In defense of stem cell research
Is embryonic stem cell research a waste of time and money? Many conservatives think so. During the recent Congressional debates on funding the research, Rep. David Weldon (R-FL), a physician, claimed, “If you actually read the medical journals, the promise and the potential appear to be in the ethically acceptable alternatives of adult stem research and cord-blood research.” Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), a heart surgeon, agreed: “Embryonic stem cells have not produced a single human treatment and have significant limitations. … Adult stem cells have been used to treat 58 human diseases.” Last fall, Daniel Allott raised similar objections in a Brainwash article, positing that the benefits of embryonic stem cell research are at least a decade off and concluding that, therefore, the research should not be funded.
These people are coming to the wrong conclusion. But more importantly, they are asking the wrong question. The whole point of scientific research is to learn about the world. To demand that scientists prove their research will be useful at the outset is to misunderstand the very nature and purpose of the scientific process.
It’s true that embryonic stem cells have not yet produced any human treatments. What opponents of the research don’t tell us, however, is that only the most wildly optimistic would have expected them to. Research on adult stem cells began in the 1960s, while embryonic stem cells were only isolated in 1998. It shouldn’t be surprising that we haven’t produced any human treatments in just seven years of experimentation!
And, in fact, embryonic stem cells do show more promise than their opponents would have us believe. To understand the debate, we need a bit of scientific background. As a fertilized egg grows and divides, the dividing cells begin to differentiate, or specialize. Most of the cells in your body are fully-differentiated: they have settled into being one specific type and can no longer change. Stem cells, however, still have the ability to become different types of cells, and that’s why they hold so much promise scientifically.
Embryonic and adult stem cells differ in how many steps they’ve taken along the path to differentiation. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning that they can develop into virtually any type of cell in the body. Most adult stem cells, on the other hand, are generally thought to be multipotent: they have partially specialized and can develop into several types of cells within a category. For example, hematopoietic stem cells can become any type of blood cell, but cannot become fat or skin cells.
Recently, research has shown that some adult stem cells may be closer to pluripotent than previously thought, and this has been seized on by conservatives claiming that embryonic stem call research is unnecessary. However, we still don’t know whether any adult stem cells are truly pluripotent. They have other limitations as well: they are only present in small quantities, can be difficult to isolate, may contain accumulated DNA mutations from a lifetime of copying errors and exposure to toxins, and may not be able to multiply indefinitely. Embryonic stem cells offer solutions to all of those problems.
Furthermore, the promise of embryonic stem cells goes beyond the direct treatment of disease. For example, abnormalities in the early development and differentiation of cells are thought to be the culprit behind diseases such as cancer and many birth defects, and stem cell research may give us more information about these processes and provide ideas for treatment. An unbiased look at the literature shows that both embryonic and adult stem cells show significant promise, and claims that only the latter could be useful are unfounded.
In a sense, however, this is all beside the point. Funding science based solely on anticipated results is short-sighted. Many important scientific discoveries have been made while pursuing other goals, or simply investigating general phenomena with no goal in mind at all. Scientists like Maxwell, Einstein, Curie and Mendel laid the foundations of the modern world, yet none of them were primarily interested in practical applications for their work.
Indeed, it wouldn’t be the first time that a supposedly useless avenue of biological research proved immensely valuable. Around the middle of the last century, there was a great debate over which type of biological molecule made up our genetic material. Many scientists, led by Linus Pauling, suspected that proteins were responsible - after all, they had more possible building blocks (20 amino acids) and a wide variety of shapes. Proteins seemed much more likely to carry complex genetic information than DNA, with its mere 4 nucleotides and seemingly boring shape. Of course, it turned out that DNA was the winner: its four building blocks could be arranged to spell out an infinite variety of genetic information. But while Pauling was working on proteins, hoping to win the race to identify the genetic material, he made several other important discoveries, such as the structure known as the alpha helix. Protein structure is still a hot topic today, with applications in the study of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cystic fibrosis. Though Pauling was attempting to solve a different problem, the discoveries he made were nonetheless a significant contribution.
That’s the way science works. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict ahead of time which avenues of inquiry are going to produce the best results. Even if a particular topic doesn’t pan out, the addition to the body of scientific knowledge gives later scientists more to work with. The pursuit of pure knowledge, not necessarily practical applications, is a great strength of the scientific process.
If the federal government is going to fund scientific research, it should fund true research: projects for which the results are not necessarily known ahead of time. Requiring researchers to show that their work will have immediate applications is guaranteed to stifle progress. If people like Boustany and Weldon had been in charge in the 1940s, perhaps Pauling would have been able to make his protein discoveries, but would Watson and Crick been allowed to work on the “less promising” avenue of DNA?
Amanda Rohn is a writer in Falls Church, VA. She holds a degree in computer engineering and will attend medical school this fall. She has a weblog at Without Bound.
25 Comments - add your own
David Freddoso — June 7, 2005 at 12:10 pm
Embryonic stem cell funding is a huge welfare grab by corporations without ethical boundaries, whose management can’t attract private money. The money isn’t coming in because of serious doubts that this experimentation on developing humans will ever produce medical applications.
Even if it does create medical applications, they will be useless unless we can clone patients and kill their clones for the genetically identical stem cells (to avoid the rejection problem), which raises still more ethical concerns on top of the ones already there.
I just want to know why I, as a taxpayer, am being looted to pay for big business’s “Dr. Frankenstein lab,” which I find detestable. People who love this research so much can always donate to a big pharmaceutical company without making me do it, too.
Brian Moore — June 8, 2005 at 11:34 am
“Even if it does create medical applications, they will be useless unless we can clone patients and kill their clones for the genetically identical stem cells”
Hilarious. You’ve been watching the trailers for “The Island” too much. If you think that’s the only way to do that, then…. I don’t really have much else to say.
“Embryonic stem cell funding is a huge welfare grab by corporations without ethical boundaries”
Seriously, you must have written that screenplay. Any other sweeping generalizations you’d like to make? Hasn’t the “evil corporation” line gotten tired yet? We all know that medical companies have never done anything good for any of us. No sir.
And why on earth would you make the allusion to “Frankenstein?” I’m glad you actually have the intellectual honesty to see yourself in the role of the torch-bearing mob, coming to destroy that which you cannot understand simply because you find it frightening.
“I just want to know why I, as a taxpayer, am being looted to pay for big business’s “Dr. Frankenstein lab,” which I find detestable”
This is a much better argument. The problem is, if we strike down such funding on the “but I don’t like it” theory, then we’d have to cut the vast majority of federal programs. The people in power (Rep or Dem) aren’t going to let that happen, as much as I would like to.
Carney — June 8, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Had Weldon and Boustany been in charge of WHAT in the 1940s? Cambridge University?
This article makes valid scientific arguments, but never addresses why I should be forced to fund the destruction of the most vulnerable human beings in America. The day gets closer when it will be morally indefensible to pay ones taxes.
Amanda Rohn — June 8, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Carney - quite so. I deliberately concentrated on the scientific angle, because that is so often brought up as a reason not to fund the research. I’m not at all unsympathetic to your feelings - the question of whether we should federally fund things that are morally objectionable to many Americans is an interesting one, and it certainly deserves a place in the public sphere. However, I think it makes more sense for people who are opposed to stem cell research on moral grounds to make the moral argument, rather than attempting to cloud the issue with spurious arguments to science.
Matthew Mehan — June 8, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Amanda,
One reason why the argument goes thus, is because of the bad intellectual habit you just exhibited in the previous comment. Carney made an argument, he didn’t express a feeling. The moral arguments are received by you as merely feelings with no binding force on your conscience to take them seriously as possibly true. Instead you pass them by, simply by stating that peoples feelings ought to be respected. But that is not what is at stake in Tim’s claim, the protection of human life is at stake, not Tim’s feelings.
Your response is a denegration of his argument and reasonable discourse. Hence, conservatives often times ditch the moral arguments and try to show, not “spurious” arguments, but alternative scientific methods of doing the same research.
I understand your irritation with the rhetoric. We both wish people would just argue the matter straight on, but, if the moral arguments were the rhetorical lede line from conservatives, they would simply get the brush off in nearly the same way you sidestepped Carney’s question.
Jarrett Conner — June 8, 2005 at 4:15 pm
I think it is wise for opponents of stem cell research to be careful not to stake too much of their argument on the efficacy adult stem cell research or the inefficacy of embryonic stem cell research.
The moral argument should be the trump card, and it should be the trump card even for hard core pro-choice people. Most arguments for choice are grounded in a concern for the woman in whose womb an embryo resides. Indeed it is her right to privacy that is cause for abortion’s legality under Roe.
With the case of fertility clinic embryos, and especially laboratory-created (cloned) embryos, there is no woman in the equation. Hence our “excuses” for destroying the nacent human life in abortion should fall away. We have no excuse.
Some celebrate IVF clinics for they bring the potential for life and parenthood to couples (or women) who would otherwise not be able to bear children. Is not strange, then, that now we are asked to celebrate the work of scientists who would(like an IVF clinic) create (or helps to create) embryos but (unlike an IVF clinic) intends for the embyros to be destroyed for research (not implanted to create life).
This awesome tiny cluster of cells with this awesome power to cure disease is so awesome because it could have been a person. The scientists want to use the cells because they have that very potential. That is what makes them so valuable.
The proponents of that research err when they claim that the embryos are anything other than potential human life (as has been done in Massachusetts), as that is the very reason why the research could be so useful, and the very reason why a natural science–a moral science–would have to reject the use of those awesome embryos for research, even very promising exciting research that could help lots of people.
Tim — June 9, 2005 at 11:39 am
Matthew, I suggest you read Amanda’s comment again. She wrote “the question of whether we should federally fund things that are morally objectionable to many Americans is an interesting one, and it certainly deserves a place in the public sphere.”
That’s not a “denigration” of Carney’s point. She’s acknowledging that those arguments are important, but that just wasn’t what this particular article was about.
Amanda’s a future medical student who knows quite a bit about the scientific side of this issue. She’s not a moral philosopher. It’s perfectly reasonable for her to write an article about stem cell science and leave moral arguments to others more qualified to address them. That doesn’t diminish the importance of those arguments, any more than an article that only focused on the ethics of stem cells would be a denigration of arguments based on science. It would be absurd to expect every article about stem cell research to address every possible argument.
Tim — June 9, 2005 at 11:42 am
Jarret,
Thousands of embryos are thrown away every year by IVF clinics who can’t afford to store them. Is that murder? Should it be illegal to create embryos that will be thrown away? If not, isn’t it better to use some of those embryos for life-saving research instead of chucking them in the garbage?
Jarrett Conner — June 9, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Tim,
you raise one of the hardest question in this debate. However, only Mitt Romney in Massachusetts proposed a policy of only using “leftover” embryos from fertility clinics.
The argument for research with embryonic stem cells, for unlocking their awesome potential requires (so the argument goes) the creation of embryos specifically for the purpose of destruction in research (which is called “theraputic cloning” or “somatic cell nuclear transfer” which is now the law in Massachusetts). There is no “lesser of two evils argument” in that case, because the embryos wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the cloning to create them for research.
I mentioned abortion and IVF clinics to illustrate the changing attitude toward the human embryo, from a sadly discarded potential human (in the case of abortion and IVF leftovers) to another research tool, not dissimilar from a bacteria culture that yields helpful samples for research.
Of course, I’ve dodged your question, “should it be illegal to create embryos that will be thrown away” and if pushed, I say yes.
However, it is important to push the otherside also. If it is okay to create embryos for research, why is it not okay to allow similarly destructive research to proceed through the 9th month?
Why choose an arbitrary time to end the potentially life saving research? on embryos or older entities that might be aborted anyway?
Forcing both arguments to their extremes can be illuminating, I think, but it is obviously not how the issue will be settled politically and it is not fair to force only one side to its most extreme political application.
Tim — June 9, 2005 at 12:43 pm
Well OK, I’ll bite: abortion is a very difficult issue, precisely because there is the continuum that you mention. Almost everyone, including me, thinks that aborting a 9-month-old fetus is distasteful, if not barbaric.
But lots of people, including me, have trouble keeping a straight face at the notion that a fertilized egg– an undifferentiated ball of cells too small to see with the naked eye– is a rights-bearing individual.
To see why, imagine (not at all implausibly) that in 25 or 50 years they figure out how to turn an ordinary adult cell into a stem cell, which can then be grown into an embryo and, eventually, a baby. Does that then mean that, suddenly, every cell in my body is a rights-bearing individual? Will I be committing murder every time I brush my teeth, killing thousands of skin cells in my mouth? When a doctor takes a blood sample, will he be obligated to save every single blood cell in case someone wants to adopt one of them and turn it into a baby?
A potential human being is just that– a potential human being. I don’t know exactly how the line should be drawn, but a ball of cells too small to see with the naked eye clearly ain’t it.
Jarrett Conner — June 9, 2005 at 1:16 pm
Where to draw the line in the process of human development is indeed hard–especially considering that we (as a nation/society) have grown comfortable with our current blurry lines.
However, what point makes sense as the beginning when the thing is human and before which it is not human?
Conception is the only logical place.
Massachusetts has picked implantation, but imagine, if you will, a mechanism that allows external gestation of a human embryo to full term. Would that human baby not be a human being because it was never implanted? No. It would be a real (creepy) human being. Similarly with your adult cell example, at the point when the new genetic material is added (or however the cell is modified) so that it becomes the kind of cell that becomes a human being, at that point, it becomes human, not before (so all of your cells are not potential human beings because, if allowed to develop naturally, they will not become other people, just old or dead cells).
Size (no bigger than a period at the end of this sentence) and location (implanted or not, in the womb or not) can’t be the defining factors.
Hence, if we are pushed to draw a line, or if we push ourselves to think through where the line ought to be, then we will have a difficult time making the case for any line other than conception.
Tim — June 9, 2005 at 2:56 pm
Similarly with your adult cell example, at the point when the new genetic material is added (or however the cell is modified) so that it becomes the kind of cell that becomes a human being, at that point, it becomes human, not before (so all of your cells are not potential human beings because, if allowed to develop naturally, they will not become other people, just old or dead cells).
What’s “natural?” 100 years ago, a doctor wouldn’t have had the first clue what to do with an embryo. In nature, embryos outside a woman’s body die in a matter of hours. It’s only with modern reproductive technologies that we’re able to preserve, store, and implant embryos that have been taken out of women’s bodies.
So is your position that embryos were not persons before the invention of modern reproductive medicine? Or that today’s storage and implantation technologies are somehow more “natural” than the technologies of the future that might let me grow a new Tim from a few cells in my pinky?
It seems to me that in an heroic effort not to draw fuzzy lines, you’re drawing absurd lines instead.
Jarrett — June 9, 2005 at 4:07 pm
Tim,
No, I don’t think that that accurately states my position.
The “what’s natural” question is fair and problematic when the process begins in a laboratory, I agree. In general, I mean “according to its nature” not “in the woods”
You say,
“In nature, embryos outside a woman’s body die in a matter of hours. ”
In nature, Embryos only exist outside of a woman’s body in the case of failed implantation, or failed pregnancy. The “nature” of the cell is still to implant and grow and become a child, even if it fails to do so. It is tragic but does not change the nature of the cell.
But we can also agree that the IVF doctor is attempting to serve a certain natural process that results in the development of a human baby. But that technological development does not change the nature of the embryos–the kind of cell that they are and the function that they are supposed to serve, and the capacity that they have. The IVF doctor creates them because they are the kind of cell that becomes a human being. Why would they create these cells if they did not have that potential? The technology does not change the equation at all. 100 years ago, today, and 100 years from now, we will be able to identify the point when a thing that cannot become a human being (a sperm, an egg, a piece of your pinky) becomes a thing that can become a human being (a ferilized egg, or strangely modified pinky cell/cells in the future).
I don’t think this position is absurd, and I would find it absurd to abandon this position without first learning one that is more defensible. (all you’ve offered as an alternative governing principle is the repugnance you have at 9 month fetal research/abortion and the humor evoked at the thought that a cell could be a human being).
For the record, I think we should not pursue technology that allows the creation of human offspring from pinky samples (nothing personal, Tim).
I appreciate the responses, and this will have to be my last for today at least.
Daniel Allott — June 9, 2005 at 4:17 pm
I agree with Jarrett that the moral argument “should be the trump card.” Even if ESCR produced cures for diseases it would still necessitate killing a human person. Arguments about its efficacy or poll numbers that reveal how many people support it are secondary. They can be an important part of the debate, but “pro-lifers” must remain focused on changing hearts with regard to the dignity of every human life. Slavery taught us that devaluing human life can sometimes be economically efficient and have the support of a majority of people. This, of course, does not change the fact that it is morally illicit.
Tim — June 9, 2005 at 5:43 pm
“I don’t think this position is absurd, and I would find it absurd to abandon this position without first learning one that is more defensible. (all you’ve offered as an alternative governing principle is the repugnance you have at 9 month fetal research/abortion and the humor evoked at the thought that a cell could be a human being).”
I don’t think personhood happens at some clear-cut moment. I think babies are clearly people, embryos are clearly not, and that, over the course of pregnancy, a fetus becomes more of a person as it acquires person-like characteristics. I think abortion becomes more and more suspect as the fetus becomes more and more person-like. That’s a messy view, but sometimes the real world is messy.
So I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this. I think a microscopic ball of cells is self-evidently not a person. You disagree. There are lots of other angles to the issue we could argue about, but at root, I think either you think embryos are persons or you don’t.
Rod — June 9, 2005 at 8:17 pm
Tim, I’m curious. You say that a baby is clearly a person, but I’m not sure what makes this so clear. What makes a person a person? Certainly not a soul, I would say. I’m not sure that babies have whatever it is that makes a person a person.
fling93 — June 9, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Yeah, I don’t think self-awareness arrives until a baby is about two-months old, and the anthropology major of a wife says that there are some African societies where, due to high infant mortality rates, babies aren’t considered people until they reach a certain age.
So I would say that there is no universal concept of the dividing line of before and after personhood is achieved, and instead, it’s a product of societal programming. And this is far more arbitrary.
Tim — June 10, 2005 at 8:48 am
I don’t have a definitive argument about why a baby is a person. But I think virtually everyone agrees it’s wrong to kill babies after it’s born.
If you want to start the American Infanticide League, be my guest.
Matthew Mehan — June 10, 2005 at 10:18 am
Rod,
You say:
“Tim, I’m curious. You say that a baby is clearly a person, but I’m not sure what makes this so clear. What makes a person a person? Certainly not a soul, I would say. I’m not sure that babies have whatever it is that makes a person a person”
Why “Certainly not a soul”? I don’t get it. Do you not believe there is an animating principle to life? Because that is what a soul is?
Rod — June 10, 2005 at 10:43 am
Matthew: I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe in a soul as the essence of a being outside the physical. As for defining the soul as simply “an animating principle,” then of course all living things have an “animating principle.” But I don’t think being animated is what makes it wrong to kill someone. Cows are possessed of an animating principle and killing them is fine.
Tim: It is convenient for the administration of justice to have a clear line about when we consider something murder. It’s also instinctual in humans to find babies cute, to seek their protection, and to be upset at their murder. So, it’s no surprise that “virtually everyone agrees it’s wrong to kill babies after it’s born.” I don’t think this is going to change anytime soon and I really don’t care if it does. My point is this: As an intellectual exercise, if one understands that babies are not persons, and that (as you seem to agree at least impliedly) only killing persons is wrong, then the killing of babies (at least by their owners) is not wrong. So, if you can push back the time when killing is wrong way into infancy, then clearly stem cells and fetuses and the rest are definitely fair game.
Jarrett Conner — June 10, 2005 at 10:48 am
Back to Rohn’s article.
She concludes:
“If the federal government is going to fund scientific research, it should fund true research: projects for which the results are not necessarily known ahead of time. Requiring researchers to show that their work will have immediate applications is guaranteed to stifle progress. If people like Boustany and Weldon had been in charge in the 1940s, perhaps Pauling would have been able to make his protein discoveries, but would Watson and Crick been allowed to work on the “less promising” avenue of DNA?”
If we accept Rohn’s position, then how do we choose to allocate research dollars (or research time)? Based on Rohn’s “pure science” argument, why would one prefer to fund embryonic stem cell research? Does its destructive elements make it superior? Obviously we can only fund some research projects and under the Rohn principle where we cannot consider potential outcomes, perhaps we would decide based on the known costs of the research. Again, embryonic stem cell research would loose.
In the end, I don’t think the argument earns the title “in defense of [embryonic] stem cell research”; If anything, the result of the argument would be to turn most people away from the research (even if they were on the fence about the appropriate status of the embryo). If you take the grand promises out of the equation, the political support goes with it (and rightly so).
Amanda Rohn — June 10, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Jarrett,
It’s not that I think that we shouldn’t consider potential outcomes at all - of course we need to prioritize research dollars, and they should go to projects with useful possible outcomes above those with useless outcomes, and projects studying interesting questions above those studying boring questions. But “basic science” (as those in the medical world call it - science that doesn’t promise immediate medical applications) IS useful and interesting. Expecting all research to provide immediate medical treatments is goofy, but that’s what the representatives I quoted seem to be advocating.
As I said in my article, I don’t believe that embryonic stem cell research should be given priority over adult stem cell research; both avenues are very promising. I think individual research projects should be funded on their merits - but those merits include “studying fascinating questions to produce needed scientific knowledge” as well as “developing medical treatments that can be used in the next few years.” Federal funding has certainly never been restricted to the latter, and I don’t see any reason to start now.
fling93 — June 10, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Tim: “I don’t have a definitive argument about why a baby is a person. But I think virtually everyone agrees it’s wrong to kill babies after it’s born. If you want to start the American Infanticide League, be my guest. ;)”
No, because I don’t think we ought to do or believe something without a good reason. But this highlights the importance of understanding the reasons behind these things. And it seems to me that the reasons we assign personhood at birth might be due to biological or societal programming. Sometimes that programming occurs for good reasons, sometimes not.
And sometimes it occurs for reasons that are no longer true. For example, human babies are unusually helpless after birth compared to other species, so maybe we were biologically programmed to be overly protective of them because that was necessary for the survival of the human race. But that’s no longer true today.
As for the belief of whether or not we have a soul, it’s important to figure out whether one believes that for a specific reason, or just because they went along with the beliefs of the community they were raised in. After all, there’s a human tendency to go along with what everybody else is doing, but this tendency can be exploited by those who know how to manipulate it.
Disappointed — June 11, 2005 at 12:27 am
For anyone arguing that theraputic cloning is the creation and destruction of cells that could one day become a person, I suggest reading up on the research done by the South Koreans recently. These cells that make up the theraputic cloning process can never become a full grown human due to the complex nature of cloning and science’s inability to perfect its process. The key point is these cloned cells CAN NEVER become a full grown cloned person.
Meta-jester — June 14, 2005 at 7:05 pm
I’d be interested to hear responses to the ANT proposal to produce embryonic stem cells without killing an embryo. Summary and insightful commentary here:
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2005/05/shazaam-even-handed-article-on-cloning.html
MJ