“I agree technology per se is neutral, but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with a complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the universe.”
C.S. Lewis
Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama abolished the federal government’s
existing restraints on embryonic stem cell research. Predictably, liberals quickly heralded the move as one that ended the anti-science policies of former President Bush’s regime. As a blogger on the ultra-liberal website
Daily Kos gushed, “With the stroke of a single pen and a dramatic flourish, President Obama is expected at long last to consign George Bush's ill-conceived embryonic stem cell policy to the pseudo-scientific abyss from whence it came.”
When he signed the statement,
President Obama stated, “
It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.” Unfortunately, Obama is doing the very thing he insists should never be done – basing policy on ideology and not science.
For years, embryonic stem cell research has been heralded by liberals as the gateway to a better society. Proponents for the research dream of a world where cancer, spinal injuries, diabetes, liver cirrhosis and mental illnesses would be a thing of the past. Who could forget the wild and reckless claims of John Edwards, when running as John Kerry’s vice presidential nominee, famously promised that if Kerry was elected “people like Christopher Reeve” were going to walk again.
For years, liberals claimed, there were only ambiguous moral objections to these methods. They refused to recognize legitimate scientific criticism behind the research and attacked any opponents as being “anti-science.” To be sure, there were real and valid ethical concerns underlying these scientific practices. Critics claimed that if stem cell research was going to proceed, it should proceed in a way that respected all of human life, from the prenatal embryo to the advanced stages of life. These detractors believed that society should carefully monitor scientific research and that scientists should not be allowed unfettered reign to do as they please; in other words, that ethics and morality has a place in science.
President Bush, when he became the first president to federally fund embryonic stem cell research in 2001, placed restraints on the government’s funding of these projects which would rely on the future destruction of embryos. Instead, he restricted government funding to existing lines of embryos that had already been destroyed using private funds. “This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem-cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line, by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos,” Bush said. For placing these ethical restraints on science, Bush was constantly labeled as being “anti-science” while he was in office.
Of course, the charges were ridiculous. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research have never been “anti-science.” Some of the leading scientists in the field actually abandoned the practice due to these very concerns. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, one of the pioneering scientists at the forefront of this field, told the New York Times, “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”
Dr. James Thomson, who first discovered embryonic stem cells, stated, “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
In addition to these troubling ethical concerns, there remains another small problem: embryonic stem cell research has never yielded one positive medical result. Despite millions upon millions of dollars poured into this research field, there is not one example of a positive test using these types of stem cells. Let’s back up.
For those unfamiliar with stem cell research, understand that most cells can only produce cells of their own kind. Stem cells, though, are a special kind of cell that can produce many different types of human cells. As many scientists are apt to point out, just as the stem of a plant can generate flowers, leaves, and branches, stem cells can render forth a variety of different types of human body cells. The promise of this field, then, is if there is brain or spinal cord damage, or some other type of irreversible injury, stem cells can be infused into the corrupt body organ and begin to grow back and replace the damaged tissue.
There are two things I learned very as I studied this matter. First, stem cell research is an amazing new medical field that looks to help solve dozens of longtime debilitating health problems in the not-too-distant future. Mental illness, cardiovascular problems, nerve damage, and even spinal and muscular injuries could be cured using awesome new discoveries being developed in this field right now. Millions of dollars are being poured into research in this field from private medical and research firms. There is no one, no matter how pro-life, that does not support fully exploring this domain. I know I certainly hope this science is thoroughly pursued for solutions to all kinds of health problems.
The second thing I learned is that there are several different types of stem cells. There are
fat stem cells, that is, stem cells found in human fat. There are umbilical cord blood stem cells,
amniotic fluid stem cells, bone marrow stem cells, pancreatic stem cells, and literally dozens of other types of stem cells. There have even been stem cells found in human hair follicles! Because there are so many different types of stem cells they are usually divided into two broad categories:
adult stem cells and
embryonic stem cells. Interestingly, it is from adult stem cells (those taken from different parts of a grown person) where
all the significant finds have been made in stem cell research. Even now, adult stem cells are successfully being used in therapies for several different diseases and hundreds of trials are being conducted using adult stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells are those stem cells harvested from a human embryo. Due to the nature of the procedure, the embryo is destroyed during this process. While this reason alone should be enough to discourage and prohibit all future attempts at collecting these cells. The reason why embryonic stem cells have been pursued so vigorously is that they are pluripotent – that is, theoretically capable of developing into any type of body tissue. Adult stem cells were always thought by scientists to have a much narrower scope and use because they lacked this quality.
No longer. Researchers
just announced that they can reprogram an adult stem cell by inserting a sequence of DNA. This allows the cell to enter a state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell; put another way, the process enables the cell to assume a pluripotent state. There is no denying the significance of this amazing finding. The
Weekly Standard reports:
Harvard's George Daley described the study as "very significant," adding that he thought it was "a major step forward in realizing the value of these cells for medical research." Robert Lanza, of the prominent Advanced Cell Technology, said it was "very exciting work. . . . we're only a hair's breadth away from the biggest prize in regenerative medicine--a way to create patient-specific cells that are safe enough to use clinically."
There are several advantages to using these induced stem cells over embryonic stem cells and several labs have already switched over from using embryonic stem cells. First, they are cheaper and easier to work with than embryonic stem cells. Second, they are patient-specific. Ryan Anderson writes in the
Weekly Standard:
As anyone familiar with organ transplants knows, immune rejection is a major hurdle to any form of regenerative medicine. Induced pluripotent stem cells clear this hurdle because they can be created using the patient's own skin cells; thus they will have his exact DNA sequence and will not be prone to immune rejection. For embryonic stem cells to do the equivalent, they would have to be created from an embryo produced by human cloning.
Because of this obstacle, embryonic stem cells have caused tumors in almost every trial conducted with them. Adult stem cells will not have this problem. Indeed, adult stem cells now possess all of the benefits of embryonic stem cells while suffering from none of the drawbacks. This makes President Obama’s decision to fund embryonic stem cells all the more puzzling. At a time when the United States’ economy is buckling under the pressure of its enormous debt, and ways are being sought to cut the nation’s deficit, President Obama decided to funnel large amounts of money into a scientific field that is morally questionable and medically unfeasible.
Indeed, it makes Obama’s statement about following science and not ideology seem misleading at best and an outright lie at worst. But I knew Obama disagreed with me over the ethical concerns of embryonic stem cell research and that he is not exactly a fiscally-responsible conservative. What surprises me is that I did not know he would turn out to be so, well, uh, anti-science.
