The reason the debate over stem cell research is taking place at all is that removal of these cells kills the microscopic human embryo, posing a challenge to the anti-scientific, rightist argument against abortion rights that a human being is created at the mo-ment of conception. Embryonic stem cells have the ability to differentiate and grow into any kind of specialized cells and tissue, prompting scientific investigation to see if they can be used in research for medical cures, or can be employed to repair or replace damaged tissue or organs.

Human embryos can be made in a lab by fertilizing a donated egg with sperm. In about six days of growth, the egg becomes a blastocyst, a cluster of 100 to 600 cells smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

The identification of stem cells and their potential medical value prompted a flurry of reports from "ethics panels." Arthur Caplan, described as a "bioethicist" by the Wall Street Journal, said that stem cell research is "a slippery slope where you could end up with embryo factories." In 1999 the National Bioethics Advisory Commission took the position that while the embryo should not be accorded the rights of a full person, it does deserve "respect as a form of human life."  
 
Debate over lifting ban on federal funds
Five years earlier, the National Institutes of Health had issued a report that was favorable to creating embryos for use in medical experiments. Then-president William Clinton distanced his administration from the finding, leading to a Congressional ban on federal funding of research involving human embryos.

The Bush administration is now considering a partial lifting of that ban to allow federal moneys to be used for research on frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded. There are currently thousands of such embryos held at fertility clinics across the country. The research seeks to determine if stem cells can be cultivated into cells that can be used to treat or cure Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, and other afflictions. For example, a scientist in Spain has used stem cells to develop insulin-producing cells that, when transplanted into diabetic mice, cured the animals within 24 hours.

Two recent announcements by scientists have heightened the controversy. Researchers at a Virginia clinic said in early July that they had created human embryos specifically for experimental purposes, something the New York Times called "breaking a taboo against creating human embryos expressly for medical experiments."

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts a scientist at Advanced Cell Technology told the press that the company is involved in a cloning project in which a skin cell is inserted into a human egg. The resulting stem cells are a genetic match with the donor of the skin cells. Cells of the same genetic makeup are less likely to be rejected by the immune system.  
 
Most don't believe embryos are people
Several bills before Congress would ban human embryo cloning to produce a new human being; another would forbid cloning even for research purposes. Nine states ban all research on human embryos and four have enacted laws against human cloning. Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom currently prohibit reproductive cloning. France and Germany have a ban all human embryo research.

In a July 9 column, Jonah Goldberg, editor of the right-wing National Review Online, wrote that he fears "the stem-cell debate is lost" because "the logic that denies experimentation on embryonic stem cells forces the acceptance of these embryos as human lives. And I just don't believe that the majority of the American people can be persuaded that embryos are human beings."

Admitting that he disagrees with some conservatives and rightists, Goldberg said that equating "a clump of cells in a petri dish or test tube" with a human life is something that "Catholic intellectuals and others who oppose embryonic-stem-cell research are comfortable asserting as fact. But for the majority of Americans such a position is a hard pill to swallow. It requires, for example, that we ban in vitro fertilization [IVF]--a medical procedure the American people support--because it necessitates the murder of many human lives for the creation of a few lives or even a single life." Once the "fight against IVF was lost, so too was this debate," he wrote.

The next day National Review Online deputy managing editor Kathryn Lopez urged Bush "to do the right thing" and "prohibit once and for all the federal subsidy for the killing of innocent human beings." Lopez favors federal funding for research using adult stem cells. She favorably explained the position of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops supporting the prohibition of "embryo-destroying research entirely."

National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru weighed in with a column in the July 23 issue of the magazine entitled, "Cells, Fetuses, and Logic." He noted the "surprising" stance of anti-abortion rights senator Orrin Hatch, who told the press he "cannot equate a child living in the womb, with moving toes and fingers and a beating heart, with an embryo in a freezer." Warning that such a position is a "slippery slope," he added that "surely neither the temperature nor location [of the embryo] is decisive.... Either conception results in a new human being deserving of legal protection or it doesn't."

The Wall Street Journal reported July 12 that aides to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan visited Capitol Hill recently to convey Nancy Reagan's support for federal funding of stem cell research. The report implied that she was influenced by the fact that the former president suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

In an opinion column in the paper that same day, Albert Hunt writes that Bush got himself into "a hole playing political games with embryonic stem-cell research" because the White House stance "confuses the Catholic hierarchy with rank-and-file Catholic voters. There really is no longer a distinct Catholic vote in America; on issues like stem-cell research and abortion, Catholic views are little different than non-Catholic views."

Sen. Connie Mack, a foe of abortion rights who supports the research funding, acknowledged that the debate is "one of those classic issues that, in a sense, redefines some things." He said it made the issue more difficult for Bush when someone like Nancy Reagan, whose husband opposed a woman's right to choose abortion, supported research on embryonic stem cells.
 
 
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Defend women's right to choose  
 
 
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