Embryonic stem cells are, according to a quote from Senator Arlen Specter, the cure for everything.
Think I’m overstating his case? Here’s what he was quoted as saying in a press conference yesterday (via The Corner):
It is scandalous that eight years have passed since we have known about stem cell research and the potential to conquer all known maladies, and federal funds have not been available for the research.
Really? The common cold, cancer, gout, whoping cough, and beri beri can all potentially be cured by the miraculous employment of embryonic stem cells?
Perhaps that’s true, if you know not even the foggiest thing about the research that has been done thus far on stem cells. But Specter knows the research. He’s been one of the leading advocates for full federal funding of embryonic stem cells. He knows better than to flat-out lie like he did. He doesn’t have the ridiculous bragadocio of John Edwards’ saying that folks like Christopher Reeve would walk again thanks to the inspiring power of John Kerry’s Presidential leadership, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
Here is the truth, as best I know it. There is federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, funding that President Bush authorized. He is the first US President ever to authorize such funding. The funding is restricted to the current strains of stem cells available. There is no federal funding to create new embryos on which to experiment.
There are also other sorts of stem cells on which a great amount of research is being done. Both adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells have produced not only incredible promise in the laboratory but are also being used right this very minute to treat real, honest to God maladies suffered by real, honest to God human beings. This is not “potential”. This is practice. It’s happening right now. Embryonic stem cells have not even come close to providing an actual treatment for any malady, much less, “all known” ones. And the continuing research and development of treatments using those other two types of stem cells is quite generously funded by the federal government.
Here’s the hitch. Hypemasters have gotten us to believe that the potential for curing nearly everything exists solely with embryonic stem cells. Now, that may or may not be the case. We do know, for a fact, two things about embryonic stem cells: 1) no research has found that they can be used to treat anything, as opposed to the other two major types of stem cells, and 2) extracting them, for research or treatment, kills a human being.
It is the latter part that gives me pause. Without getting very far into the deep rough on the issue, let me say that I think it’s wise to think very hard before I decide to take the life of one human being to save another one. I want to think even harder before I take that life simply on the possibility that it might save another one. I want to think harder still before I take that life simply on the possibility that it might make someone’s life easier. I understand the arguments involved here. I’m not being naive or blindly dogmatic. I simply want us all to slow the heck down and think about it, without hyperbolic statements from Arlen Specter and John Edwards, both of whom have a great personal stake in the outcome of the debate. I want to consider our other options. I want to know if there are alternatives that don’t destroy an embryo (it seems there may be, but that research is not coming along quickly, and not exactly being encouraged by the most vociferous ESC advocates). I think it’s important that we not take this step without being darned sure we know what we’re getting into. I want us to be very clear about the choices we’re making and who is going to pay for those choices.
That’s really what we’re talking about when it comes to embryonic stem cells – who pays for the choices. We know, thanks to science, that when an embryo dies, it is a human being that dies, and nothing else. It’s going to cost an immense amount of money and an uncountable number of human lives before we can really start using embryonic stem cells to cure all the maladies we’re told they might cure (assuming their predictions are correct). It would just make sense to discuss how we will spend those lives. Perhaps it would be a good idea to charge full steam ahead on the just as promising potential treatments that don’t kill a human being before we fully embrace the ones that do.
In the end, really, what we do or don’t do with embryonic stem cells isn’t a matter of science. It’s a matter of our ethics – where we decide to draw the line between life and death and which lives we will value more than others. This shouldn’t be such a terrible surprise because we do it all the time. This time, though, we are going to need to do it more explicitly than normal, and that’s not an easy thing to do. Just because it’s not easy, though, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done honestly and with our eyes wide open.
