A fresh look at the stem cell debate
I came across an interesting Reason op-ed piece provocatively entitled “Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?” I read the whole thing in one go, and it’s quite interesting. It offers some interesting figures and points out some glaring inconsistencies of the right wing stem cell agenda. I don’t enjoy reading, writing, or talking about politics, but from a scientific perspective, this article is enlightening regarding the political issues surrounding stem cell research, and I highly recommend that you read it for yourself.
It may come as a surprise to many that most human embryos are lost by natural means. Between 60 and 80% of them, in fact. They are lost as a result of menstruation. These are not miscarriages; the woman doesn’t know that she’s been fertilized, and the embryos are washed away naturally in menstrual flows. It is estimated that 60% of embryos have been fertilized for 7 days or more, and this number jumps closer to 80% if you count eggs just barely fertilized. (It’s bunk that some women think they can feel the moment of conception.)
These embryos are completely viable, and if they had implanted into the walls of the uterus, would have developed into healthy babies. This presents a problem for right-to-lifers who often make claims that every embryo is “already a human being.” So the question for people like Robert George is whether or not we should be trying to rescue these embryos as human beings. The only answer one could realistically arrive at is “no.” To even attempt to do so is impossible, not to mention silly, and it puts into perspective the absurdity some of the moral issues raised by right-to-lifers.
“If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined,” declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
People like Robert George and other right-to-lifers do not advocate saving these embryos. Ronald Bailey, the author of the article, reduces the issue to a simple question. (Emphasis mine.)
Of course, culturally we do not mourn the deaths of these millions of embryos as we would the death of a child—and reasonably so, because we do in fact know that these embryos are not people. Try this thought experiment. A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?
Anyone that would save the petri dishes would be ripped to shreds, even by right-to-lifers for allowing a human being to die. To take things a step further, if one were to extend this logic, that means that Heaven would be full of people who never lived: never developed brains, had thoughts, or, indeed, ever consisted of anything more than a handful of undifferentiated cells; those bags of cells wouldn’t even be visible to the naked eye sitting on a table.
But by using their flawed logic, many conservatives are blocking life-saving medical research that could benefit millions of people. Nonetheless, two new methods have been proposed to skirt the objections of right-to-life conservatives.
The first one involves using embryos that have cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes (called aneuploidy), and some with a normal number of chromosomes. These embryos are not viable, and could never develop into a fetus. Howard Zucker and David Landry, professors of medicine at Columbia Unversity would like to have these embryos declared dead so that stem cells can be harvested from them, just as organs can be legally harvested from brain-dead organ donors. It has been shown experimentally that these harvested cells can be used to grow other tissues, but could never become fetuses or human beings.
The second method is quite a bit different, and one which Mr. Bailey says that “right-to-lifers should not find morally objectionable.” But after reading about it, I can assure you that they will. The method involves inactivating the cdx2 gene, which prevents the formation of the trophoblast — the precursor to a placenta, which in turn prevents the formation of of a fetus. This method allows the formation of stem cells, however. The method works experimentally on mice, and it is thought that a similar method might work on humans, if the trophoblast gene could be located and turned off.
Hurlbut proposed an attempt to find similar genes that could be inactivated in the nuclei of adult human cells before they are installed in enucleated human eggs to produce cloned embryonic stem cells that are a genetic match for the person who donates the adult nucleus. (Transplanted cells and tissues produced by such therapeutic cloning would not be rejected by the donor’s immune system.) Once the stem cells have been derived, the inactivated genes could be reactivated so that the stem cells could be used to produce normal transplantable cells and tissues.
“This process does not involve the creation of an embryo that is then altered to transform it into a non-embryonic entity,” explained Hurlbut. “Rather the proposed genetic alteration is accomplished ab initio, the entity is brought into existence with a genetic structure insufficient to generate a human embryo.”
I can simply imagine the responses that I would get if I were to propose the idea to a group of fundamentalists. While nothing would be directly objectionable, the whole thing would be too close to “playing God” or something equally spurious, and they would be against it. I would respond to such objections that doctors have been “playing God” since the first time someone took an herb to settle their stomach or get rid of a headache. Instead of antibiotics or asthma inhalers, we’re engineering the solution this time, rather than using allopathic therapy. Engineering medical solutions is not wrong, it is simply the next step for modern medicine.
To share my own experience, many ultra-conservative fundamentalists don’t want to cure all disease. I’ve had conversations with some very conservative people who think things like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s shouldn’t be cured. The scary thought was that one of them had ambitions to be a doctor, specifically an oncologist. I cannot reconcile such a statement with the desire to be a physician — especially an oncologist where so many risk factors are hereditary. To show how thin the veneer of sactimony often is, I have known people who opposed certain types of research, until a loved one came down with a condition where the only options available were those that are traditionally “off-limits” from the church’s point of view. It’s easy to be comfortable in self-righteous indignation when the people who will benefit from life-saving treatments are faceless statistics, but when it’s a real person that is sick, opinions and beliefs change quickly. But I should be fair and say that I’ve seen others who would rather die than do an experimental treatment that they have moral convictions against, so it goes both ways. But usually the former attitude prevails.
There is one final thought that I have on the matter. Religion and science have always clashed, and they always will. Science cannot and does not exist in a political and/or religious vacuum. There will always be squabbles over ethics, and I believe that trying to talk about science as though it exists in a political vacuum is disingenuous and does no one any favors. In the past and present, societal values — as represented by the current administration, which I would like to remind the rest of the world that not all Americans voted for — are 10-20 years behind science. The tide will change again soon, and the current stem cell debate will subside when the law is changed. (It’s only a matter of time before the laws regarding stem cells are changed simply because Americans hate to be behind the rest of the world in research and technology.) And then the debating process will begin anew, perhaps about a different issue. The important thing is that science and medicine remain fact-based so as not to muddy the moral waters that the ethicists have to sift through.
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That’s a great article. I never new about the 60% figure, and I myself believe that life begins with brain activity. For the record, I’m an atheist who’s strongly against abortion (especially late-term). I’ll definately have to throw a link to this article on my site for others to read.
Cheers
Comment by Eighty — August 8, 2005 @ 11:32 pm
[...] From polyscience.org: It may come as a surprise to many that most human embryos are lost by natural means. Between 60 and 80% of them, in fact. They are lost as a result of mentruation. These are not miscarriages; the woman doesn’t know that she’s been fertilized, and the embryos are washed away naturally in menstrual flows. It is estimated that 60% of embryos have been fertilized for 7 days or more, and this number jumps closer to 80% if you count eggs just barely fertilized. (It’s bunk that some women think they can feel the moment of conception.) [...]
Pingback by eightyford.com » A fresh look at stem cells — August 8, 2005 @ 11:37 pm
Most of the discussion in the article is slanted in a way that belies the author’s claim that “I don’t enjoy reading, writing, or talking about politics”. When he points out that to try to save embryos lost through menstruation would be “silly” he is quite correct, but to say that it “puts into perspective the absurdity some of the moral issues raised by right-to-lifers” is very unfair.
Although there are pro-life atheists, a large contingent of the pro-life crowd are Christian. In catholocism at least it is not considered that there is an obligation to preserve or extend human life beyond what is humane or reasonable (i.e. it can be acceptable to stop treating terminally ill patients who are in pain, even though euthenasia is forbidden). I think something comparable is appliccable here. Pro-life people may not want unborn lives killed (this is a natural consequence of the belif in the existance of unborn human life), but do not have to have corresponding objections to the many embryos lost as part of the natural biological process. I do not see anything inconsistent or absurd about this moral position.
Comment by Dom Howells — August 9, 2005 @ 8:09 am
You have to realize that I was writing that slanted against the typical fundamentalist position. Catholicism is quite a bit different than typical fundamentalism, especially when it comes to science and medicine. (It tends to be more progressive.) So while you might have read this as an attack on all Christians, it wasn’t meant to be that way. Indeed, I only wanted to point out the absurdities that many typical protestant fundamentalists hold near and dear to their hearts.
Lastly, while you think what I wrote may “belie” my statement about not enjoying or wanting to write about politics, I think you should re-read what I wrote: there’s more in the way of statements about religion and morality than politics. And when I do mention “the right,” you have to keep in mind the last paragraph. Particularly this:
Keeping science and ethics (which in turn stem from one’s morality which often stems from one’s religious upbringing; both of which are connected to one’s political leanings) separate is impossible.
Comment by Rian — August 13, 2005 @ 1:05 pm
[...] What I would like to know is whether stem cell research is involved. If not, this would leapfrog a huge ethical barrier, at least here in the United States. Sadly, though, I suspect that there is, simply because of the phrase “fetal liver cells.” Unfortunately, this regeneration method doesn’t offer any hope for those who choose (or chose) to indulge in reckless recreational habits of questionable legality in the past or present. [...]
Pingback by polyscience.org » Regrowing hearts, lungs, but not brains — September 11, 2005 @ 10:01 pm