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August 01, 2006

Stem Cell Advocates Tread Dangerous Ground

By Dennis Byrne

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone objected to President George W. Bush's veto of funding for embryonic stem cell research because it's not worthwhile protecting human life that's "smaller than a period on this page."

From this we should conclude that the comparative worth of human life is determined by size. The smaller you are, the fewer human rights you get; when you're the size of a dot and you have none. That's bad news for shorties. Stone, writing in an op-ed column for the Chicago Tribune, never gets around to saying how big a person must get before being endowed with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Years ago, I was discussing this point with a liberal editorial board colleague at the Chicago Sun-Times. She insisted that a woman's "reproductive rights" trumped any fetal rights because "it" wasn't yet a person. So, I asked, when did you become a person? Her pause indicated an intellectual void on the topic, until the answer came to her with sudden and absolute clarity. "Well, at birth," she proclaimed. She reasoned that at birth the fetus no longer is intimately dependent on the woman.

From this we are to conclude that the comparative worth of human life is defined by the degree of dependency. Which isn't good news for the developmentally disabled, the failing elderly and even newborns.

These guardians of compassion and sensitivity couldn't be more stone cold. They are wild-eyed with conviction that Bush's veto was nothing more than a cynical political ploy to placate right-wing religious nuts. They are unwilling to even consider that the veto reflects longstanding and sound philosophical and metaphysical thought about the most fundamental of human questions.

Exclaimed one cold heart on the Internet: What's wrong with using human embryos that are "headed for the dumpster anyway."

Even eminent British scientist Stephen Hawking asked: "We throw away many embryos in IVF (in-vitro fertilization) and no one objects. Isn't it better to use a few embryos to save lives?"

And this correspondent made it into the Chicago Tribune letters to the editor: "Is it better to waste a resource by unceremoniously tossing it into a black plastic bag to thaw and decay, or use that resource to better understand the complexity of the human body?"

Would they listen to themselves?

Does standard English now require us to refer to human life as a "resource?" Would they excuse Josef Mengele, the Nazi mad doctor who conducted horrific experiments on "useless" Jews and other concentration camp "discards" for saying: "Isn't it better to use a few Jews as a resource? They're going to die in the ovens anyway."

Here I will have outraged some readers by finding equivalence in a grown human and a human "dot on a page." Too bad; it's their position that is outrageous, by justifying the ending of human life with essentially the same reasoning that Nazis used to justify gruesome human experimentation. They're going to perish anyway, so let Big Brother use them for something else.

Outrage rightfully belongs to those who see value in all human life, who don't diminish human rights on the basis of size, development or dependence. Those who see that human life begins with a qualitative change. Who understand that a fertilized egg is qualitatively different than an unfertilized egg or sperm. It has its own genetic map, different from any other living creature. That the map, from the moment of conception, directs its growth. It manufactures its own blood cells and creates its own complex network of pathways and nerve endings. Until that person's death, he never again experiences such a qualitative change.

Yet, people who demand respect for all human life are portrayed as religious nuts, even though they may never once mention God or theology. They are painted as modern Luddites who oppose progress and goodness. Their ideology opposes letting the blind see, the lame walk and the deaf hear.

Or as a Chicago Tribune story, prior to Bush's veto, put it: "The debate pits those banking on the promise of medical advances against those troubled by the ethics and morality of destroying embryos in the name of science." As if being in favor of progress and concern about destroying embryos are mutually exclusive beliefs.

How the hell does anyone know that advocates of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research are more in favor of progress than its opponents? On the contrary, ESC proponents, not opponents, downplay concrete scientific advances made by ESC alternatives--stem cells obtained from "adult" tissue and human umbilical cord blood.

ESC opponents often are criticized for making too much of those alternative therapies. They are falsely accused of claiming that the promise of those alternatives is greater than the promise of ESC research.

Yet, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) herself provides an example of ESC overstatement when she calls the promise of embryonic stems cells "limitless." Clearly, no one from either side can claim with scientific certainty to know which therapy offers the greatest promise. A decade ago, we were offered the same kind of promise, of limitless and cheap power through the miracle of cold fusion.

But if we are to talk about actual progress, as opposed to promised progress ESC alternatives are far ahead, hands down. With amazing, but unheralded regularity, reports appear of new advances in treating diseases and injuries with adult or umbilical cord stem cells. A recent example is the use of adult stem cells found in fat to rebuild damaged muscle cells.

In light of that, one can reasonably question why such concrete results don't excite Clinton and others as much as ESC promises do. The apparent answer: ESC research has a higher priority for political and ideological reasons. (As well as for a practical reason: The lode of government aid coveted by ESC researchers.) There's plenty of ideology on both sides of this debate, but so far the media and politicians have avoided shining the spotlight on the heavy political agenda of ESC supporters.

ESC supporters could demonstrate interest in good faith debate by acknowledging the mere possibility that a contentious and, as they like to say, divisive fight can be avoided by aggressively pursuing a stem cell path that already is yielding dramatic results.

Instead, too many ESC advocates prefer to tread dangerous ground when they insist that human life ought to be sacrificed for someone else. To argue that it should be puts us on the road to the plot in the film Soylent Green--a 1973 sci-fi flick set in 2020 in which older people are euthanized into food for a starving New York City.

Can it be far away?

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