Stem cell research will offer no 'advance' for society

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Stem cell research will offer no 'advance' for society
Friday, February 25, 2005
John Morris
Kansas City Business Journal

What horrifies us most about the medical experiments of Josef Mengele, Tuskegee or Willowbrook is that they actually happened. Human beings -- sick or merely disenfranchised -- were exploited for the "advancement" of medicine.

In recent weeks, the issue of embryonic stem cell research and its connection to the process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has heated up in the Missouri Legislature. Kansas Citians have been bombarded in the local media with claims that banning SCNT will cost us billions of dollars in lost biotech industry, prevent local researchers from finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes, and label Missouri as anti-science.

Examination of the science, however, raises fundamental ethical concerns.

First, researchers do not "create" embryonic stem cells -- they "harvest" them from an embryo when it is about 5 days old in a process that destroys that embryo. In human research, this embryo is not just a "clump of cells," but rather is a self-developing organism with a complete "human" genome. Noted doctors from the Mayo Clinic, including C. Everett Koop and Edmund Pellegrino ("Stem Cell Research: Why Medicine Should Reject Human Cloning"), observe that the "human embryo is a living human organism. Structurally, the embryo is genetically complete." (Mayo Clinic Proceedings August 2003;78:1010-1018).

Thus, SCNT -- by producing a human embryo from which to harvest stem cells -- actually produces a new, genetically complete human life for the sole purpose of destroying it. This simply cannot be tolerated in any civilized society.

Second, most media gloss over an important distinction regarding stem cell research. One form is called embryonic stem cell research. As noted above, these stem cells can be obtained only from a developing embryo in a process that destroys the embryo itself. Because the stem cells harvested from embryos are difficult to work with and consistently form tumors when transplanted, this type of research has not led to a single cure for any human patient after 20-plus years of laboratory work.

On the other hand, there have been incredible breakthroughs in adult and umbilical cord blood stem cell research, in which no one is harmed (see www.stemcellresearch.org). Banning SCNT will actually save money that could go toward adult stem cell research that is helping patients today. This is where the Kansas City biotech industry should be focusing its resources -- on ethical research that can save lives now!

Finally, supporters of SCNT often claim that this research offers the best hope of finding cures for terrible diseases such as Alzheimer's and juvenile diabetes.

However, as one group of doctors who oppose embryonic stem cell research noted in a letter to presidential candidate John Kerry last October, "there is strong scientific consensus that complex diseases such as Alzheimer's are unlikely to be treated by any stem cell therapy. ... Similarly, autoimmune diseases like juvenile diabetes, lupus and MS are unlikely to benefit from simple addition of new cells unless the underlying problem-- a faulty immune system that attacks the body's own cells as though they were foreign invaders -- is corrected." (www.stemcellresearch.org/pr/kerry.pdf).

Local supporters of SCNT and embryonic stem cell research must stop exaggerating the "promise" of this research, which raises false hopes.

In the end, much good will come from adult stem cell research. But those who live and work in Missouri should neither support nor allow unethical research such as SCNT to occur, lest Kansas City join the ranks of such infamous places as Tuskegee or Willowbrook, where human beings were mistreated in the name of science.

John Morris is associate professor of philosophy at Rockhurst University and special adviser for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on issues of stem cells, cloning and human embryos.

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