Sixty years ago, George Orwell wrote in Politics and the English Language, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness."

History repeats itself. Case in point: As I updated my lecture on bioethics in preparation for a grad-level lecture I delivered yesterday, I found all these euphemisms for “human embryo.” Not surprisingly they are the words of choice chosen, for the most part, by those who condone the destruction of embryos:

• Pre-embryo
• Embryo-like entity
• Ovasome
• Nuclear transfer-derived blastocyst
• Activated eggs
• Cleaving eggs

And here’s a new term replacing “embryonic stem cells”: Early stem cells.

Clever, eh?

It appears that the straight-up e-word is way too dangerous.