No need for embryonic stem cells

[MDM4AU 332]

From The Birmingham News, Sunday, September 5, 2004 - Page 6B

No need for embryonic stem cells; use adult stem cells

By G. Neal Kay

Several in the public life have offered recent pleas to expand the federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.  Stem cells may indeed have the potential to treat several chronic medical conditions and it is important that this research continues.  However, one must be quite careful to distinguish between stem cells derived from adult tissue and those derived from living human embryos.

There is no ethical dilemma to research using cells derived from adult tissues.  Adult stem cells can be derived from a variety of tissues.  The donor can give informed consent for the donation of tissue for the purposes of research.  Adult stem-cell research must continue with the full support of the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of federal grant support for basic scientific research.

In contrast, the use of embryonic stem cells leads to grave ethical concerns.  Human embryonic stem cells are harvested from living embryos, leading to the death of nascent human life.  If human life is sacred, the destruction of human life for any purpose, however noble the intention, can never be justified.  AN end that is good can never justify a means that is evil.

Proponents of embryonic stem-cell research argue that embryos are not persons.  They suggest that the developing fetus becomes a human person when it can survive outside the womb.  The folly of such reasoning is clearly proved by the fact that, over time, fetuses have been able to survive after birth at progressively decreasing gestational age.  If a 28-week fetus could not have survived outside the womb in 1980, but a 24-week fetus can survive with a reasonable probability in the year 2004, does this mean that the stage of development at which personhood can be defined has somehow declined overtime?  Of course not.

If an embryo is not a person, then when does a human life become a human person?  There is simply no line that demarcates when personhood develops.  Indeed, if one is logical, the only conclusion that can be supported is that human life becomes a human person at the stage of zygote, the moment of conception.  This is not faith; this is reason.

Embryonic stem-cell research must not be funded if it destroys human life (as it does).  The present technique for deriving embryonic stem cells results in the death of a developing human life at its most innocent stage.

Proponents of this research also argue that, if not used for this purpose, these embryos would otherwise be destroyed.  But what kind of logic is this?  Simply rationalizing that human life would be discarded if not used for research would be similar to arguing that since prisoners in World War II concentration camps would have been killed anyway, it is permissible for Nazi “doctors” to conduct lethal experiments on these otherwise doomed persons.  While saving lives and relieving human suffering are goals of all legitimate medical research, we can never condone the killing of human life in order to reach these goals.

The challenge facing ethical scientific researchers and our entire society is to discover methods for unlocking the potential uses of stem cells from adult tissues.  While this may be more difficult than using embryonic cells, it is achievable.  Indeed, if adult stem cells can be manipulated to unlock their full potential, the ethical debate regarding stem-cell research will disappear.  Fundamental scientific research must never allow human life to be destroyed, no matter how laudable its potential rewards.  It is incumbent on our culture to preserve the basic human rights of all Americans.  The most basic right is life itself.

G. Neal Kay, M.D., is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.