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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

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

In research that may have been science fiction only decades ago scientists are on the verge of producing a variety of specialized cells from stem cells. What, you ask, are stem cells? They are the fast-growing, undifferentiated cells that make up the inner cell mass of a week-old embryo. After fertilization there is a five-day cell division of the fertilized ovum (the new human being) during which he or she develops to the blastocyst stage. The blastocyst consists of an outer ring of cells—the trophoblast that will ultimately form a placenta. There is also an inner cell mass that will develop into the 210 cell types that make up the human body. What scientists want to do is extract this inner cell mass and use it to form various kinds of cells, such as blood cells, brain cells, liver cells, pancreatic cells, skin cells, bone marrow cells, etc. The inner cells at the blastocyst stage are said to pluripotent, that is, have an ability to become almost any sort of cell. By a process not completely understood these undifferentiated stem cells receive genetic information that makes them develop into specific sort of cells. At the blastocyst stage each cell of the inner cell mass is more or less indifferent as to what sort of cell it will become in the developing human being.

Scientists formerly thought that once a stem cell became committed to a specific type of cell it was no longer capable of becoming any other sort of cell. Thus they assumed that brain stem cells could produce only brain cells. Recent research in Oregon has modified this idea somewhat. Transplanted neural or brain stem cells from mice were transplanted into the bone marrow of other mice and the transplanted cells took over the job of making blood cells. The job switch surprised the researchers and suggested the possibility that other stem cells could be taught to take on other jobs. For example, intestinal stem cells might be given the job of liver regeneration.

Research in stem cells offers exciting possibilities to relieving the suffering of those afflicted with debilitating diseases. Some benefits might include regeneration of heart muscles, miracle cures of Alzheimer’s, stroke, cancer or diabetes. Benefits may also include growing organs for transplants and for cell rejuvenation.

While all of this is very desirable and encouraging there are some moral standards that apply to this research. We must keep our eyes not only on the medical benefits but also on the way that they are achieved. There is no question that the Nazis advanced scientific knowledge by their experiments in the concentration camps, but we recoil in horror at their treatment of the inmates. People were put in extremely cold water to find out how long pilots downed in the North Sea could remain alive. People would be injected with a disease or virus in order to study the effects of drugs to counter them. Identical twins were subjects of experiments. One would be injected with disease and then both twins would be killed, if the disease did not cause death, and autopsies were performed on them for scientific knowledge. Our own government performed syphilis experiments on black Americans without their knowledge or consent. It also conducted radiation experiments on unconsenting women and unborn children. American researchers are also capable of considering human beings as so much research material. Undoubtedly the knowledge gained was useful, but only at the cost of considering fellow human beings as being in the same category as laboratory mice and as disposable objects.

In our day we have a new set of disposable human beings—human embryos produced by the immoral method of in vitro fertilization. Typically many are produced and the surplus ones no longer desired by the parents are destroyed. Scientists of the National Institute of Health want to kill these human beings for the sake of obtaining their stem cells for the useful experiments that we described above. The act of harvesting embryonic stem cells necessarily kills the embryo. Extracting the inner cells from the blastocyst results in the embryo’s death just as surely as if you cut out a child’s heart of lungs. The attitude of some scientists is exactly the same as prevailed among the Nazi doctors. These persons are going to be destroyed anyhow so why should we not derive some benefit from them. This sort of attitude ignores the moral evil of using in vitro fertilization in the first place and the further immorality of exploitation of an innocent human being. A human being is the sort of good that that may not be exploited for any reason whatever. It is not morally permissible to kill a human being in order to benefit another. A human being has the right to respect for his or her body whether it consists of one cell or several billion.

There is a federal law against using tax funds for research that would destroy embryos. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has tried to get around this by saying that private funds could be used to destroy embryos for their stem cells and then federal dollars be employed for the experiments on them. That is rather like saying that the prohibition of tax dollars for research that destroys embryos applies only if the government itself does not do the killing. It is equivalent to saying that the experimenter himself may not do the killing but may hire an assassin to do it. Another argument used by HHS is that the human embryo is not an organism unless it is proved that the organism would have become a human being if implanted in a woman’s womb. That is rather like saying that a baby whose heart has been removed is not a human being because, with that handicap, he is incapable of becoming an adult.

Medical advances are still possible without destroying embryos because stem cells can be derived from adults and miscarried children. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has developed a promising avenue for research into the enzyme telomerase. The enzyme prolongs cell life 400% enabling cells to live and divide like young cells. It may be possible in the future to grow skin grafts for their patients using the patients’ own skin, to grow insulin-producing cells for diabetics, and muscle tissue for persons suffering from muscular dystrophy. Other research along these lines demonstrates the possibility of obtaining stem cells without the need of destroying human embryos. By all means let scientists proceed with stem cell research for the benefit of humanity, but let it be by means that are not an affront to humanity.