What’s the Big Deal with Stem Cells???

Last week, President Barack Obama gave a speech wherein he reversed a policy which strictly limited the Federal money that could be spent on research involving embryonic stem cells. As someone who has followed this issue over the last several years, I thought as your pastor, it would be good to briefly explain the science, ethics and morality involved in his decision.

Let’s start with a few facts: (1) AREN’T STEM CELLS JUST STEM CELLS? No. President Obama’s speech is not about “stem cells” per se. There are different types of stem cells. Some stem cells come from living adults, and some stem cells come from destroyed human embryos. There are no ethical arguments against doing research on adult stem cells that are voluntarily donated for research purposes. On the other hand, embryonic stem cells can only come from the destruction of a living human embryo. Since each human embryo has the same potential to become a human being as each of us had at that point in our lives, destroying that embryo destroys the same potential that we had at the same stage of development.

(2) DOLLARS AND SENSE. Notwithstanding the fact that many Americans find the idea of experimenting on human embryos to be morally repugnant, it is currently legal in the US to experiment on human embryos. There’s no law against it. President Obama’s policy change isn’t about the “legality” of that research; it’s about the expansion of the use of our taxpayer dollars to pay for this very controversial research. It’s about paying for things that Catholics consider immoral. We’re talking about human embryos, not lab mice.

(3) EMOTION HAS LEVERAGE. There are a lot of emotions involved in decisions where research has a possibility of curing diseases. And emotion is a bad companion to science. When we see the tragedy of some famous person, like Ronald Reagan or Michael J. Fox, suffering from a disease like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, we think it would be good for science to find an answer. But we need to separate our emotions from the science. Stem cell treatments involve the introduction of stem cells into an area of the body that is damaged or diseased. And the scientific fact is that embryonic stem cell research has not arrived at one – not one – treatment for any disease whatsoever. Using embryonic stem cells in treatment creates huge problems because of genetic differences (rejection by the patient’s body because the DNA is different) and tumors (because the cells multiply very quickly). On the other hand, treatment using adult stem cells do not have the same problems because one can get easily them from the patient’s own body (same DNA), and they do not have the same propensity to develop tumors. According to some peer published studies there are over 73 treatments where adult stem cells have being used successfully. And how many treatments come from embryonic stem cells again? Once again: none.

So what’s the big deal with embryonic stem cells? Why do scientists want to use them? Well, the argument doesn’t concern itself with possible treatments but with research and research dollars. Private money is largely directed toward research involving the use of adult stem cells because that’s where scientific promise is seen. Private money doesn’t usually fund research that has no foreseeable short-term application. So scientists have to rely upon taxpayer money. And that’s the debate. Since private money won’t pay for research on embryonic stem cells, scientists want the taxpayer to foot the bill.

But there’s another factor that has recently come into play. The primary scientific reason for using embryonic stem sells is that they are “pluripotent,” (multi-potential) meaning that in a Petri dish they have the potential to differentiate – to be “coaxed” – into a variety of different types of cells. They can be made to turn into liver cells, or skin cells or heart cells. And that is an exciting thing from a research standpoint. The pluripotency of embryonic stem cells has been what has give research “scientific leverage” over the moral objections of destroying living human embryos.

But recent research has made some incredible advances.
In an incredibly under-reported story last year, separate researchers in Wisconsin and Japan were able to reprogram an adult skin cell (through a technique called "somatic cell reprogramming") into a pluripotent stem cell. Since the new discovery does not involve the destruction of human embryos, and since it gives the scientist most of what he wants, namely, a pluripotent cell that can turn into numerous others types of cells, one would think that the ethical debate would be over. But no. Some scientists have decided that embryonic stem cell research should be pursued until it is clear that the other alternatives satisfy all of our scientific goals. And this argument is bad from a scientific, ethical, practical and financial perspective. Since adult stem cells are used ethically and morally, and since recent advances show that they can be pluripotent just as embryonic stem cells, and since all of the treatments have been as a result of the use of adult stem cells, shouldn’t the research dollars and practical effort be applied where the results are most promising?  This makes too much logical sense.

And then there’s a deeper issue involved.  Should we as taxpayers be paying for human experimentation? No one would argue that it would be okay to do experiments that result in the death of human beings - even if important scientific knowledge were to be gained. Those prohibitions are based on ethical arguments, not scientific ones. The ethical principle relevant to embryonic stem cell research is that it is impermissible to kill human beings – any human being. Age and developmental maturity is irrelevant. The persistence of those who are stating that embryonic stem cell research should continue is attributable more so to persistent rejection of the argument that human embryos are simply young human beings and therefore deserve protection from destructive research. It is interesting to note that the regulations governing human research already protect implanted embryos. Extending such protections to non-implanted embryos would not seem that far of a stretch, especially if one considers the fact that these embryos are human beings.

The embryo debate is among the first real tests of our commitment to the equal protection of every human life in the age of biotechnology. The quandaries of this age will only grow more vexing and complicated. But scientific advances in recent years – especially the development of alternative sources of embryonic-like cells that do not necessitate the destruction of human organisms – appear to offer us a way around the test.

President Obama has turned his back on those advances. He has needlessly forced a choice between the promise of progress and the respect for life, and has gone out of his way to ensure that we fail the moral test put before us. Let us hope this failure can be reversed and does not set the tone for science policy in the years to come.