What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Good Morality or Good Medicine?
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have decided to fund stem cell research projects that are dependent on the destruction of human embryos to derive the cells. Stem cells are “master” cells present in the early embryo that are pluripotent, capable of becoming any of the 210 types of cells present in the human body. It is hoped that research will teach us how to coax stem cells to grow into different kinds of cells to repair such organs as the liver, pancreas, heart, etc. Stem cell research may lead to cures or at least improvements in persons who have diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.
There is another source for stem cells beside embryos—adult stem cells from such places as bone marrow. The NIH is not opposed to adult stem cell research, but it still wants parallel research done on embryonic stem cells. Pro-life advocates want research limited to adult stem cells because it does not require destruction of a human being as does harvesting of embryonic stem cells.
The NIH gives various reasons for its stance. It says that stem cells in adults are present only in minute quantities insufficient in number for adequate treatment. Research in Philadelphia has shown this is not true. There are conditions for large-scale expansion of adult stem cells in culture making them an almost unlimited resource. Researchers achieved a billion-fold increase of adult stem cells in a few weeks from bone marrow. The NIH states that extracting neural stem cells from adults is a complex and invasive procedure that may cause further neurological damage. In actuality it may not be necessary to extract neural stem cells from the brain. Marrow cells, which are readily accessible, have shown an ability to form nerve cells. Besides researchers have been able to stimulate regrowth in neural cells while they reside within the brain.
The NIH maintains that stem cells that have genetic defects are not appropriate for transfer into adult patients. This is not true because researchers in France cured some children who had an immunodeficiency by culturing their own bone marrow cells and, after replacing the defective gene, treating the children with their own stem cells. The NIH says that stem cells for all tissue types have not yet been found in the adult human, especially cardiac and pancreatic islet stem cells. Neither have cultured embryonic stem cells been made to differentiate into all tissue types, including cardiac or pancreatic stem cells. Researchers have found these stem cells in mice and adult stem cells have cured diabetes in mice. Perhaps the same can be done for humans.
Further, numerous studies have shown adult stem cells have the capacity to form different types of cells from the one ones from which they are derived. Some researchers think adult stem cells are pluripotent like embryonic stem cells. Brain cells can become blood cells and cells from bone marrow can become liver. Mice marrow cells injected into the brains of newborn mice became brain cells. Human adult stem cells were coaxed to differentiate into different kinds of tissue including fat, cartilage, and bone cells.
Adult stem cells also have the advantage of eliminating the issues of rejection since they are inserted into the patient from whom they are derived. That may not be true with embryonic stem cells.
The research suggests that use of embryonic stem cells is not necessary to achieve the benefits of stem cell therapy. Not only that, use of embryonic stem cells has resulted in some catastrophic results. George Doeschner who has Parkinson’s disease had nerve cells from fetal tissue injected into his brain. For a time he felt minor relief, but then his left arm began to jerk uncontrollably. Other patients similarly treated had similar side effects: writhing, twisting, head-jerking, arm-flailing and constant chewing. One man was affected so badly that he could eat only by using a feeding tube. In these patients the grafts may have grown too well and churned out too much of the chemical dopamine which controls movements. A fifty-two year old Japanese woman had a fetal graft in 1995 in hopes of relieving the rigidity and shuffled gait characteristic of Parkinson’s disease. It grew into a cyst and killed her. An experiment in China involving transplanting of fetal nerve cells into a Parkinson’s patient ended badly. The man improved briefly and died unexpectedly. The autopsy showed that the tissue graft did not generate new nerve cells as had been hoped. The man’s death was caused by the unexpected growth of bone, skin, and hair in his brain from the undifferentiated stem cells injected into him.
From a moral point of view, even if embryonic stem cells would produce good effects not available from adult stem cells, it is still not permissible to kill embryos for the sake of producing the good effect. The immorality of killing embryos is not mitigated or removed by the potential of alleviating the sufferings of millions. That is obvious if one examines the statement, “If taking your heart benefits me it is wrong for you to prevent me from taking your heart.” What is the sense of destroying life to save life? One cannot object that the case is different with respect to embryos because they do not look human. The historical and well-respected 1995 Ramsey Colloquium on embryo research states that the embryo is human. It will not articulate itself into some other kind of animal. Any being that is human is a human being. An embryo looks precisely as all of us did at five or fifteen days of development. So, the term “pre-embryo” and the implication that it is not human are scientifically invalid. Human embryos are humans and therefore persons. When one destroys an embryo he extinguishes a human life.
Some say that since surplus embryos from fertility clinics, one suggested source of embryonic stem cells, are going to be destroyed in any case we might as well get some use from them. The Nazi Dr. Mengele may be dead, but apparently his spirit is alive and well among some of our scientific community.
Some celebrities have testified before Congress in favor of embryonic cell research, e.g., Mary Tyler Moore and Michael J. Fox. They have tried to move the ethical issues into the background and perhaps even make the objecting ethicists look cruel and heartless in denying these celebrities the research breakthroughs they need. But since adult stem cell research for the moment looks equally as promising as embryonic stem cells, if not more so, it makes more sense to concentrate resources, time, and talent on adult stem cell study. It is dangerous to create a subclass of human beings that can be killed and exploited for the benefit of others. This principle can also be used against those who propose it. It is a matter of indifference to the principle to whom it is applied.
The proponents of embryonic stem cell research suggest that our choice is either good medicine or good morals. No one can predict the future of scientific research, but for the moment it seems that good morality is good medicine. I suspect it will ever be thus.
