So we want to say that we don’t want to harm human beings at that stage of development – that is a core ethical concern. Another key ethical concern is the way that this is being talked about, communicated in the media and public policy, in public venues where we are discussing this issue. There needs to be truthful communication on the difference between adult and embryonic stem cells and what is really producing results right now and what is not. There is an attempt to evoke all these breakthroughs with embryonic stem cell research to imply that it would be terrible to say no to embryonic stem cell research. That it would be like saying no to all these wonderful development when there have been 65 major medical conditions that have helped or treated with adult stem cell research and 0 using embryonic stem cell research.
Some regard embryonic stem cell research equivalent with abortion because it involves the destruction of embryos. What is your opinion on this issue?
That connection is very natural because this does destroy human lives that have begun and started developing rather than allowing them to develop into born human beings; they are cut off before that stage. I think that to those that are concerned about abortion, it is not surprising that they would be even more concerned about embryonic stem cell research.
The reason why I say that is that in the abortion issue you have a mother, her wishes, her health, her emotional well being and her material needs – you have very real concern on the part of the woman and her body involved there. Then you have this young human being. Therefore, so much of the abortion debate deals with how to weigh those competing considerations.
In embryonic stem cell research you don’t have all of these concerns about the mother and her body. There is no mother’s body involved and you really pull it out of that context and say, ‘What if we really didn’t have those competing considerations and all we are talking about is this young human being?’ ‘Is it acceptable to kill this embryonic human being?’ So those that would be concerned about abortion should be even more so about embryonic stem cell research because there isn’t even competing consideration of the body and also the mother.Why or what has made stem cell research so controversial among government bodies and especially at the level of the state?
I think the controversy not only goes as far as what we have been talking about with regards to members of the human race - albeit the youngest ones are being killed in the process to do that – which would concern people who are concerned about life in all stages.
But people who are concerned feel that if the federal government will not protect the issue then they will turn to the state government. Again, the first issue is protecting members of the human community.
The added dimension, which has really stirred this issue a lot at the state level, has to do with the connection between human cloning and stem cell research. Because with adult stem cell research, in many cases, the cells could be taken from the person’s own body and therefore be a genetic match for the body. This would avoid the problem of rejection during an organ transplant, for example, when the organ is not a perfect genetic match the body rejects the organ. So one of the great advantages of adult stem cell research is if you develop the material from stem cells developed from your own body there is a genetic match.
So people recognise that for embryonic stem cell research to be really widely useful medically we would have to produce cells that are genetically matched to your body and the only way to do that is to produce an embryo that is a clone of you and destroy that embryo to get the embryonic stem cells that could be used in the treatment in you.
Well, you have to recognise that cloning is something that is far more widely opposed by the public than anything to do with stem cell research. In fact, the United Nation has handed down a global ban – which is of course advisory and we are not bound by the United Nation, no country is – but there certainly is a strong moral force there and they passed a global ban on cloning on all sorts.
