Stem Cells

yay this is very informative.

And to the followers of "harvest of embryonic stem cells": If you had been decomposed at few cells stage of development, you wouldn't be writing anything now...

and whats your point if i were "decomposed at few cells stage of development" i wouldn't even know anything because i wouldn't have a brain capacity of any sort because the ability to think wouldn't have developed yet. so i wouldn't care at all.P.S keep in mind theres millions of embryos in a human not all of them get to have life, and eventually the human dies and a million embryos die as well and are not even used. At least stem cell research is putting them to use to further human knowledge.

So I can treat your comment as non-existent.

According to the results of scientific research
human cell that switched itself to a state of embryogenesis IS a human individual.
Check this publication from 2009:
Nature EMBO reports:" Embryonic human persons Talking point on morality and human embryo research" Robert P George & Patrick Lee EMBO reports (2009), 10, -301 - 306, doi:10.1038/embor.2009.42

And this from 2009 should end the debate about disassembling human children for production of stem cells: this article describes methods of acquisition of stem cells from human skin -they are your body cells clones. Cell Stem Cell. 2009 Jun 5;4(6):472-6. Epub 2009 May 28.Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells by direct delivery of reprogramming proteins.Kim D, Kim CH, Moon JI, Chung YG, Chang MY, Han BS, Ko S, Yang E, Cha KY, Lanza R, Kim KS. Harvard Medical School

So there we are not dealing with "potential" of an embryo to develop into human, because this suggest statistical interpretation, as if it could develop different species, but with 1/0 confidence that this is meant to give a new human. And indeed at that stage the one cell is really equal to all human organism, even if it seems amazing.

Science in simple words is about how things works. In this case how human body works. Results of newest research allow us to obtain stem cells from our own body, without the need for destruction of someone else's organism.
That should be extremely clear: human cell with complete genome that entered the state
of embryogenesis WILL produce entire body.
That characteristic differs that cell from all other cells of our bodies that also have complete copy of genome.

I agree with your comment, pixiezone

The way I've always put it is: an individual sperm or egg cell do not contain the complete genetic material necessary to develop into a human being; it is not human(in the moral sense)

An embryo, at any time after fertilization contains every bit of genetic material necessary to develop into a human; it is human, just at a different stage of development. A fetus is to a child as a child is to an adult; it is just at a different level of physical maturity.

To all interested in scientific view of the matter:
DO NOT use word "science" for description of procedure that have nothing in common with it.
It is not even pseudomedicine, as medicine should not be in conflict with Hipocrates legacy. Here (disassembling human body) we are dealing with anti-medicine.