A reader writes:
"Human life is created and then experimented on to save other human lives."
Your language is deceptive. Sure, that human life was created, and then it was experimented on. But it was not created purely for purposes of experimentation. This is a very important distinction. The end to which you allude - growing into an adult human - was never achieved. So it seems that it is then valid to seek another end: the alleviation of suffering of millions of future living, feeling, thinking humans who have the misfortune of being struck by disability or disease. You admit that many of these pre-embryos will be discarded. I think this is a point that most Americans do not understand; they believe what your above quote, intentionally or not, implies. If they fully understood the details, I think public opinion would be even more strongly in favor of the use of these pre-embryos for research.
And don't pretend this research will happen anyway. The federal goverment is by far the major funder of basic science research. Anyone who knows anything about research knows this. Basic science (lab bench) research is too risky for the private sector.
There are hundreds of thousands of pre-embryos in storage, and many of them are unclaimed. What to do with these? Should we sacrifice benefit to mankind for some abstract, esoteric principle of protecting the rights of a clump of cells that never was and never will be sentient?