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Stick to Ethical, Successful Research |
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Saturday, 02 December 2006 |
Source: Muskogee Phoenix
By Anthony Lauinger
Princeton professor Robert George, former member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has observed:
“Researchers know that stem cells derived from blastocyst-stage embryos are currently of no therapeutic value and may never actually be used in the treatment of diseases ... In fact, there is not a single embryonic stem cell therapy even in clinical trials. (By contrast, adult and umbilical cord stem cells are already being used in the treatment of 65 diseases.) All informed commentators know that embryonic stem cells cannot be used in therapies because of their tendency to generate dangerous tumors.”
Embryonic stem cell research represents not only flawed science, but flawed ethics, as well. Robert George succinctly highlights the problem with the science. Political pressure, inordinate media hype and lavish funding all promote the one type of stem cell research that holds the least realistic scientific promise, while virtually ignoring the exciting breakthroughs, constant progress and successful treatments resulting from stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood and adult tissue — neither of which pose any ethical problems.
Why the imbalance? Why the tens of millions of dollars being spent to sell the ethically offensive proposition that we should endorse — indeed, finance with tax money — the intentional destruction of embryonic human beings in order to try to find a treatment for disease, while simultaneously downplaying, under-reporting and under-funding the tremendous progress being made in the ethically non-controversial areas of adult and cord-blood stem cells?
Harvesting stem cells from a living human embryo, and killing the embryonic human being in the process, violates the most fundamental principles of ethical research on human subjects. We should protect living human embryos from being used for medical experiments that harm or kill them.
The public’s natural aversion to embryo-destructive research is consistent with the basic human instinct to value human life, to respect our fellow human beings. Human embryos —which we once were — are our fellow human beings, at their youngest and most vulnerable stage of growth and development.
There is something tragically contradictory in purposely killing one member of the human family — even in the earliest days of life — for the purpose of trying to help another. A very young member of the species Homo sapiens deserves respect precisely because he or she is a unique, individual, distinctly separate human being, with intrinsic value, dignity and worth that places us above animals and plants.
Human life at every stage of biological development is deserving of respect and protection, regardless of the circumstances under which that human life was created. We should steadfastly resist the urgings of some that we enter the “Brave New World” of cloning human beings by somatic cell nuclear transfer. Some scientists propose creating human life through cloning for the purpose of performing destructive experiments on those humans, resulting in their deaths — a process euphemistically referred to as “therapeutic” cloning. This constitutes creating human life with the intention of destroying that human life, cloning human beings and requiring that they be killed.
We have a special obligation to protect embryonic human beings, fellow members of our human family, who are totally dependent on us for their very survival. Protect them, and they will soon join us in debating issues of medical ethics. Exploit them by treating them as raw material to be mined for parts, and we diminish ourselves as we destroy them.
Americans support “stem cell research,” but most oppose the kind that would kill a human embryo. Why not build on the broad consensus that exists in support of the ethically non-controversial research on stem cells from adult tissue and umbilical-cord blood? This is where the only successful treatments have been derived for scores of human diseases. No successful treatments have been derived from embryonic stem cells.
We must be unfailingly faithful to that bedrock principle of the healing arts: Primum non nocere; first, do no harm.
Anthony J. Lauinger is the state chairman of Oklahomans For Life. You can contact the organization at 3105 E Skelly Drive, Room 605, Tulsa, OK 74105; or call (918) 749-5022 or Click Here To Send Email
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