Letter: A decision best left to the individual

Sunday, July 1, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

I love letter writer William F. Brennan's emotional argument June 28 against a previous emotional letter to the editor in favor of stem cell research.

First, the Internet is loaded with one-sided, slanted and error-prone Web sites. Not a good source of facts about stem cell research. With the Internet, you can pick an answer then look up all the Web sites that support your position.

Second, there are thousands of embryos that are flushed down the drains of fertility clinics all over the United States. Clinics harvest as many as 20 eggs from a woman and fertilize all of them. They sort them and test them and then implant only one or two of the best.

Families are then given the ghastly choice of paying thousands more dollars to freeze the excess embryos, or allowing the clinic to flush them down the drain. Most of the embryos that are frozen die of freezer burn because they are never used. Let's face it, they didn't make the cut the first time, so why take a chance on them again?

Third, it is absurd to credit the Bush administration with a morally correct decision when it invaded Iraq on false pretenses, turned Pakistan over to drug lords by installing an oil buddy to run the country rather than take the time necessary to instill a real democracy (and, by the way, find Osama bin Laden), authorized torture, and has trampled all over the Constitution.

I believe the government should get out of the way of individuals making their own informed, moral decisions about what to do with these embryos that are otherwise industrial waste.

Wallace Eastman, Las Vegas