ALL THE BENEFITS WITH NONE OF THE IMMORALITY:

Beginning of the End for Embryonic Stem Cell Research? (Michael Fumento, 02/11/2005, Tech Central Station)

Supporters of expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research were disappointed by President Bush's State of the Union Address, which indicated no softening of restrictions. Instead, he said he'd work to "ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation." But those who support expanded government ESC funding because they believe it will bring medical breakthroughs have naught to fear. For there's a far more promising approach likelier to produce more benefits and much sooner.

That's because we're being flooded with exciting new developments from the alternatives to ESCs, called adult stem cells. Taken from a person's own body or from umbilical cords or placenta, these cells continue to be used to treat ever more diseases. Further, ASC research in humans and animals keeps biting away at the alleged trump card of ESC-backers, that only ESCs can be transformed into every type of cell in the body.

At some point you have to conclude that those pushing the use of fetal/embryonic stem cells just want to exercise the power to kill.

MORE:
Here's the immoral side, Cell Out: Bush’s stances on stem cells and cloning drift ever further from scientific reality. (Chris Mooney, 02.07.05, American Prospect)

His mention of ensuring that embryos "are not created for experimentation" clearly refers to a ban on so-called therapeutic cloning, much desired by Bush's religious-right supporters, such as Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, as well as most members of the President's Council on Bioethics. This legislation, which Bush has previously embraced, is a real nightmare; it would mean actual jail time for offending medical researchers.

Even considering all the other assaults on science with which Bush has been charged, his signature on such a bill would truly mark a new departure. And indeed, the president's professed moral stance on "therapeutic cloning" makes little sense in light of the latest scientific information.

At its most basic, therapeutic cloning amounts to embryonic stem-cell research Part II. For a diagram of the process, see here. In brief, scientists would extract the nucleus from a human body cell and implant it in an unfertilized egg, which would then be coaxed into dividing until it reaches the blastocyst phase, when embryonic stem cells could be extracted. South Korean scientists have already pulled this off. Many U.S. researchers think it should have happened here first.

Scientists don't want to perform this controversial research merely to provoke jeremiads from neoconservatives or to enrage the Bible Belt. And no serious scientist wants cloned human embryos implanted in wombs -- they'd be glad to see a law passed outlawing such an action.

Nevertheless, scientists foresee that down the road, "therapeutic cloning" could facilitate the growth of transplant organs from stem cells that wouldn't be subject to immune-system rejection. And there's another key benefit: As a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study of cloning pointed out, with this process you could essentially transfer the DNA of someone suffering from a genetic disease -- say, Lou Gehrigh's -- into an embryonic stem-cell line. Once scientists have such disease-specific lines available for study, they'll be able to watch the lines develop and, hopefully, gain new insights into disease processes that may someday prove the target of medical interventions.

That's a pretty good reason not to imprison American scientists who want to conduct this work. Moreover, despite Bush's hand-wringing about embryos being "created for experimentation," a strong case can be made that therapeutic-cloning research is actually less morally troubling than ordinary stem-cell research. "Cloned embryos are the most ethical embryos to work on precisely because they are the least likely to really be embryos," explains University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan.

Caplan is referring to recent research suggesting that embryos produced through cloning would have a range of abnormalities that could make them incapable of actually developing into grown human beings when implanted in a womb. Such findings have made many ethicists question the conventional wisdom, implied in Bush's recent speech, that cloned-embryo research somehow crosses a moral line that the use of IVF embryos for research does not.

That's a particularly repellant line of reasoning, eh? That cloned humans will hopefully be so abnormal that they won't be viable?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2005 04:54 PM