Blowing Smoke on Stem-Cell Research
Anything but the truth.

By Wesley J. Smith, author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America published by Encounter Books
July 12, 2001 8:20 a.m.

here is an old saying among trial lawyers that goes something like this: "If you can't argue the facts, argue the law, if you can't argue the facts or the law, blow smoke." This proverb is equally applicable to political arguments. In the Great Stem-Cell Debate the smoke blown by proponents of federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) has grown so thick that global-warming activists should sound the alarm.

Up until now, those who advocate federal funding for ESCR have driven the debate. This isn't surprising given the blatantly biased coverage by the mainstream media as exposed by the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), which I described in a previous NRO piece. But now, opponents of federal funding are beginning to hope that time may actually be on their side. Indeed, the longer President Bush ponders what to do, the clearer the air is becoming.

The following are the primary arguments in favor of federal funding. What once appeared to be concrete pillars supporting a compelling argument have turned out to be constructed out of wispy particulate matter that may be beginning to collapse.

Only IVF Embryos Would Be Targeted For Destruction:
The American people are deeply pragmatic. Thus, the most potent argument in favor of federal funding has been the promise that only embryos destined for destruction from IVF fertility experiments would be used in federally funded research. Opponents' response to this argument--that no law requires these embryos to be destroyed, that some might be ultimately adopted by infertile couples, that such attitudes lead directly to the slippery slope, etc--while certainly true, have not persuaded a public that seems to view the use of unneeded IVF embryos as being akin to recycling aluminum cans.

But a story has now exploded into the news that should shatter this popular complacency. Scientists at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Virginia bragged in a press release that they paid women between $1,500 and $2,000 apiece for their eggs, and then used them — with the egg providers' consent — to create embryos for the purpose of destroying them in ESCR. These scientists claim that making embryos for research is "as ethical" as using frozen IVF embryos. Moreover, they contend, freshly created embryos might be "superior" for research purposes to those thawed out of a deep freeze. If that is true, how long would scientists be content to use "in excess of need" IVF embryos?

The response of pro-ESCR scientists and bioethicists to this development has been especially telling. Rather than forcefully and unequivocally condemning Jones Institute, their primary complaint has been that the "timing could not have been worse" — meaning that the disclosure makes a bad appearance that could give President Bush grounds to refuse federal funding. There has been no reported outcry from the ESCR crowd that the creating human embryos solely for the purpose of destroying them in research is immoral.

With this breaking story, it is now clear that the IVF boundary would never hold. Instead, federally funding ESCR would merely free up private dollars, now used for IVF research, to fund the kind of activities undertaken by the Jones Institute. Moreover, we must not forget that the biotech industry is lobbying hard against the Weldon Bill — crucial legislation that would ban all human cloning — on the basis that cloning would be a necessary aspect of embryonic-stem-cell medicine should the research ever become clinically viable. Thus, all of this talk of restricting the research to IVF embryos is really nothing but the old bait and switch.

Embryos Would Not Really Be Destroyed in the Research:
Some advocates of federal funding who are queasy at the thought of destroying embryos have settled their uneasy tummies by changing the scientific definitions. Thus, the Washington Times's Suzanne Fields wrote, "Though these fertilized eggs are popularly referred to as embryos, they really aren't, not until implanted in a uterine wall. They are more precisely blastocysts."

Fields may be a good writer but she clearly doesn't know her human biology. An embryo by any other name is still an embryo. The 1989 edition of the American Medical Association's Encyclopedia of Medicine explicitly states, "From the time of conception until the eight week, the developing baby is known as an embryo." In its earliest stage of life the embryo is known as a zygote. The embryo is called a blastocyst when it reaches the stage of development where it can implant into the womb. At this point the embryo may be made up of more than a hundred cells encased in an embryonic lining. This is the stage of the embryos that are destroyed when their stem cells are harvested.

Along these same lines, Senator Orrin Hatch, former Senator Connie Mack, and other ESCR supporters who self-identify as pro-life, have taken to asserting that life doesn't really begin until actual implantation in the mother's womb, thereby seeking to hold on to a thin thread of consistency with their previous anti-abortion advocacy. (Hatch put it rather indelicately, stating, "Life begins in the womb, not a refrigerator.")

The idea that life begins in the mother and not a Petri dish may reflect a metaphysical belief system to which these anti-abortion politicians are surely entitled. But it isn't biology. Biologically, an individual human life commences as soon as sperm merges with egg. At that point, its entire genetic makeup of a human individual has been determined. The rest is simply a matter of time and development.

Only Embryonic Stem Cells Offer the Full Promise of Medical Breakthroughs:
For years, the propaganda coming from ESCR supporters has claimed that only embryos offer the potential for the full range of cures that scientists hope to develop with stem-cell research. Happily, amazing breakthroughs using alternative stem cell sources — umbilical cord blood, organs, fat, etc. — have dramatically altered the playing field. Indeed, terrible human maladies have already been healed using stem cells found in umbilical cord blood. Moreover, a recent scientific journal report stated that stem cells found in bone marrow might be as flexible as embryonic cells. Thus, scientists may be able to obtain virtually all of the medical benefits that ESCR advocates hope to achieve using alternative cell therapies without our society having to accept a Faustian bargain in which medical advances are paid for at the cost of human lives commodified into a crop, ripe for the harvest.

The Stem-Cell Issue is the Latest Chapter in the Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice Debate:
The media has played the Great Stem-Cell Debate as merely another front in our country's never-ending cultural struggle over abortion. But it isn't. The point of legalized abortion — whether or not one accepts the premise — is that the law should not force a woman to use her body for gestation and giving birth against her will. But in ESCR, there is no woman being forced to do anything. Thus abortion is utterly irrelevant.

In the Great Stem-Cell Debate our nation confronts a crucial question that cannot be finessed or compromised. Indeed, it is an ultimate issue: does human life have inherent value simply because it is human? If so, then federally funding ESCR would be wrong because, in effect, it would, place the people's seal of approval on destroying life for the utilitarian purpose of harvesting its valuable parts. If not, if we have no inherent value different from that of other life on the planet, then what's all the fuss about?

Perhaps this is why the issue sears our collective consciousness with such burning intensity. In the end, the denouement of the Great Stem-Cell Debate may not be about embryos at all, but about the meaning and purpose of human life.