If Yamanaka's daughters really look like two-week-old embryos they're going to have trouble finding boyfriends... And since the objection that 'creating and destroying human life [is] unethical' is not an empirical one but grounded in personal morality and religion, no possible events in the real world can determine whether it is 'valid' or not.

But if, as I understand it, 'pluripotent cells' are just as capable of producing a new human being as embryonic cells are, isn't the moral implications of using these the same? We're still ending a 'potential human life'. And if ANY cell can become pluripotent, that means that ANY procedure which results in ANY cell death must be equally bad in God's eyes, and all doctors are going to burn in Hell for ever, along with every mother who ever threw away an umbilical cord and every child who ever had their ears pierced.

Such are the lunacies that result when religion meddles with science.

Just a curious thought ...

Isn't ethics distinct from morality. I would have thought morality was defined by religion.

Mormons believe in polygamy (well at least one-sided), whilst other christian religions believe in monogamy - albeit serial monogamy. As far as I know, Catholics can't get a divorce ... althought there is definitely wriggle room ... annulment ... which means there was no marriage in the first place ... but then ... the couple have been living in mortal sin. This is further confused by the knowledge that one may have actually believed they had been married.

My mother-in-law, explaining a daughter's virginal pregnancy, told me that her daughter had caught a germ off a toilet seat. Now ...