It's only a matter of time before conservative Christians claim that this research is just as morally wrong as harvesting stem cells from blastocysts, being that average human testes produce millions of pre-babies.
Matt McIrvin made an interesting comment at Pandagon:
If the DNA is a magical encoding of the complete human, instead of the genetic input to a process that has a lot of other inputs and eventually results in the human, then it’s a short leap to concluding that the rights of the baby inhere in the DNA the moment it’s all together in one place.
He was talking about abortion, but the false notion he mentions there has implications in a number of issues, particularly having to do with essentialism.
The first example that came to my mind was the so-called gay gene. Various ways in which homosexuals apparently tend to differ from normals heterosexuals are pored over and excitedly touted as pointers to The True Nature of homosexuality, and there's the eternal fight between the people who say it's inborn and the epsilons who say it's a choice people make for no better reason than sheer contrariness.
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