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Potemra v. Lopez: It's Pro Life Research

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Potemra v. Lopez: Why Both Reeve and Potemra Are Wrong

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A Turning Point On Abortion

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The Gospel According to Planned Parenthood

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The Goon with the Gun

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This Is America?

4.22.00
Elián Raid: Simply Un-American

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Elián Meets Dan and Oprah

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Rocker's Return

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Takin It to the Streets

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Way Out There

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Feds Overreach on Elián

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The Big Deuce for Noonan

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House Invites Juan Miguel to the Hill

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NRO Tops NY Times

4.10.00
Judis Strikes Again

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Elián Fatigue

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Most Treasured Right

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Anti-Hillary Tome Hits Bestseller List

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Elian and his Enemies

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Reagan: Wrong Man, Right Time?

3.28.00
Forbes Endorses Bush

3.28.00
Enter Saint Jack

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Oscar Wrap

od willing, I will never know the physical pain Christopher Reeve suffers. And I greatly admire his dedication to easing the pain of crippling conditions. I do, however, have to disagree with both Reeve and my colleague Mike Potemra. Using embryonic stem cells for medical research is neither morally nor (as of now) legally licit. Furthermore, it is not necessary.

Mike gets the pro-life position wrong in his call to arms for embryonic stem-cell research. I don’t blame him; as he rightly says, the pro-life movement has its share of public-relations problems.

But the fact remains: His highly logical means-ends test is irrelevant, because stem-cell research isn’t prima facie about abortion. In essence, the pro-life objections to human embryonic stem-cell research lie in the fact that using human embryos for medical research is immoral. If you take as a given that a fertilized egg is a human life, which many of our state and federal laws do, than embryonic stem-cell research is one of those things the Nuremberg Code was established to forbid.

That having been said, make no mistake: Ending the prohibition of human embryonic stem cell research will further destigmatize abortion. Imagine the guilt that can be removed from abortion, when a woman knows the good that will come out of her sacrifice. Picture the already P.R.-handicapped pro-life movement head-to-head with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, or Christopher Reeve in his wheelchair.

Furthermore, Reeve embraces government control of stem-cell research, in order to keep money-grubbing capitalists out of the business. What he fails to mention is that there is a reason why private industry isn’t rabid to get into the game: The medical benefits of stem-cell research that Reeve and Mike Potemra take as a given are merely theoretical. Recent research indicates that bone marrow in adults can provide the same stem cells the human embryo does. As Dr. Byron Petersen of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told the Associated Press, recent research suggests “that there is a stem cell in the adult bone marrow that is capable of becoming anything if you give it the right signal.” And adult stem cells are only one of many equally good options that don’t carry with them an added advantage to the pro-choice movement.

Mike Potemra wants pro-lifers to provide evidence of why embryonic stem-cell research is immoral. He should have his fellow-travellers provide the medical evidence to support why using the stem cells of embryos for research is necessary.

And one more thing: Reeve writes that “the work should be funded and supervised by the Federal Government through the National Institutes of Health. That will avoid abuses by for-profit corporations.” I worry about the trust Reeve puts in the National Institutes of Health. One hopes that Congress isn’t equally trusting, as they oversee NIH operations. The memory of Jesse Gelsinger, a relatively healthy 18-year-old who died at the hands of NIH gene-therapy researchers last fall, should be front and center in our memories whenever we discuss federal research on human beings.

Unlike Mike, I do value the consistency principle-there’s certainly no other way to deal with the issue of human life. Stem-cell research is not a good end coming out of a bad means. It’s bad. It’s destroying human life.

Couples adopt embryos. Let’s encourage that. With thousands of couples in the United States who suffer from the heartbreaking disease of infertility, there’s a truly good end we can all embrace.

The debate over embryonic-stem-cell research has been truly Clintonian, ever since the Clinton administration made it a political issue last spring. Even though Congress long ago banned the federal funding of the destruction of human embryos, the NIH has sought to circumvent Congress by arguing that the law doesn’t include stem-cell research because stem cells aren’t embryos. Never mind that you have to destroy an embryo to get to the stem cells. And never mind that what the law prohibits, specifically, is, “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”

When people like Reeve and Potemra continue to demonize their opponents as obsessives whose every action is directed towards overturning Roe v. Wade, they prove only that they can’t tell apples from oranges. They are confused, but their confusion has dire consequences: If their cause prevails, life will continue to be destroyed, in more varied, federally endorsed and funded ways.

The Potemra Argument.

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