Wesley Smith: Blowing Smoke on Stem-Cell Research
Source: National Review; July 12, 2001

Blowing Smoke on Stem-Cell Research
By Wesley J. Smith,

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Wesley Smith is the author of Culture of Death:
The Assault on Medical Ethics in America published by Encounter Books. You
can purchase his books online in the books section of
http://www.roevwade.org]

There 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 htmlect 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.