Human leftovers

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 18, 2005

In a Boston Globe story on frozen embryos, we're asked to feel some sympathy for one John Rizza, who handles the "leftovers from fertility treatments."

Leftovers.

But there's more. The Globe informs us:

Some people -- including Rizza -- consider the embryos potential lives.

To justify killing innocent human beings, or treating them as "leftovers," dime-store moralists sometimes dismiss the clear biological evidence of life, and concede only that some people think the embryos are alive. Alternatively, they say that the embryos are potential humans, who reach that potential when their mothers decide to keep them. Let the record show that the Globe has taken another step across the frontier of scientific known-nothingism, with the claim that some people think and embryo is a potential life.

Really? What do the other people think?

Imagine that your lawn looks a bit patchy, so you go to the store, and see a bag of seeds which-- according to the advertising blurb-- some people consider potential blades of grass. Do you buy it? No; of course not.

So tell me why readers are buying what the Globe is peddling here. Better fertilizer, maybe?