Earth science, biology, chemistry, physics and embryology were always my least favorite subjects in school. Indeed, if it were not for the tutorial assistance of my good friends -- Tom Fitzgerald in high school and John Connolly in the seminary -- I would never had been able to muster a passing grade in those challenging courses.
I must confess, then, that when the issue of human embryonic stem-cell research emerged recently in the public debate it was not a topic I particularly relished, and an in-depth understanding of the science involved still eludes me.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the stakes involved. One had only to hear the heartfelt emotional pleas of celebrities like Mary Tyler Moore, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve to realize why people suffering from diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries would be passionate in urging the government to fund research that promises a cure for these debilitating and life-threatening illnesses.
Dilemmas
On the other hand, in announcing his decision on federal funding for stem-cell research, President George W. Bush put into perspective the ethical, legal, theological and pragmatic dilemmas this research creates.
These stem cells are extracted from human embryos when the embryos are five or six days old, still small enough to fit on the head of a pin.
We in the Catholic Church and many others regard these embryos as nascent human life and deserving of the protection which should be accorded every human being. Others maintain that such protection is not warranted, especially if science can produce life-saving therapies by experimenting with the stem cells obtained by destroying human embryos.
Bush's decision
President Bush sought to strike a compromise on this issue, one he believes will encourage potentially beneficial research but discourage further experiments on human embryos which are destroyed in stem-cell experiments.
His decision is to confine the public financing on stem cell research to those 64 stem cell colonies (or "lines") which were already in existence on the date of his announcement: August 9, 2001.
While I disagree with the President's compromise, which really has shifted the debate from whether it is ethical to do such research, to how to go about it, I understand the complexity of the matter at hand and why people of good will might find themselves in honest disagreement about embryonic stem-cell research.
Respecting life
Our Church's annual October observance of Respect Life Month provides a superb opportunity to reflect on this challenging moral issue.
An excellent article by Dr. Anton-Lewis Usala, a pediatric endocrinologist, prepared specifically for our U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual Respect Life Month observance, outlines in a very concise and understandable way why, despite the good intended, human embryonic stem-cell research is morally unacceptable.
Let me summarize some of his salient observations:
1. What are these "stem cells" and why this enormous interest in them?
Briefly, stem cells are cells that have the potential to become many other kinds of cells, depending on the signals they receive. They theoretically provide avenues for replacing damaged or non-functioning tissue to treat many kinds of diseases.
Stem cells are found from the beginning of embryonic development throughout adult life. Some researchers believe that stem cells found in the embryo provide more potential for regenerating tissue than do stem cells taken from older, adult donors.
2. Since human embryonic stem cells may provide the basis for some medical miracles, shouldn't the federal government fund research utilizing "spare" embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics? Wouldn't this be a better use for discarded embryos than destroying or freezing them as is currently done?
To address the question whether government funding should support human embryonic stem cell research, we need to consider the following:
* What is the scientific and medical rationale for considering this line of research and its alternative?
Medical science now provides no definitive therapy for many debilitating diseases. In fact, with the exception of antibiotics and other infectious disease therapies, medical science offers few definitive cures for human disease. Most therapies either control the disease, slow its progression or palliate its effects.
The ability to regenerate poorly functioning or damaged tissue might provide definitive therapy for many of the above diseases. The ability to regenerate central nervous system structures, for example, may help paraplegics regain the ability to walk. Regeneration of parts of the brain that make dopamine might cure Parkinson's disease. Regeneration of the pancreatic tissue that makes insulin could conceivably cure diabetes.
Studies in animals, and some preliminary studies in humans, have shown the ability of adult stem cells to improve various conditions associated with disease. Studies using human embryonic stem cells as a treatment do not yet exist.
One misleading conclusion drawn from those favoring embryonic stem-cell research is that it is a "medical breakthrough." It is not. It is an interesting idea favored by many scientists at the National Institute for Health and leading universities.
There is also a huge difference between promising research and the ability to turn research into a medical product. It takes years to conduct the basic science research, and many more years to turn discoveries into a usable medical therapy. Products that are now in human clinical trials are years ahead of any new basic science effort in, for example, embryonic stem-cell research, now being proposed for federal funding.
Thus, while embryonic stem cell research may be a popular idea, there are other exciting therapies that are much further along in development and that do not require the destruction of embryonic human beings.
* What are the secular ethical arguments, pro and con?
There are many ethical arguments put forth both for and against the use of human embryonic stem cells for medical research. For example, Dr. Richard Hynes, professor of Biology at M.I.T., offered this testimony in favor of such research before a Senate subcommittee in September 2000: "[We] believe it would be immoral not to pursue embryonic stem cell research...because this research has such enormous potential to save human lives and to mitigate human suffering....Surely, we should take advantage of the enormous life-saving potential of the thousands of embryos that are currently frozen and destined for destruction....We owe it to all those who are suffering to explore all possible avenues that could lead to the prevention of, and remedies for, disease."
But the premise that because the need is great, the effort should be great and all possible avenues explored, is clearly not ethically valid. If an adult does not give consent to be an organ donor, for example, states do not presume the right to use that person's organs for transplantation, even if the person is dead. Much less would any state instruct researchers in how to kill him by harvesting his organs while he is still alive.
In this case, the developing human embryo, cannot give consent to be sacrificed; hence, using precepts of natural law, the state should not subsidize and promote that sacrifice.
Catholics, along with Americans of many other religious backgrounds or none, believe that each individual has rights and duties, including a duty to respect the existence of other individuals. Simply to claim that the research potential is promising has not been seen as sufficient to justify funding countless other approaches to curing disease, many of which present no ethical problem. So one cannot reasonably demand funding for this research on the basis that it may have potential to one day mitigate disease, without taking into account the fact that it involves the destruction of living embryonic humans.
The ethical arguments that support fetal or embryonic research assume that the fetus and embryo do not have rights equal to individuals further along in their development (i.e., older). In short, one must define the embryo as a human cell mass that does not have the same right to life as us, more differentiated cell masses.
If that assumption were correct, however, would it then be unethical not to have embryo farms in order to save the further differentiated human beings whom we value more? And which other groups of undeveloped, underdeveloped or no longer productive humans may we apply this premise to next?
* What are the legal and jurisprudential considerations?
The medical and scientific basis for funding embryonic stem cell research is debatable. The ethical basis hinges on accepting a ranked valuation of humans according to how far they have developed. The most compelling secular argument against funding lies in its conflict with the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights establishes a government whereby the rights of the individual supersede the perceived rights of the state.
The framers of the Constitution believed that unless the people retained their ability to defend the specific individual rights articulated in the first ten amendments, just government would eventually devolve into one in which the majority could inflict injustice on less favored groups.
Thus, the rights of the individual have been protected throughout the history of the republic. When debate on what constitutes human life reaches a flash point, as with slavery and now with abortion, the premise of one side had to be defeated. In the case of slavery, it took the Civil War to establish the precedent that all people are worthy of Constitutional protection.
In the case of abortion, an interesting paradigm has developed. Since, at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, a majority of Supreme Court justices stated uncertainty about when life begins, they allowed the right of one individual to take precedence over the right of another. The right of the mother to terminate her pregnancy took precedence over the right of her developing child to live.
But now, by proposing federal support for human embryo research the state will be deciding the best use of an individual for the state's purposes, for the first time in American law.
In other words, federally sponsored and approved research that endorses using human embryos for social good is a cataclysmic paradigm shift. The NIH, with federal support, will for the first time determine that human individuals can be used and destroyed in medical experimentation in the interests of the state.
Dr. Usala noted in his testimony before the Senate subcommittee that "history has amply demonstrated the ghastly consequences when government arbitrarily defines what constitutes human life. I am not suggesting that those who want to use human embryonic tissue are of the same mind. However, the law is based on precedent; and once the United States allows the individual human embryo to be sacrificed for a perceived greater good, the greatest defense for the rights of individuals will have been eroded."
The cogent arguments marshaled by Dr. Usala against human embryonic stem-cell research are presented without consideration of the religious or theological foundations for rejecting such research because, unfortunately, both scientific researchers and public policy makers tend to dismiss religious arguments as unworthy of a substantive response in the secular arena and as a violation of the so-called principle of the "separation of church and state."
However, it is precisely and primarily our theological and religious understanding that leads us in the Catholic community to reject human embryonic stem-cell research because we strongly oppose any procedure that willfully terminates innocent human life from the time of conception to natural death.
God-given life
As this year's Respect Life theme states so well, "Every human life has its origin in the heart of God." Hence, every human being is to be regarded as a sacred and inviolable entity, and can never be seen simply as a thing, a pawn, a commodity, a unit of production, or an instrument for scientific or medical progress, even for so demonstrable a good as another's health or life.
This conviction about the sacred dignity of the human person, even in the petri dish, is a profound religious truth that appears from the first line of the Hebrew Scriptures to the last chapter of the New Testament and finds its expression in the teachings of all the great religions of the world.
We, then, as Americans must prevent the destruction of the Bill of Rights through trivializing the protection it affords all individuals, including human embryos. And we as Catholics must seek to transform a culture that tolerates and sometimes promotes the intentional killing of human beings by abortion and destructive embryo research, by executing criminals, and by assisted suicide.
No human life should be outside our concern because none is beyond the reach of God's love.