the determination of whether a future child is worth seeing through, why then would you stop at banning abortion? Why stop at banning contraception, even? Women, if maximizing potential future children is paramount, should never ever be allowed to say no, to anyone, ever, should they?

Of course, the reason for that difference in treatment is the (convenient) concept that the soul enters upon formation of a zygote, but that is a purely religious concept, and now we're back in religious la-la land, not in secular-argument land like you claimed. So about those tumors with souls...

Regarding the motive for the embryonic stem cell ban — it's not clear that the actual religious objection is primarily concerned with preventing destruction. Research involves splitting and growing the cell lines, which results in branches of the cell line being experimented on and then killed. If each of these isolated cell clusters has a soul, isn't ongoing experimentation just as bad, and actually worse, than simply killing the single master cell line? The latter would result in one death. Ongoing experimentation results in potentially unlimited deaths.

It seems like the real intent behind the federal funding ban for research involving new embryonic stem cell lines is to prevent their creation in the first place, knowing that once created all the options are bad (according to religious dogma) and result in the destruction of one or many soul-vessels. But to be ideological consistent, wouldn't you want to prevent the creation of never-to-be-gestated soul-vessels by splitting, too, in addition to preventing their initial creation? If so, W's ban makes no sense.

If you agree that identical twins have separate souls and tumors don't have souls, I don't know what you (or anyone against embryonic stem cell research or IVF which has similar issues) are doing, other than grasping at biological partial-realities trying to defend your religious dogma.

Federal funds are an enormous proportion of the money available for biomedical research. There was also a lot of uncertainty over how broadly this prohibition was going to be interpreted: could new lines be analyzed using equipment bought with federal money? Could you even keep them in a federally-funded fridge? I worked in a lab that was making all sorts of weird contingency plans in case we wanted to handle covered embryonic stem cells. Some of this is undoubtedly the university’s fault, but it was still annoying.

I don't think anybody knew at the time how useful adult stem cells would be. I'm glad that they are, though.