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Think Outside the Box

COUNTER POINT

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Sam Harris writes:

                 Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene.  Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine.  It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer – for the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body.  This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders.  Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-cell research.  It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos.  This is what worries you.

                Let us look at the details.  A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst.  There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.  The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons.  Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all.  It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person’s brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground.  If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such.  If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.

                Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter’s potential to become a fully developed human being.  But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering.  Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings.  This is a fact.  The argument from a cell’s potential gets you absolutely nowhere...

                Anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.  The link between religion and "morality" -- so regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated -- is fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.

              (Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 28-30, 32)

 R.C. Metcalf responds:   

Your incomplete view of morality evidently distorts your analysis of embryonic stem-cell research. If we defined “immoral” as only that which causes human suffering, your case may have some merit. Certainly the needs of a “child with a spinal cord injury” are imperative. Yet, is the destruction of a potentially viable human embryo to produce embryonic stem cells truly the best course of action to help this child? Embryonic stem cell research will not likely offer this child any notable advantages over adult stem cell research.  Additionally, a blastocyst is nothing like a group of nasal skin cells.  Skin cells have no potential to develop into persons on their own, without human intervention.  Blastocysts do.  In fact, in order for a blastocyst to exist outside the environment necessary for its development, human intervention must be involved.

While embryonic stem cells do multiply faster than adult stem cells and have been shown to produce some neuronal regeneration, there still exists a significant likelihood that the child’s immune system will mount a graft-versus-host response to the foreign cells. Researchers have found that the presence of the protein nestin “indicates neural stem cells are much more active then previously believed. Our brain naturally increases the production of stem cells to aid an injured CNS.”[ii] These naturally produced stem cells only yield structural astrocytes that provide neuronal support rather than the neurons themselves. Studies conducted by Grill and colleagues on rats have shown that concomitant use of neurotrophin 3 (NT-3), stimulates neural stem cells to develop into functional neurons that result in significant improvement in motor skills.[iii] Brain derived neurotrophic factors such as NT-3 are proteins that do not have the potential for host rejection associated with the introduction of embryonic stems cells to the site of a spinal cord injury.

                In some other medical situations embryonic stem cell lines may offer the best hope. Nevertheless, we really have no way of knowing, at this time, how much success researchers will encounter. A similar situation arose in the 1970s and 1980s with the field of gene therapy. Public pronouncements of the expected results of gene therapy research yielded a throng of suffering patients with high expectations. This resulted in a tremendous let-down as researchers encountered the many unexpected technical difficulties inherent in medical research. In 1995, with minimal progress after more than a decade of gene therapy research, the Director of the National Institutes of Health commissioned a review of the field which led to the following pronouncement:

Expectations of current gene therapy protocols have been oversold. Overzealous representation of clinical gene therapy has obscured the exploratory nature of the initial studies, colored the manner in which findings are portrayed to the scientific press and public, and led to the widely held, but mistaken, perception that clinical gene therapy is already highly successful. Such misrepresentation threatens confidence in the field and will inevitably lead to disappointment in both medical and lay communities. Of even greater concern is the possibility that patients, their families, and health providers may make unwise decisions regarding treatment alternatives, holding out for cures that they mistakenly believe are ‘just around the corner.’[iv]

Already, in the field of embryonic stem cell research, patients have developed high expectations for a very embryonic field of study.

Scientists at Wake Forest University and Harvard University have recently discovered a much less controversial way of harvesting embryonic stem cells. Researchers retrieve “stem cells from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women and turned them into several different tissue cell types, including liver, brain, and bone. … Harvard stem cell researcher George Daley said that the finding may mean expectant parents could someday freeze amnio stem cells for use in generating replacement tissue in a sick child, without fear of tissue rejection.”[v]

You conclude that Christians oppose embryonic stem cell research because “life starts at the moment of conception” and “there are souls in each of these blastocysts.”[vi]  What does the Christian church generally believe with respect to the concept of a “soul”? The majority of Christians typically do believe that “the soul comes into existence at the point of conception either by a direct act of God (creationism) or by transmission from parents (traducianism).”[vii] I adhere to the traducian view, which means that I believe the soul passes on from one generation to the next. However, the crux of the mind-body problem does not lie with the origin of the soul within individuals, but rather with the existence of the soul at all. Your apparent mockery of the concept of the soul leads me to believe that you are convinced that “a human person is purely a physical organism, whose emotional, moral, and religious experience will all ultimetely be explained by the physical and biological sciences.”[viii] We call this monist view of the mind-body problem reductive physicalism. Conversely, I believe that we can achieve a greater understanding of the nature of the soul by dispensing with mockery altogether and accepting insights gained via both science and theology.

                While the controversy regarding the nature of the soul remains vitally important to the question of the sanctity of life, the issue of inherent human dignity is equally indispensable. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the Christian concept of the imago dei. His steadfast belief in the inherent dignity of human persons came as a direct result of his Christian faith. He received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote equlity for persons of all races. Almost two hundred years earlier, the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence referred to the self-evident truth that all men were created equal. Yet as a nation, Americans have only recently reached a consensus that supports that self-evident truth with respect to persons of different races. Perhaps it’s time we recognize that same self-evident truth with respect to persons at different stages of development.

Dr. Metcalf's comments regarding ESCR can be seen on YouTube video feeds:    Part 1    Part 2

Watch Dr. Metcalf discuss ESCR on YouTube.

Part 1

Part 2