July 19, 2001
THE NATION
Bible Guides Senate on Stem Cell Studies
 Science: Debate on controversy focuses on when
an embryo becomes a life.
AARON ZITNER,  TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON -- After heaven and Earth, fruit and fowl, cattle
and every creeping thing, the book of Genesis turns its attention
to the creation of man. "And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground," it says, "and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life."

On Wednesday, in a chamber known more for cutthroat battles
over the laws of the workaday world, U.S. senators turned
to that biblical passage for guidance on whether a human embryo
is equivalent to a human life and whether it may be destroyed
for its stem cells.

"We all agree that the embryo is alive," Sen. Sam Brownback
(R-Kan.) told a Senate panel. "The question is, is it a life?"
The theological debate, which also drew on a parable
from the book of Matthew, came as pressure grows
for President Bush to decide quickly on whether to allow
federal funding for medical research using stem cells
from embryos. Many scientists believe the cells hold the key
to new treatments for disease, but anti-abortion groups
say the research is a form of murder, as embryos must
be destroyed in order to harvest their stem cells.

An influential advisor to Bush on Wednesday became
the latest of about 70 senators to support the research.
Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician and abortion opponent,
said the research can be done ethically if it is strictly regulated.

For lawmakers who oppose abortion, embryo cell research
has raised particularly thorny moral questions. Many have
ong believed that life begins at conception, which would
imply that destroying a human embryo is destroying
a human life.

But Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), an abortion opponent
who supports the research, guided a panel of the Senate
Appropriations Committee to Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7,
on Wednesday.

After reading the passage, Smith said it describes a
"two-step process" for creating humans: First, God formed
man from the dust of the ground. Then, the verse says,
God breathed into man's nostrils "the breath of life;
and man became a living soul."

Cells, Smith said, are like the dust of the earth, giving
form to man but not "the breath of life." To gain that spirit,
he said, the cells must be placed in a womb.

Seen this way, embryo cell research can be conducted without
destroying a living human because the embryos taken
for federally funded experiments would never have lived
in the womb. Instead, they would be donated by fertility patients
who had created embryos in the laboratory as part of the process
of becoming pregnant.

Hundreds and possibly thousands of "spare" embryos
are discarded each year by fertility patients who had created
more than they needed. Some lawmakers say it is more ethical
to use these embryos to help patients than to let them
go to waste. And Smith, a Mormon, argued that these lab-created
embryos are not equivalent to a person anyway.

"I believe that life begins in a mother's womb,
not in a scientist's laboratory," said Smith.

A representative of the Catholic church criticized
Smith's interpretation as "amateur theology."

Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
called it "absurd" to think that the womb conveys the
"breath of life" to an embryo. "An embryo's development
is directed completely from within--the womb simply provides
a nurturing environment." If scientists created an artificial womb,
he asked, would a child born from it not be human?
Could it be killed for any purpose?

Stem cells have drawn wide interest because they are able
to grow into any cell or tissue of the body, raising hopes that
they can replace faulty tissues in patients. One possible
application is in Parkinson's disease, which claimed Smith's
grandmother, an uncle and a cousin,
Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.).

Michael West, chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology
Inc., a Massachusetts company working with stem cells,
said research is ethical on embryos up to two weeks of age.
At about 14 days, he said, the embryo produces the beginning
of a backbone. Until that point, the embryo can divide in
two--producing identical twins--or two embryos can merge
into one.

"This is a line that nature has drawn for us," West said.
It would be illogical, he said, to treat an embryo
as an individual if it could still become two people.
When the British Parliament this year authorized stem cell
research, it said experiments could be done on embryos
up to 14 days old.

Some theologians, including a small minority of Catholic
philosophers, have also backed the idea that an embryo
younger than 14 days cannot be a person. They reason
that the soul, the hallmark of an individual, cannot enter
an embryo capable of dividing in two.

Frist, a heart and lung transplant surgeon,
drew on the ethics of organ donation to explain how he
reconciles his opposition to abortion with his support
for research that destroys embryos.

He noted that for organ transplants to become common,
scientists and lawmakers had to change the notion that
death occurred only when the heart and lungs stopped
working. Instead, they built a consensus that a person was
dead when brain functioning stopped--a time when the
person still had living tissue that could be used to save
other sick people.

"We had to decide, after 2,000 or 3,000 years of thinking
that death is when the heart and lungs stop to work,
that it was something else," Frist said. Without the concept
of brain death, usable organs would be "going into the
ground or discarded."

Similarly, he concluded that stem cell research could be
conducted ethically if the embryos destroyed were those
created at fertility clinics that patients would
otherwise discard.

But Brownback, an opponent of the research,
said it would deny "the dignity of the young human,
effectively making the human embryo equal to mere
plant or animal life or property."

About 70 senators now back federal funding for the research,
said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). If Bush bars federal funding,
Specter is all but certain to have enough votes for a bill
to overturn the president's decision. But prospects
for such a bill are uncertain in the House.

Moreover, Frist's support comes with conditions that many
research advocates find unacceptable. They include a limit
on the number of embryos destroyed for research and a rule
that the private sector perform the destruction of embryos
and harvesting of stem cells.

Moreover, Frist would ban the use of cloning to produce
embryos, a technique that West's company and others want
to use to overcome tissue rejection.

However, Frist's guidelines might allow some research
under strict guidelines.

Attempting to push Bush in the opposite direction,
a panel of the United Methodist Church this week urged
the president, a fellow Methodist, to bar research using
human embryonic stem cells.

Smith was not the only witness Wednesday to draw
on the Bible. In his testimony and in a later interview,
West cited a parable from the New Testament book
of Matthew, Chapter 25, in which a master gives gold
to three servants.

Two go into the world and double their stake,
pleasing the master. But one buries his gold in fear.
"Thou wicked and slothful servant," says the master,
chiding the servant for failing to be productive.

West said the federal government should not bury
the chance to use stem cells to help patients.
"We've been given an opportunity in medicine.
To say it's better not to mess around in this area
is not an answer."

SOURCE: The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-000058925jul19.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dpolitics

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