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Comment by Pigo | Hacker News Reader

I have to agree. Of course, I've never had a child dying from organ failure, so I don't think I'd be quick to judge. But there is also a part of me that thinks humans are meant to die, and this kind of science is fueled a lot by fear of the inevitable. The powerful are trying to stave off death until the singularity they believe will happen, and the lengths those kind of people are willing to go scare me. But maybe I'm just thinking that because I watched Altered Carbon.

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While we sympathize with people who have dying children or are dying themselves, being in that position can in fact cause desperation and desperation can warp moral reasoning. In other words, being in a particular position does not necessarily put you in the best position for making the right decision, hence why we often value honest, appropriately competent, impartial advice.

W.r.t. to the moral dimension, there doesn't seems to be enough information in the article to make an assessment either way. If we're destroying fertilized human embryos to obtain stem cells to produce organs, then we are committing something categorically gravely immoral. If we're obtaining cells from the person needing the transplant and coaxing those cells into producing organ tissue, then the moral analysis will depend on contingent factors.

I think I wholeheartedly agree with you. I guess my worry, which some people apparently don't think was worth bringing up, is that there are lots of people in this world with no moral analysis going on. I have no doubt there will be scientist following the code determined by society. But there are resourceful people of means who will just go about the business of doing whatever is best for them. The further this science goes, the easier it will be for them. I think of stem cells as this ground-breaking therapy that will one day be put to good use, for Joe Rogan it's something he had done several years ago to fix his shoulder (old news). I'm not saying he did anything questionable, just pointing out that the rich fly abroad to get treatments that are still being debated in the land they live in. I guess I just hope we find a way to toe a moral line that gets followed by peoplekind. Thanks Trudeau

Most fertilized human eggs don't result in a pregnancy, they either don't implant in the uterus or they spontaneously abort early on. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spontaneous_abortion_in_humans

Humans aren't "meant" for anything.

Well that's a bleak view

Depends whether you read that as "...therefore useless," or "...therefore must forge their own purpose."

It absolutely can seem that way, depending on the worldview you grew up with.

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