Society must not let powerful exploit the weak with impunity
AS I SEE IT column - Worcester Telegram & Gazette March 29, 2005
Not all stem cell research is good for us. The current debate on Beacon Hill makes clear we have a choice to pursue good science which is ethically responsible and already successful, or bad science which kills in the name of a supposed cure. Which will we choose?
Stem cells are very malleable human cells which can be isolated in the laboratory and coaxed into growing new tissues and body substances for sick patients. There are two types of stem cells. Adult-type stem cells, harmlessly obtained from mature tissues like umbilical cords, placentas, bone marrow, muscle, and even body fat, are already being used in successful therapies for nearly 100 different diseases.
Embryonic stem cells are harvested from days-old living embryos. No cure has been developed using embryonic stem cells. In fact, the research history is replete with instances of tumors, tissue rejections and immune reactions. Yet scientists and politicians loudly claim these early primitive cells have even greater potential to heal a wider range of diseases. The promise, however, comes at a morally unacceptable price: harvesting the stem cells kills the embryos.
That is reprehensible to patients like Patricia Payne, mother of five, even though her body is flooded with constant pain as a result of Parkinson’s disease which she has suffered for 14 years.
"How I want to relieve my suffering, especially of the body which I carefully conditioned for years as a classical dancer," she recently told a State House joint committee considering a law that would support embryonic stem cell research. "My suffering isn’t the real issue. The real issue is what we are being asked to do in the hope of relieving our suffering. I don’t want to see cures, even a cure for my terrible disease obtained by destroying a fellow human being at their earliest and most vulnerable stage of their existence."
How right Patricia is to remember the value of this early and humble stage through which we all have passed. None of us would be alive today if a scientist had hovered over us while we were embryos too tiny and helpless even to cry, and expertly extracted our stem cells. Mrs. Payne is a example, however, of sound ethical science.
She is a participant in an adult-stem cell therapy trial which is already showing significant promise in treating Parkinson’s disease.
Some politicians and scientists claim embryonic stem cell research involves no moral wrong because the embryos they would be using, leftovers from fertility clinic treatments, would die anyway. All of us "will die anyway" but that gives no one the right to experiment upon and kill us. "Imagine children trapped by terrorists in a school building,"said Father Tad Pacholczyk, priest, microbiologist and bioethicist. "Would we allow scientists to enter the building with a device aimed not to rescue but to extract the organs of the children for the benefit of medicine since the trapped children were going to "die anyway?" We would be morally outraged. And so should we be about scientists seeking to experiment on children "trapped" as frozen embryos.
Others say stem cell research using embryos obtained through cloning would be morally acceptable because a cloned embryo is not human. In cloning, a nucleus from a person’s body cell is inserted into an egg whose own genetic material has been removed. The egg is then stimulated to begin normal embryonic development without sperm. This process was used to create Dolly the sheep. Surely we would not call Dolly a different animal because of how she was produced. And in the same way, human embryos, no matter how they are produced, are human beings with distinctly human DNA. Chillingly, scientists hope to engineer such embryos with certain diseases so they can study their development and perhaps construct healthy tissue that would be a genetic match for a donor.
What they propose is the creation of human beings who live long enough to provide muscle, bone, skin for another.
A truly just society, with equal treatment for all humans, can never allow the mighty and the powerful to exploit the weak and powerless with impunity. Allowing experimentation on human embryos, on our own humble origins, further erodes respect for the human dignity of all people.
If we say yes to embryonic stem cell research our society will become increasingly coarse and violent. It will become a barbarous and dangerous place where human beings of any age or perceived weakness are vulnerable to experimentation and exploitation by the state which is supposed to guarantee the right to life of all.
Our laws should promote good science. Good science never kills to cure.