ZYGOTES & BLASTOCYSTS : Human enough to protect?(Brief Article) From: Commonweal | Date: June 14, 2002| Author: CALLAHAN, SIDNEY | COPYRIGHT 2002 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

As debates over stem-cell research and cloning roil on, proponents of scientific research ask their opponents: "But why do you want to protect human zygotes, blastocysts, and embryos from manipulation or loss? How can you care about the inviolability of these 'clumps' of developing cells, 'no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence'?"

But why is size an issue when there is so much inherent developmental capacity? Surely size in a world of quarks, quantum even...