by Eve Stenson

Stem cells have been hailed as a fountain of youth, and the solution to everything from the common cold to cranky in-laws. While the more perceptive may have recognized these claims as slight exaggerations, stem cell research has great medical potential. It is not unreasonable to think that it could lead to therapies and even cures for Alzheimer’s, paralysis, and some of the other ailments that we haven’t quite figured out how to handle, yet. For this to be possible, though, federal funding and federal laws must be accommodating.

Less than a month ago, President Bush called for a plan allowing federal funding for exaclty 60 existing stem cell lines, no more and no less. (Stem cell lines are colonies of "pluripotent" cells -- they can still differentiate into any cells in the human body, but cannot grow into a baby under any circumstances.) He spoke out against using embryos discarded from in vitro fertilization clinics, and against the creation of new embryos for research purposes.

This was an attempt to find a comfortable middle ground. The most conservative voices (the Catholic Church, the Family Research Council) would like to ban stem cell research altogether on the basis that it sanctions the destruction of embryos by using already existent stem cells (much as organ transplants from murder victims cause and increase in the crime rate). Rather than going this route, however, Bush has "compromised" in such a manner that it is more difficult to establish his decision as a poor one.

The National Institute of Health, in an attempt to locate 60 pre-existing stem cell lines has found 64, but the vast majority are not ready for research and many may not even develop into colonies capable of replenishing themselves indefinitely, which is what Bush’s plan would require. Furthermore, many of these lines would be difficult to access because they are owned by private companies. On a more economical note, many of the stem cell lines are located overseas, and if Bush’s plan becomes law it seems likely that many of America’s top scientists in the field will find themselves located overseas as well.

By prohibiting researchers from creating their own embryos or using discard embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics, Bush has sought to protect his Pro-life support, without incurring the rather of all those who look to stem cells for new cures for their or their loves ones’ illnesses.

The President, however, claims that his stance on stem cell research is not a product of politics, but rather morals. "I have made this decision with great care, and I pray it is the right one," he was quoted as saying in CNN.com’s August 11 article. "I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines where the life and death decision has already been made."

While he is correct that there is indeed a "life and death decision" involved, it is not the one he means and it certainly has not "already been made." The decision isn’t about whether those inner layer stem cells have been separated from the outer ones, but rather whether the lump of cells as a whole is even "alive" at all. If it is, then we must ask whether or not it is deserving of the rights that come with "life."

Now, you could say that all forms of human beings are alive and therefore should be accorded equal rights. You could say that we all equally deserve to exist, that nobody in any stage of human life has any more or less right to be alive. You could say a lot of things along those lines, provided you ignore the fact that we as a society have already acknowledged that "life" is not an absolute, and that with limited claims to being "alive" come limited rights as a living being.

After all, suppose you have one person taking a nap on a Saturday afternoon, and another who was just in a car accident and is now brain dead and supported by machines. They may look the same lying there, but you probably wouldn’t want to extract organs from the former of the two. Yet, it is an established and encouraged practice to donate organs from people who are brain dead. This is because we have decided that they are no longer fully "alive" and therefore forfeit the accompanying rights.

It used to be a lot easier: when you stopped breathing, that was it. No questions asked. Then we learned to take a pulse, and people had to wait a little longer before breaking out the will. Next, we invented CPR and your heart had to be stopped for a pretty good while before they threw in the towel. You also got to talk about bright lights and seeing dead loved ones.

Now, we have machines to breathe for us and keep our hearts beating, in some cases almost indefinitely. So we have switched to brain activity as the determining factor; if you want to take out an organ before then, you have to ask. Most people don’t have a problem with this system.

Yet, if we declare a person dead when his brain stops functioning, it makes little sense to declare an embryo alive before it even has a brain to function. Both beings are products of technology, alive only because we have developed the machines that permit it. Neither deserves to have the same rights as an independent human being.

One might argue that a fertilized embryo has the "potential for life." Here again, though, you find that our ever-increasing capabilities have made it nearly impossible to find a clear transition. Eggs and sperm have that potential as well, and now that we are developing cloning, so do all the rest of the cells in the body. The question is one of degree.

A somatic (non reproductive) cell can only become an organism if fused with an egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. In other words, there’s a little processing involved. If we look at a somewhat more natural process, the sperm must fertilize the egg before anything at all starts to happen. And once you have a fertilized egg, it won’t develop into a baby unless it attached to the wall of a woman’s uterus.

It doesn’t matter whether that embryo is being grown in a researcher’s petri dish, an in vitro fertilization facility, or a woman’s body. There’s no way you’re getting a human being out of that lump of cells without that next step. About half of all fertilized eggs in a woman’s body naturally don’t make it.

As a result, to say that every embryo has all the rights of human life is absurd. There is a degree of life in them, just as there is a degree of life in a brain dead accident victim. For this reason – the sanctity of human life – they deserve a measure of respect. Yet, nobody is about to try to outlaw organ transplants on those grounds. Nor should stem cell research be outlawed, or even curtailed to the extent that President Bush has described as "the policy I thought was right for America."

Albert Einstein once declared, "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." An incredibly discouraging statement, it nevertheless expresses the conflict we as moral beings must face as we become more and more capable of influencing our world. The religious insist that we must sacrifice our future to maintain our humanity; the pioneers call for us to abandon our conscience in our quest to fulfill our potential. Neither option is reasonable.

As our science evolves, so must our ethics. New questions call for closer examination to find the answers, not condemnation on the basis of ignorance.

This is only the beginning. Some day, we may develop the technology to grow a real "test tube" baby outside the womb. We may be able to create living, breathing human clones.

That’s when we’ll get to the hard questions.

(published in The Ram, 6 September 2001)