The source of this article is the Chicago Tribune: http://tinyurl.com/4dvxw

Stem cells and the soul
Religion, science and the politics of polarization

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Dick Thistlethwaite. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is president of the Chicago Theological Seminary and Dick Thistlethwaite is an organ transplant surgeon and a profes
Published August 2, 2004

The Reagans have become vocal proponents of embryonic stem-cell research. Theirs is a powerful witness. They have lived with "the long good-bye," as some have described living with a person who has Alzheimer's. Millions of Americans also live with family members who have life-threatening or terminal diseases that potentially could be cured by stem-cell transplantation.

With Ron Reagan's speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, stem-cell research has officially entered the presidential campaign. This can mean less light and more heat on the subject. But does the question of whether it is ethical to do embryonic stem-cell research have to succumb to the politics of polarization that has begun to define what passes for public debate in the United States?

The key question is this: Can we find a moral middle ground on embryonic stem-cell research so that this important research, which has so much potential for treatment as well as finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart disease and spinal-cord injury, can proceed? Embryonic stem-cell research also could alleviate the organ shortage crisis that causes many potential recipients to die while waiting, knowing they may not live long enough to receive a transplant.

Embryonic stem cells can be encouraged to become many different kinds of cells. Stem cells have also been found in several tissues of adults; however, stem cells from adult tissues do not appear to have the ability to develop as easily into multiple competent mature cell types as easily as those from embryos. Limiting research to adult stem cells is like asking the government to develop an Air Force only using prop airplanes and ignoring the existence of jets.

The religious controversy over embryonic stem cells centers on the question of when the embryo develops a soul. For Catholics and some conservative Protestants this ensoulment is held to be at the exact moment when the egg is fertilized by the sperm. More liberal Protestants, in general, do not view ensoulment as a static event but more as the progressive spiritual, intellectual and biological growth of the human both in the womb and after birth. A decisive moment in this development is when the fetus is capable of existing outside the womb.

In secular terms, similar arguments for and against embryonic stem-cell research are phrased as the question of when life begins--at fertilization, later in fetal development or at birth.

The stance that people take in this debate, thus, is critical not only to their opinions about embryonic stem-cell research, but abortion as well. The intertwining of these two issues has also raised the heat of the public debate, but they are distinct and separate. When embryonic stem-cell research is examined separately, the question can be rephrased from when does life specifically begin, to when is life clearly not present, thus eliminating an unknown gray zone in between.

There is a widely accepted legal and ethical precedent for defining the absence of life. Countries in which organ transplants from deceased donors are performed have accepted a well thought out, but arbitrary, definition of brain death. Without this definition, the majority of organ transplants performed today would not be possible. The absence of brain activity and its irreversibility constitute a medical definition of death accepted almost universally by all religions.

While not an exact analogy, the parallels to consider for embryos are that they have no brain activity and, when they are not implanted in a mother's womb, they will never develop brain activity.

At least half of fertilized eggs in normal human reproduction do not survive when they fail to implant in the uterus. Failure of natural implantation is not considered by anyone to be the destruction of human life in any argument that has been raised against embryonic stem-cell research. This natural process of destruction of embryos without implantation thus fits the analogy to brain death.

Embryonic stem cells from fertilized eggs that are the byproducts of in-vitro fertilization also meet these criteria. In in-vitro fertilization, many embryos are created but only a few of these are ever implanted in the mother's womb and given the chance to develop into human beings. Most will never be used and have been kept frozen in storage indefinitely or have been destroyed. Many have proposed that embryos left over from the in-vitro fertilization process but never utilized would be a practical source of stem cells for research. But the concept of how to define their status in such a way that it is ethical to pursue this research has not been fully developed.

While people hold a wide variety of conflicting views on when a human being receives a soul or becomes alive, as a society we can perhaps arrive at agreement that, in the absence of brain activity and with no potential to develop brain activity, embryos that are left over from the in-vitro fertilization process fulfill criteria for absence of life and, therefore, can be used to accomplish a good end in healing.

As a nation we must move beyond polarized ideology in both religion and politics as we become a remarkably pluralistic society. One kind of pluralism is shaped in the search for areas of common action even without complete agreement on all our premises. The other kind of pluralism, the kind where we take sides on rigid ideological grounds, will tear us limb-from-limb as a society and leave us paralyzed.


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune 

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