I thought this was a very well written piece.
Stem cells: the goo of life, the debate of the century
U.S. panel support of embryo research raises tough issues
By Glenn McGee, Ph.D.
SPECIAL TO MSNBC
May 24 - Suddenly everyone is up in arms about pluripotent stem cell
research. Well, sort of everyone. And maybe not up in arms exactly. But it
is big news: pleuripotent stem cells are amazing cells derived from a very
early stage human embryo (called a blastocyst, comprised of approximately
100 cells and smaller than an eyelash). IF YOU believe the hype, the
political and religious right and the scientific left are fighting a battle
royal over whether to conduct research on embryos that have been slated to
be destroyed anyway by fertility clinics.
But don't believe the hype.
Despite the recent findings of the NIH legal counsel, the President's
ethics panel, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, a few
Catholic scholars and bishops and dozens of bioethicists, no one is sure
what stem cell research will involve, or what the ethical issues are.
Pleuripotent stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize medicine,
but media coverage of stem cell research has the potential to scare us all
to death.
On the one hand, pluripotent cells seem to be the "goo of life," a
cellular biological discovery (by James Thompson and John Gearhardt) as
revolutionary as the spiraling of DNA identified in 1953 by molecular
biology pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick.
Once derived from an early-stage embryo, they may be directed to grow
into virtually any kind of cell line. Liver cells, brain cells, bone cells,
skin cells: If you need cells or tissue, we may soon be able to grow
compatible, stem cell-derived cell lines to help.
MANY COULD BENEFIT
Patient's CuRE, a recently formed patient-advocacy group comprised of
more than 20 patient organizations and many medical professionals, held a
press conference in early May to describe a few of the diseases for which
stem cells might offer therapies or cures: Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's
disease, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, birth defects,
osteoporosis, spinal cord injuries and burns made the list, as well as most
cancer.
That accounts for more than half of all Americans, and Patient's
CuRE estimates that 148 million Americans will be candidates for stem cell
therapy.
Stem cell research is at least as ambitious as the Human Genome
Project and infinitely more promising in the short term. At the CuRE press
conference I noted that pleuripotent stem cells are the most exciting
scientific discovery of my lifetime.
On the other hand, you could scarcely imagine a more controversial
field of research. While opinion polls suggest that most Americans support
the use of very early embryonic cells for this research, many Americans are
both vehemently opposed to abortion and frightened to death by what they
hear about a few outlying infertility clinics and practices in the United
States.
Rome has not yet spoken on the subject of stem cell research, but a
few American Catholics have really stirred the water. Catholic bioethicist
Richard Dorflinger argues that embryos should not be used under any
circumstances, even if the embryo is discarded in freezers at fertility
clinics. It is difficult to imagine, other pro-life groups have argued, a
bigger destruction of human life than that entailed by a massive stem cell
research campaign.
Existing Federal law prohibits the destruction of embryos for
research, but NIH Director Harold Varmus and the NIH counsel make a
distinction between destruction of embryos, which the agency cannot fund,
and research on resultant stem cell lines, which it can. Pro-life scholars
counter that federal funding of pluripotent stem cell research is the same
as funding abortions.
The abortion debate is certainly one of the greatest failures of
American democracy to empower and civilize public discourse. Lives are lost,
careers and esteem destroyed, and religion made to serve as a political
football.
There is still time to separate stem cell research from the abortion
debate. The critical issues here are tough, and they require us all to do
some deep thinking about how we want to understand human life and dignity
and about how we want our social institutions to work.
THE ISSUES
First, what is an embryo? In the short term we may see human embryonic
tissue derived from excess embryos in IVF clinics, but if the political
debate becomes too toxic the researchers will turn to other ways to make
stem cell tissue.
For example, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts last
year announced he had made an embryo-like-thing by merging DNA from his
cheek cells with a cow egg. He found what look like stem cells in the
resulting organism. Is that an embryo? Is it a clone? Is it human?
If discarded IVF embryos are off limits, look for cloned
embryo-like-things within a year.
Second, what is the best way to regulate ethically difficult research? The
answer clearly is not to play ostrich. Take infertility: totally
unregulated, research in infertility sometimes does not even require animal
studies, and there are few rules about any of the important questions in the
field.
Without federal funding there will also be no rules in stem cell
research. With funding, the field can be controlled and the results
carefully monitored. Patients and donors of tissue alike will have full
informed consent.
Third, what is the right balance between respect for embryos and respect
for the suffering patient? Sick Americans wait for the outcome of a debate
about whether suffering ill, our parents and children, should be denied
therapy when all that is required is that embryonic tissue is used in
research rather than thrown away.
There is time to answer these questions, and all voices must be
heard. But we have to put more stock in the opinions of the people than the
voices of a tiny minority. There isn't a debate here, there is the beginning
of a critical conversation about the most important new technology of the
millennium.
Glenn McGee, Ph.D., is a professor and associate director for
education at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics in
Philadelphia. His latest book is "Pragmatic Bioethics."
Bruce A. Hollenbeck
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