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David
Prentice,
professor of life sciences, Indiana State University & adviser
to Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.)
President Bush's
compromise decision on human-embryonic-stem-cell research was both
heartening and disappointing. Heartening because he made it clear
that no taxpayer dollars would go toward the killing of any more
human embryos. Disappointing because he opted for a political compromise
in an attempt to satisfy everyone. Federal dollars will now be used
to reward the recent destruction of human life for what is certainly
tainted and scientifically questionable research. Human life was
still purposely destroyed to derive the existing human-embryonic
stem cells. And how will these cells be certified as existing before
the president's announcement, versus produced by further destruction
of human embryos? What happens when and if researchers provide one
actually successful result and proclaim the need for many more cell
lines? After 20 years of experiments with mouse embryonic stem-cell
lines, little evidence exists that embryonic stem cells will ever
make good on any of the promises being made to patients. Meanwhile,
adult-stem-cell research continues to show the path to real benefits
for patients, and without harm to any human being.
Jonah
Goldberg,
editor, NRO
"Once
again, the president has done the bare minimum in order to try and
publicly posture himself with the majority of the Americans,"
declared House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt in a scathing response
to President Bush's decision to support continued research of existing
stem-cell lines. This is a funny criticism coming from a politician
who has done the bare maximum to publicly posture to the
majority of Americans. After all, Gephardt was once a reliably pro-life
Democrat, but switched when the breeze on his finger switched directions.
Still, even
if the messenger lacks moral authority, the message remains interesting.
Did Bush thread the needle? Did he maintain the principle while
accommodating the public's desire for further testing? Or did he,
like Gephardt before him, violate a fundamental moral principle
simply to placate the demands of politics?
I think he
did. By using only existing stem-cell lines, Bush in effect said,
"In the past, the federal government killed your fellow man
in order to further medical science. That was wrong. We shall stop.
But, of those already dead, that research shall continue."
This may seem like a great moral indignity to some. But it doesn't
to me. Indeed, for me, the most compelling pro-life argument against
what he did comes from Michael
Novak. If Bush blundered, he blundered strategically not morally.
"President Bush will now have to fight off roaring dragons,"
Novak argues "to hold on to the shrinking piece of ground he
has left himself to defend." This may, in fact, make it very
difficult to stop greater and less restricted funding of embryonic-stem-cell
research in the future. But that's essentially a slippery-slope
argument and such arguments are always about the hypothetical rather
than the here and now. And in the here and now, I think Bush did
ok.
Christopher
Reeve,
chairman of the Christopher
Reeve Paralysis Foundation (in a statement)
President Bush's
decision today to allow federal funding for human-embryonic-stem-cell
research on a limited basis is a step in the right direction. However,
this political compromise may seriously hinder progress toward finding
treatments and cures for a wide variety of diseases and disorders
that affect 100 million Americans.
By allowing
scientists access even to 60 existing stem-cell lines, the president
is still limiting the pace and effectiveness of federally supported
research. Scientists may need to use an unknown number of cell lines
and should not be restricted to those that presently exist.
Recent polls
show that an overwhelming majority of Americans support research
within the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health adopted
during the Clinton administration. Few issues enjoy broader bipartisan
support in Congress. The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation
supports President Bush's appointment of an advisory council on
stem-cell research and welcomes the opportunity to serve on such
a council.
Because of
the President's decision, it may now be up to Congress to enact
legislation that will enable scientists to fully explore the potential
of human embryonic-stem-cell research."
Michael
Schwartz,
vice president for government relations, Concerned
Women for America
One of two
things is bound to happen. Either the research on the embryonic
stem-cell lines the president has authorized will produce some therapeutic
advance, or it will not. In the first instance, the pressure to
broaden the funding will be irresistible, because it works. In the
latter case, blame for the lack of progress will fall on the president
for his timid failure to commit enough resources to scientific progress,
and the resentment against him will grow along with the frustration
over the lack of results. Having discarded any principled basis
for resisting the broadening of research funding, he will have no
option but to permit more and more. Once you start sliding down
a slippery slope, there is no stopping until you hit bottom.
The president was confronted with a stark choice between good and
evil. He was afraid to go either way, and tried to find a middle
ground that would please pretty near everyone. So he chose a little
bit of evil, and now he has the wolf by the ears.
Lewis
Charles Murtaugh,
research fellow, Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard
University
Right off the
bat, full disclosure: While I don't work with human ES cells, I
have a number of friends and colleagues who do. On their behalf,
and because I believe that ES cell research is the most promising
route to many cures, I let out a sigh of relief at the news of President
Bush's compromise. And yet...I would be much happier with this development
if the only politicians on my side were cut from the mold of Bill
Frist and Orrin Hatch. ESCR opponents will object that the ends
do not justify the means, but at least Frist and Hatch have the
right ends in view, i.e. alleviating disease and suffering. Their
opponents in the pro-life movement are similarly sincere in their
views. In contrast, I suspect that many on the Left know and care
little about the science, but see ESCR itself as a means to a more
questionable end, the shoring-up of abortion rights from blastocyst
to birth. Bush cannot possibly hope to sway these voters, ESCR or
no; the question is whether as many moderates will be won over as
conservatives are alienated. In the meantime, well-meaning scientists
are in the hot seat, as the culture wars finally invade the research
laboratory.
Michael
Ledeen, fellow, American Enterprise Institute & NRO
contributing editor
I thought it
was a hell of a good speech. It fit the problem very well, he demonstrated
a gravitas that we haven't seen enough of, and he was obviously
in full command of the subject. I was pleased with the final phrase,
when he said he hoped he'd made the right decision.
There may not
be a right decision, and there may not even be a decision that matters.
While it is not true, as so many believe, that scientific genies
can't be put back in political bottles, there are some that clearly
escape capture, and my guess is that this is one of them. There
will be lots of clandestine labs, and some very public ones-like
Professor Antinori's — that will clone, that will use any stem cells
they can get (and the Chinese will provide any body part for a price),
and will keep pushing the envelope. The desire for immortality will,
I have little doubt, eventually overwhelm the defenses of the virtuous,
even such a pillar of virtue as Leon Kass, surely the best choice
to head the new oversight body.
But we can
hope that W's fine speech will do some good, by elevating the debate,
by showing the public that politicians can grapple with truly profound
problems with modesty and dignity, and that this president is trying
very hard to advance our interests, moral as well as material. Did
someone say "solomonic"?
Chris
Currie, who has been insulin-dependent with type I diabetes
for 28 years. He lives with his wife and two young children in Hyattsville,
Md.
While there
are sighs of relief this morning that the president's proposed limiting
federal funding to cell lines already established, troubling questions
remain. By rewarding the human-experimentation industry with tax
dollars for its grisly fruits, the federal government maintains
a morally problematic proximity to the acts which killed some of
the most vulnerable members of the human species. Moreover, both
the principle and the mechanism by which these embryos perished
remains intact. The idea that the government can foster good ends
from evil means has become policy, while the freedom of researchers
to create new cell lines by destroying countless more embryos using
private money continues unchecked. What in the new administration
policy will prevent future embryonic-stem-cell lines from receiving
the same sanction as those "grandfathered" last night?
President Bush may have felt he exercised the wisdom of Solomon
with his compromise, but the wise king saved the baby. Last night,
we were left to contemplate babies already slaughtered, and the
president parceling out the remains.
Arthur
L. Caplan, director, Center
of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
When is a compromise
not a compromise? When a president declares a compromise but in
actuality takes one side of an issue.
President Bush
gave an articulate and sincere speech. He proclaimed he had found
a compromise on the thorny ethical question of stem-cell research.
But, while his rhetoric was beyond reproach, the substance of his
supposed compromise is nothing of the sort.
The president
declared that he would permit federal funding of existing cell lines
created from human embryos. There are, he said, 60 stem lines available
worldwide from destroyed human embryos and these could be obtained
by scientists seeking to research on stem cells with federal money.
By limiting
research to these cell lines Bush in effect banned federal funding
for human-embryo-stem-cell research. Most of the 60 cell lines that
already exist in the world will not be of much use to would-be researchers
in this country. Many of these cells lines are owned by companies
who will only make them available if the price is right. Other cell
lines are close to losing their potency making them worthless for
further research. And still others have been manipulated in ongoing
research to the point where there is no practical way to make any
use of them in new experiments.
I believe the
president when he says he truly wants to meet the needs of the disabled,
diseased, and dying. But his '"compromise" will do nothing
of the sort. The only real hope for doing serious research on human-embryonic
stem cells is to use human embryos to create those stem cells. Existing
cell lines simply are not going to do the job that is required.
Why did the
president decide against destroying embryos to get stem cells? In
his speech he said that all human life is sacred and that it is
wrong to experiment on something that is going to be destroyed.
Neither view seems ethically sound.
Not all human
embryos can be treated as morally equal. Most of the tens of thousands
that are frozen in tanks all around this nation are the unfortunate,
unwanted remains of attempts to treat infertility. They are not
human life, nor are they alive nor are the vast majority of them
even potential human lives.
Many were put
aside and frozen as malformed. Others are miswired having come from
women who eggs had lost their potency. Those that have been frozen
for more than five years will never be put into a womb for the purposes
of making a baby by any responsible doctor because they have almost
no chance of becoming a baby. The president declared these embryos
to be equal in moral worth to crippled children and those confined
to wheelchairs due to spinal-cord injury, traumatic brain injuries,
strokes, and Parkinsonism. They are not.
The president
also argued that it would be wrong to experiment on embryos which
are going to be destroyed. But he never said why. He simply asserted
this as a moral fact. He is wrong again. If you have embryos that
are going to be destroyed then if their destruction is an ethical
act, which I would maintain it is for those embryos that cannot
become babies, then there is no moral harm in accomplishing their
destruction by putting them into research.
The president
sought a compromise. But he wound up advancing a non-solution. Patients,
the disabled, their families and research scientists are not likely
to be mollified. The president compromised his compromise because
the American people will not be persuaded by the moral position
that it rests upon.
Sen.
Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) in a statement
I am pleased
the president has made a strong, clear statement about the need
to ban human cloning and stopping the creation of human life for
research purposes. Throughout human history, we've learned the painful
lesson of using one class of human beings for the benefit of others.
It was wrong then, it is wrong now.
I am saddened
by the president's decision to allow taxpayer dollars to fund the
use of stem cells derived from young humans.
We already
have success with adult stem cells in treating human diseases without
the moral dilemma posed by embryonic-stem-cell research. We should
substantially increase the funding for adult-stem-cell research
rather than research on young humans — a practice which is opposed
by millions of American taxpayers."
Michael
Fumento, fellow, the Hudson
Institute
Until now,
President Bush has been to the art of compromise what Andy Warhol
was to art. It was time for him stop trying to please everyone and
simply do the right thing. With stem-cell research, he has.
It's not clear
how many human-embryonic-stem-cell lines already exist. But all
it really takes is one line to create an inexhaustible source of
cells that can be used by any number of labs.
These cells
cannot be considered human beings. The embryos whence they were
extracted are long dead. Allowing federal funding for experimentation
with them does not sanction those deaths.
Meanwhile,
the stunning breakthroughs that have characterized stem-cell research
over the last few years will continue. Most will continue come from
non-embryonic stem cells, notwithstanding the claims of the mainstream
media and so many politicians and pundits that non-embryonic stem
cells are A) not nearly as useful as embryonic cells, B) utterly
worthless, or C) in fact don't even exist.
Indeed, one
of the great unspokens in this vastly lopsided "debate"
was that much of the pressure for taxpayer-funded embryonic research
has been because funds have overwhelmingly gone to non-embryonic
work. Mayhaps these investors have know all along what others have
tried to hide.
R
Nathan Slotnick MD, director, Reproductive Genetics,
Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School
By far the most fascinating component of the political and media
focus on the stem cell and its clinical potential, is how quickly
and powerfully the questions have come to our nation's attention.
Ten years ago cloning, stem cells, and reproductive technologies
were largely unknown in the general population and, for the most
part, did not register on the national media's radar. In the span
of weeks, the nation's attention has become focused on this sophisticated
area of clinical experimentation. But attention without understanding
creates only misunderstanding and distrust. Although I commend the
president for what is clearly a successful "education"
in this field and for his thoughtful and flexible reconsideration
of his former policy, I'm troubled that the nation, as a whole understands
the issues and complexities far less well. Our representatives'
and media's comments clearly demonstrate how poorly they comprehend
the complexities of these issues.
We are scientists
and clinicians working in an exciting and promising area of research.
We should recognize that our responsibilities extend beyond the
lab to the scientific education of all. Our nation's biotechnical
decisions should be educated and informed.
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