So an Imam, a Fundamentalist, a UCC minister and a Jewish man walk into an Ivy League university...

I said a few days ago I'd comment on the stem cell forum I attended last week. I was thinking during my run today of all the smart things I could have shared while there. Then I realized that's what the blog is for.

When I was interviewing people for the article update I worked on a couple of weeks ago, I agreed with everyone that embryonic stem cell research was important, that the blastocyst didn't have personhood, that those leftover embryos from IVF treatments shouldn't be tossed but should be used for research.

And I don't know if I still feel that way. Take the whole IVF issue, which I am going to comment on with the caveat that I haven't reached the end of the line with my own fertility; I don't even have a boyfriend. I'm coming from where I'm coming from, and that ain't the place of being someone who desperately wants a baby and can't get pregnant. So please don't take what I am about to say as a personal insult if you are.

I really find IVF to be a wee bit selfish. So you can't have children and you've exhausted all fertility options up to IVF? Adopt them. There are too many people already. Babies die every minute all around the world, horrible deaths. I say this as a person who regularly keeps her head stuck right up her ass for weeks at a time before realizing that it is not all about me. I mean, Jesus, I blab about myself every single day on this very Web site.

The other IVF issue I have is with creating all these embryos and then freezing them and throwing them away. I'm not ready to say, as the fundamentalist who spoke at the forum did, that you could be killing the next Mozart, but at the same time the idea of making all these extra -- what? -- potential babies? -- only to chuck some of them makes me uncomfortable on a deep, almost primal level.

So how does this all relate to my views on stem cell research? I guess it's shown me I feel less pro than I did before I went to the forum, which is odd, because I was guns blazing for research and not for wacky bullshit from the Christian right. And I am still not for wacky BS.

What I am for is checks and balances, and careful consideration of moral, ethical, legal, health and welfare, and safety issues. I want the people doing the research to weigh the benefits and drawbacks. And to keep weighing them. I saw that happening at the forum. Which is great.

I also realize just how uneducated I am on so much of what goes on in the world -- I really believe in having an educated opinion and I would call mine, at best, only very slightly so. I also don't have, as the gentleman in front of me at the forum did, a grown and paralyzed son and a friend who died slowly from MS, people who suffered and are suffering, who could benefit from this research, in my life.

Some days the world seems too big to be known.