To the editor:

While watching a discussion on stem cell research, it occurred to me that if I had a baby who was on life support and brain dead I could ask to turn off the life support and donate the baby’s organs or body to research or to the university medical school and this would be an ethical use of this living being. I don’t think the turning off of life support is the moral or ethical equivalent of murder. And I don’t think it is considered so by most medical ethicists.

So if my spouse and I had created several embryos for the purpose of fertility treatment and some were going to be unused and destroyed, wouldn’t donating the embryos for the purpose of using the stem cells for research or for use in a medical treatment such as a bone marrow transplant be the moral and ethical equivalent of donating the baby’s body?

I, as perhaps many others who are struggling with the morality and ethics of our “Brave New World,” would like to have a medical ethicist comment on my comparison.

Alan Welles,

Lawrence