Ronald Bailey thinks that Steve Chapman is “wrong” and “confused” because Chapman thinks that embryo-destructive research is immoral. But judging from Bailey’s three arguments, it sure seems as though he’s the one who’s confused. The first argument is that “the mere existence of human DNA in a cell” does not confer moral worth on a cell, because humans’ skin cells have that DNA and are not human beings with moral worth. Fine: But a skin cell is not a whole human organism, as an embryo is. The second argument is that because scientists theoretically could use skin cells (and other biological materials) to create embryos, they are already morally equivalent–which seems like an obviously fallacious line of reasoning. The third argument is that to see a moral difference between an embryo and a skin cell is to “base moral distinctions on [a] level of biochemistry [in a way that] seems a bit quixotic.” I’m sure that if one were in a suitably reductionist frame of mind one might be able to describe the difference between a human being who is alive and one who is dead in terms of biochemical details that seem trivial in themselves; but the moral difference would remain.