STEM CELL ETHICS

If South Korean scientists are someday able to replace diseased cells with healthy lab-created cells that can eliminate Parkinson’s, diabetes or Alzheimer’s, should Americans suffering from these diseases be allowed that treatment or should the government order it withheld? If the answer is to allow it – and with treatment derived from therapeutic cloning, it should be – the president’s promised veto of congressional bills promoting that science should be withdrawn, to be replaced by admiration of this emerging field of biomedicine.

The South Korean scientists announced last week they have developed a method for using cloned genetic skin cells from an adult human being to alter an embryo so that it produced new stem cells that are a genetic match for the patient. The work would move researchers closer to being able to replace diseased cells with healthy ones as well as deepen understanding of why the diseased cells appeared at all.

At the time of the announcement, Republican and Democratic House members were finding support for a bill that would lift the ban on using federal dollars for research on embryonic stem cell lines developed after August 2001. Under the bill, researchers could use embryos that are left over from fertility treatments and are being discarded now. President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill, just as he has a Senate bill that would achieve similar ends.

The science will proceed with or without federal funding, but may not happen as quickly, is less likely to be developed in the United States or under federal standards if the limited use of cell lines approved by the president in 2001 remains in effect. The White House offers what it says are ethical doubts about stem cell research. These doubts may be religiously based, but ethically Americans, including members of the Bush administration, are aware that early embryos, called blastocysts, are already discarded during in vitro fertilization and find the practice acceptable. Blastocysts are discarded naturally, for that matter, whenever one fails to implant on a woman’s uterine wall.

No one responsible is calling for the cloning of humans, and Congress agrees that federal laws should be in place to prevent the irresponsible from trying. That’s not what this debate is about. Instead, it is about whether U.S. researchers, practicing under broadly accepted ethical standards, are going to lead the field of stem cell science or follow it, and what the implications for Americans suffering from diseases some day treatable through this research will be.

The ethical debate of this is very different from the one which the White House continues to assert.