Bruce,
Thanks for posting the well written piece by Dr. Glenn McGee to the pd
list. Hopefully reasoned comments like his will be heard above the
hysterical cries of the frenzied few(yes the few NOT everyone as the media
prefers to say). I hope the screaming minority will not be heeded rather
than the reasonable majority.
Jeanette Fuhr 48/47/44?
Part of the article by Dr. Glenn McGee reads:>
> 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
> [log in to unmask]
