Moral Divide
Experts debate value, risks of embryonic stem cell research

For the six panelists of Should We Place Limits on Medical Research: A Look at the Stem Cell Debate, the event seemed to be a matter of life and death.

But exactly how both life and death are defined was among the central themes of the debate, which was held Oct. 10 in Mercer County Community College, West Windsor.

Panelists in the debate who oppose embryonic stem cell research were:

Father Michael Manning, pastor of St. William the Abbot Parish, Howell, and coordinator of Respect Life Ministries for the Diocese of Trenton; Marie Tasy, director of public and legislative affairs and spokeswoman for New Jersey Right to Life, and Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, a Republican who represents the 25th District.

Proponents of embryonic stem cell research included: Dr. Wise Young, founding director of W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience and a professor in Rutgers University; Barbara Johnson of Princeton, who is the mother of paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve, and Dr. Harold T. Shapiro, who served as the 18th president of Princeton University and is a professor of economics and public affairs.

Proponents of the research claim it offers the greatest hope for the treatment of spinal cord injury and diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

However, the Church opposes embryonic stem cell research because it is a human individual with a human life, according to a paper released Aug. 21 by the Vatican’s U.N. Mission.

The Vatican also said it "strongly supports the advancement of human biological sciences" and approves the use of stem cells for research if they were not taken from live embryos or obtained in ways that violated human dignity, Catholic News Service reported.

Even when an embryo had not been implanted in a womb, it is "nonetheless a human individual with a human life" and "destroying this embryo is therefore a grave moral disorder," the Vatican said.

The use of embryos isn’t necessary because "adult" stem cells obtained in morally acceptable ways "contain a great scientific promise," the Vatican has noted.

Father Manning, who practiced medicine in Staten Island, N.Y., before becoming a priest, said "human life can not be created and destroyed for a punitive good."

"Our right to life is not conferred by legislation nor can it be assigned through a legal way," Father Manning said. "It is a God-given, inalienable right and such belief in the sanctity of human life is religious. But it is also political. That is why the debate must occur. Not only in churches, but in universities and the public square."

Referring to the "freezing" of human embryos, Father Manning said "we can not be silent when any human life is commodified. Toleration does not demand that those who hold human life sacred life be silent in discussions about the use of public money for research that they find ethically or morally repugnant."

Tasy said "aggressive research should move forward using adult stem cells and that it should never be a public policy of our state or federal government to permit the deliberate destruction of one million human beings for the potential benefit of another."

"Regardless of how an embryo is created, whether it be through egg and sperm, which is sexual reproduction, or asexual, without a man’s sperm, it is still a whole human organism," she added. "So clearly, regardless of how this human embryo comes to existence, it should have the same moral status."

Tasy also said there is no scientific evidence that shows that embryonic stem cell research will lead to cures for disease, but adult stem cell research does.

Assemblyman Carroll, who sits on the state assembly’s Consumer Affairs Committee and the Law and Public Safety Committee, said "human rights must be universal if they are to be human rights."

"If they be legitimately denied to anyone, they can be legitimately denied to everyone," Carroll said. "If humanity itself is now nothing more than a matter of opinion, one about which people can realistically and pluralistically disagree and is dependent even upon majority rule, then we have in effect consigned the rights of nature to nothing more than a stature.

"Once you have acknowledged that it is proper for a society to say there are certain groups of admittedly human creatures to whom we will not accord basic human rights you have opened the door that someone might use that particular philosophy in a different manner."

Dr. Young said a lack of stem cell research is "doing substantial harm because we haven’t been able to take the research and use it to save lives."

"Stem cell biology is critical to all of life sciences; the prohibition on embryonic stem cell studies, particularly human stem cells, held back science for many years now; the issue is not about abortion or in vitro fertilization. It’s about trashing it or using it," Dr. Young said.

Johnson said she participated in the debate not for her son, but for several family members struggling with diseases that include diabetes and Parkinson’s.

"I am not the scientist researcher on this panel," Johnson said. "I am not the bioethicist. I am here to argue as forcefully as I can as a lay person, as a family member that limits should not be placed on medical research.

"Especially stem cell research, which seems to offer so much promise, so much hope for the estimated more than 100 million Americans suffering from diseases and conditions such as those I mentioned."

Dr. Shapiro said because of the rapid pace of technological change, "we are in what I would call a period of turbulent moral weather," so continued debate about stem cell research is necessary.

"We have to deal with these ethical issues in a pluralistic democracy," Dr. Shapiro said. "One of the aspects of pluralistic democracy is that it expects that people are going to have different views on moral issues. And one aspect of the great American strength is that we can continue to live together in view of these different perspectives, different beliefs on moral issues."

Father Alfred Cioffi, research ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center near Boston, explained cloning during the 51st convention of the National Council of Catholic Women Sept. 27-30 in Minneapolis, according to Catholic News Service.

In cloning, the nucleus is sucked out of an unfertilized egg and a somatic nucleus is inserted, Cioffi said. The result is reproduction without benefit of fertilizations of the egg by male sperm.

The purpose of this type of cloning, called therapeutic cloning, is to create an embryo, allow the embryo to grow to the blastula stage, then, rather than implant the embryo in a uterus so it can develop, harvest the embryonic stem cells for research, Cioffi said.

Adult stem cells, Cioffi said, can be obtained with the donor’s permission. Adults produce millions of blood cells every day, he added.

Another alternative is to do research with umbilical cords and placentas, both of which are discarded after birth, he said.