Stem Cell Research

When President George W. Bush was first elected with fewer votes than Al Gore, he announced that he wanted to bring this country together. We assumed that this meant that he was going to be a moderate president. Since his election, Bush has proven to be captive to the most benighted, right-wing elements of our society. As a result, we have more political antagonism in America right now than at any time since the Civil War.

Bush has vetoed a bill that would authorize governmental funding of stem cell research. Despite the fact that Congress has passed many bills filled with rotten pork and corrupt earmarks, this was Bush’s first veto. The bill would have gone a long way toward removing restrictions that have slowed progress, burdened laboratories with red tape, reduced American competitiveness, and discouraged young researchers from entering the field of stem cell research.

The bill was supported by large majorities of both houses of Congress and by over 70 percent of the public. This veto, like many of Bush’s actions, will not bring the country together. It will foster further divisiveness and anger. Moreover, it will hold back efforts to carry out some of the most promising medical research of our time.

Medical researchers believe stem cells have the potential to change the face of human disease. Stem cells might be used to repair damaged human tissues or to grow new organs. A stem cell is a primitive (undifferentiated) type of cell that has not yet become identified as a particular type of cell (e.g. a blood cell, heart cell, brain cell, etc). Scientists believe that it can be transformed into almost any of the 220 types of cells found in the human body. That means that it might be used to replace or repair the damaged nerve cells from spinal injury for people like Christopher Reeve or damaged brain neurons from Alzheimer’s disease for people like Ronald Reagan. Stem cells could possibly provide a cure for heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other diseases.

Stem cells can be extracted from very young human embryos -- typically from surplus frozen embryos left-over from in-vitro fertilization procedures at fertility clinics. There are currently hundreds of thousands of surplus embryos in storage. Most of those embryos are not wanted by the couples who deposit them there. The clinics fertilize many more embryos than are needed by the people who use their services. The extra embryos will eventually die or be discarded by the operators of the clinics. With governmental funding and permission of the donors, those embryos could be used for research that carries the greatest hope of alleviating human suffering since the development of antibiotics.

Why did Bush veto the bill, and why do religious and conservative groups oppose stem cell research? Because in order to do the research, the inner cell mass of the embryo must be extracted. The embryo is killed in the process. To some people, this is the killing of a human being. They do not care that these “human beings” are being kept frozen in liquid nitrogen or are being discarded down the sink by the thousands every year. They just don’t want them used for research.

For some people, a human embryo is a human being with a divine soul. This is a strictly religious belief that cannot be proven by scientific means. In America, we believe in the separation of church and state, and the religious beliefs of one religion should not govern our public actions. If one religion can thwart the conduct of life-saving medical research, that religion has too much power and influence in our democracy.

Other people oppose stem cell research because they liken it to abortion, which they abhor. To my mind, their opposition is not so much ethical as political. Many of these opponents are right-wing extremists whose opposition has more to do with sexual politics than with the rights of embryos.

Bush’s veto will not stop stem cell research. It will only hold back governmental funding of such research. The research will continue to go on in private laboratories. Some states, such as California, have voted to provide state funding for such research. The research is also being funded by private foundations. However, because so much medical research relies on governmental funding, holding back government money will surely retard the research. Scientists say the federal government would be a larger and steadier source of money.
Opponents of stem cell research claim that they are defending the sanctity of human life. The lack of research money could mean the deaths of thousands of people who might have benefited from the research. What kind of morality is it that values the lives of microscopic frozen embryos over those of living, suffering, dying human beings? The President and opponents of stem cell research should have the deaths of those real people on their consciences.