CBS claims human embryos "surplus"

So it must be true, right? (Be sure and see this link for a review of the timeline of embryonic stemcell research.)
CBS's 60 Minutes TV show ran a biased piece last night on "A Surplus of Embryos." The written news article doesn't show the hostility of Leslie Stahl toward Robert P. George (who has a doctorate of philosophy of law from Oxford, his law degree from Harvard,is a professor of constitutional law and jurisprudence at Princeton, as well as a member of the President's Bioethics Council).

Be sure and click here for a portion of the video or the link to the right of the text.

Although there is additional footage of Stahl talking about the segment, for some reason, the whole report is not available, so we are unable to hear her squeals of delight that the tiny heart cells were shown to be beating on the microscope stage. The embyronic stem cells were among the first produced, by James Thomson, a veterinarian and primate pathologist at Wisconsin-Madison's School of Medicine.

From Stahl's interview with one of the IVF technician/doctors, Richard Scott, MD:

It’s been suggested that fertility clinics should stop making so many embryos that go unused.

"You’re really limiting, then, the number of eggs that you can inseminate," Scott says. "Then you’re actively intervening to harm that couple and reduce their chances of ever having a baby. I have a very big ethical problem with that."

No, Sir. We are not "intervening to harm." We are monitoring and controlling a procedure which should be regulated under both Federal and State laws. Regulated doctors, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment are used in protocols that not only affect currently living women and children, but will have unknow effects on all our future children.
There is no monitoring, counting or follow-up on the children who are being born from IVF. There is and never has been any Federal funding for the procedure until the money that was recently made available for adoption of the embryos of families who do not plan to continue the lives of the children in storage the same way they have the ones in their arms.

The hostility was not visible when Stahl interviewed either Dr. Scott or Arthur Caplan, PhD (his PhD is in the history and philosophy of science) from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics. Stahl mentioned that Caplan has done a survey on the fate of embryos at fertility clinics, but did not challenge him on his statement that there are 400,000 embryos available for research. In fact, not all fertility clinics and parents are in agreement with using the embryos for research, and embryos frozen as long as 13 years can and have been born and and found to be healthy.

From the CBS text version:

"Well, when President Bush says he opposes using embryos for stem-cell research because that would be destroying an embryo, what does it mean that embryos are already being destroyed?" Stahl asks Caplan.

"To me, it means that the president's policy is hypocritical and deceptive," he replies. "And I say that deliberately because it is not a secret that embryos are destroyed at infertility clinics."

"So we have a policy that says, 'Can't destroy them for research. I, as president, cannot abide it.' Every day a clinic somewhere, destroys one — no one says anything," Caplan adds.

This statement is disingenuous. The President's policy only deals with Federal funds. Federal funds are not available to destroy embryos and never have been. The cells for which funding is now available are not part of embryos. I'm sure that Caplan remembers that it was the prior administration that promised to allow funding for research on cells after the embryos were destroyed, but not for the destruction itself. A thorough review is available at Nature Biology.