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 resident
Bush opposes federal funding for research on stem cells taken from
human embryos because the research would destroy the embryos. He
is under intense pressure to reverse his position. The media are
almost as gung-ho for this cause as for campaign-finance reform.
And some politicians who usually vote with pro-lifers — notably
Sens. Orrin Hatch, Strom Thurmond, Gordon Smith, and John McCain,
and former senator Connie Mack — have also urged Bush to fund
the research.
Advocates brandish polls suggesting that most Americans, even most
pro-lifers, support this funding. These polls are meaningless. Since
most people have not spent much time thinking about the issue, poll
results vary greatly depending on the wording of the questions.
(Opponents of the research have found that most people are with
them when the questions mention that the research destroys human
embryos.) For the same reason, most people are unlikely to vote
based on the issue.
We do not know which decision would be better for Bush politically.
What we can evaluate are the moral arguments that supporters of
the research have used to get pro-lifers to surrender their objections.
These arguments plainly fail.
Some such supporters have advanced the curious notion that a human
embryo that has not been implanted in a womb cannot be a human person;
so it is acceptable to destroy that embryo. To consider implantation
a criterion for personhood is to make a fetish of location. If we
had the technology to develop an embryo all the way to infancy,
toddlerdom, and beyond, without ever being implanted, would anyone
deny that these older human beings had a right to life?
Some libertarians, meanwhile, have become attached to the idea that
opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is ridiculous because
early embryos are human only in the same sense that every human
cell is human. An embryo contains the genetic code for a human being,
goes the argument, but so do the skin cells we lose in the shower.
They, too, are "potential human beings" because emerging cloning
technology will make it possible to develop them into human beings.
Pro-lifers, though, do not believe that human embryos have the potential
to develop into human beings; we believe they are human beings.
They are whole human bodies. They are not functionally part of other
human beings. Skin cells are. If a clone were created using the
genetic material from a skin cell (joined with an ovum from which
genetic material has been extracted), it would be the act of cloning
that created a new human being, just as conception normally does.
The clone would be equivalent to the embryo, but the skin cell before
cloning is equivalent to neither.
Finally, supporters of the research argue that many of the embryos
that would be destroyed in it are slated for destruction or deep
freeze anyway. They will, in the charming phrase of advocates, "remain
unused." That we destroy small human beings — discarding "excess
embryos" from in vitro fertilization, or for that matter aborting
"unwanted children" — is a scandal that should be ended and,
we hope, one day will be. Freezing embryos is less problematic,
as it leaves open the possibility of allowing these human beings
to reach their full potential at some point in the future. In the
interim, embryos slated for destruction should no more be used for
research than Death Row inmates.
Embryonic stem-cell research may not lead to the medical miracles
now being discussed. Similar speculation a decade ago, when pro-lifers
were being asked to abandon opposition to fetal-tissue research,
proved tragically wrong. But even if embryonic stem-cell research
were to lead to everything claimed for it — were to cure cancer
and heart disease to boot — we would oppose it. Bush should
support research that does not destroy embryos, such as research
using stem cells taken from adults. But he should refuse federal
funding for embryo-destroying research, and indeed push for an overall
ban on it.
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