I Don't Get What You Don't Get

Sorry, Mark, but I just don't get what you don't get.  Michael S. made the following claim:

We cannot conclude that some types human organisms have more worth than other types or that human organisms at some stages of development have more worth than those at other stages.

How is the hypothetical not directly relevant to that claim?  I'm not talking about stem cell research or abortion with this hypothetical, as I made clear in my original post, since those involve intentional harm.  I'm just asking about Michael S.'s absolutist claim, which I found interesting and somewhat counterintuitive (and not at all necessary to the anti-abortion position) that we cannot distinguish among any of the stages of life between conception and natural death, favoring one over another.  I think we by and large do favor certain life stages over others, particularly at the earliest stages of development, and I think that it is reasonable to do so.  Moreover, I think your proposed alternatives perfectly demonstrate the limited point the hypothetical is trying to bring to light. The simple fact is that if I made my hypothetical such that there were an aryan in one room and a Jew in the other, or a disabled person in one room and healthy person in the other, the answer people would give would be quite different.  What the Nazi firefighter would do is also completely irrelevant, except to show us what NOT to do. 

No one on the site has come forward to say that they would choose the blastocysts over the infants.  I'm quite certain that if I said there were a disabled person in one room and a healthy person in the other, people would (correctly) say that they would find some random way to choose between the two rooms.  I suppose in the end this hypothetical is getting at a similar point to one that Steve has tried to raise on several occasions, to no avail, when he has asked why we don't treat failure of embryos to implant as a public health crisis.

We are in complete agreement that it certainly does NOT follow from this hypothetical that we can do anything we want to blastocysts.  For what it's worth, I think the suggestion that we have to treat all stages of life between conception and natural death as having exactly the same value (which is what I take to be Michael's position) or, if not, anything goes presents a false choice.