No research leads to anything purely good, bad or dangerous. The same expertise that landed rockets in British population centers during the Second World War led to manned exploration of the moon. The use of science is what lends it whatever moral dimension it has, and that is more a political or legal question than a scientific one.

As something which has the potential to improve the quality of life of Americans generally, stem cell research should be funded.

If I'm living forever, it depends somewhat on how, right? If I'm a wrinkly, feeble thing whose legs failed him decades before, then I'll be in bed thinking my great thoughts for the stenographers' benefit, and waiting for the nurse to change my bedpan.

More likely, if it occurs, it'll be because Kurzweil was right. My brain, such as it is, will have been captured as a disk image by some machine not yet invented, and long after my mortal body is gone, I'll be alive in the RAM of some repository of human minds. It may even provide some sort of virtual sensory experience to benefit me during the seconds in any year when my mind isn't being harnessed with millions of others to work on solutions to some problem or issue, out in the world of the living.

Of course, this would put me in a terrible position to negotiate with my employer for anything, but if I'm a ghost lingering in electronic storage, I guess my needs will be small.

Sure.

In those few cases, though, it was always made worse by a lie, or a delay in informing me about the horrible thing in question.

This is one of the problems I have with the Biblical ideal of forgiveness for all wrongs in this life, or turning the other cheek after one has been slapped for no excellent reason. I don't do this, or at least, I honestly can't look at someone who fucked me over and say, "Even if what you did was wrong, I will pretend it never occurred and be as friendly as before." It doesn't work that way for me. At best, I can go through the formality of accepting an apology if one is offered, and then shut that person or thing out of my life to the greatest possible extent. Why? Because the absence of any repercussion for that person or thing, as I suffer, can be embittering. See also: FAA.

In order to reach a point like Christ or Gandhi wherein all wrongs are simply shrugged off as non-occurrences, you would have to discipline yourself against caring about what happens to you. That sensitivity, that allows me to enjoy human warmth and kindness, is also what makes me register human coldness and antagonism. It may be that I can reach that level someday, and look past all of life as a sport and a pastime, but it hasn't happened yet.