April 2, 2008 11:16 AM
Rethinking Embryonic Stem Cells
The Reprogramming Breakthrough
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.
The recent discovery that regular old garden-variety skin cells can be converted into highly flexible (pluripotent) stem cells has rocked the scientific world. Two papers, one by a Japanese group and another by an American, have announced a genetic technique that produces stem cells without destroying (or using) any human embryos. This technique involves the transfer of four genes into the skin cells, triggering them to convert into pluripotent stem cells. It has been called “biological alchemy,” something like turning lead into gold. Many are hailing “cellular reprogramming” as a breakthrough of epic proportions, the stuff that Nobel Prizes are made of, a kind of Holy Grail in biomedical research.
As important as this advance may prove to be scientifically, it may be even more important to the ethical discussion. It offers a possible solution to a long-standing ethical impasse and a unique opportunity to declare a pause, maybe even a truce, in the stem cell wars, given that the source of these cells is ethically pristine and uncomplicated. As one stem cell researcher put it recently, if the new method really produces equally potent cells, as it has been touted to do, “the whole field is going to completely change. People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about.”(1) Thus, science itself may have devised a clever way to heal the wound it opened back in 1998, when human embryos began to be sought out and destroyed for their stem cells. Dr. James Thomson (whose 1998 work originally ignited the controversy, and who also published one of the new breakthrough papers) acknowledged just such a possibility in comments to reporters: “Ten years of turmoil and now this nice ending.”(2) Whether this nice ending will actually play out remains to be seen, but a discovery of this magnitude, coupled with a strong ethical vision, certainly has the potential to move us beyond the contentious moral quagmire of destroying human embryos.
Respecting Ethical Boundaries in Research
Reprogramming addresses significant ethical concerns even as it offers a highly practical technique for obtaining pluripotent stem cells. As Dr. Thomson himself put it, “Any basic microbiology lab can now do it, and it’s cheap and quick.”(3) Reprogramming also offers a way to avoid getting entangled in “therapeutic cloning,” a complex and unethical procedure which uses women’s eggs to clone embryos and get patient-specific stem cells. Reprogramming allows researchers to get patient-specific stem cells without using women’s eggs, without killing embryos, and without crossing moral lines.
The sheer practicality of the new reprogramming approach, coupled with its ethical advantages, makes it appealing enough that some researchers are in fact changing their research plans. Dr. Ian Wilmut, the researcher responsible for cloning Dolly the sheep, went so far as to announce that he will no longer pursue human therapeutic cloning, but will instead turn to reprogramming techniques. Yet when pressed by reporters, he still insists that all avenues need to be investigated: “Certainly using skin cells is much easier to accept socially than the use of embryos, but this was very much a personal decision and I still think we need to continue to work in both areas.”(4) There are a number of reasons that scientists and politicians continue to argue that the bio-industrial-complex emerging around destructive human embryo research must be safeguarded and every avenue of research, even unethical ones, must be pursued.
First, the financial investment that has already been made in this area is significant. Certain state initiatives, like Proposition 71 in California, have earmarked enormous sums of state taxpayer money (about $3 billion) to promote research that fosters human embryo destruction. When such astronomical sums are involved, and researchers, universities, and pharmaceutical companies sense a gold rush in the offing, ethics often become the first casualty of the scramble.
Second, some of the scientists who advocate the destruction of human embryos have never really taken the moral concerns too seriously, because the creed they subscribe to is that of the so-called “scientific imperative,” namely, that science must go forward, no matter what, as if it were the highest and most incontrovertible good known to mankind. This kind of modern dogmatism results in the view that science must be able to do essentially whatever it wants, and ethical viewpoints should not be allowed to interfere with experiments that researchers might want to do. That, of course, is a completely untenable position, because we regulate scientific research all the time. The very mechanism by which we dispense federal research money and grants imposes all kinds of checks and balances on what researchers can and cannot do. Certain types of research, like germ warfare studies or nuclear bomb development, are strictly regulated by the government today, and have been for decades. Other kinds of research are outright criminal, such as performing medical experiments on patients who do not give their consent. The idea that we ought to allow science to do whatever it wants is ultimately little more than “pie-in-the-sky” wishful thinking.
The Connections to IVF and Abortion
Another reason that embryocidal research in our laboratories can be expected to continue in the foreseeable future is that we have become largely acclimatized to human embryo destruction as part of what happens during infertility treatments. Many thousands of embryos are frozen or die each year at fertility clinics, and hardly a word is mentioned in respectable society. One of the most successful rallying cries in the stem cell debate has been, “Just give us the frozen embryos. They’re all going to be thrown away anyway.” Because of our unflinching pragmatism as a society, the proposal to get some good out of something that will be thrown into the dumpster seems like a no-brainer. We recycle our aluminum cans religiously, and try to maximize returns on every investment we make, so if young human embryos could be mined for their parts, we conclude that they would “not be wasted” either.
The first lapse in reasoning here, of course, occurs when we grant the assumption that it is somehow okay to discard very young humans. We wring our hands and tell ourselves that this is “inevitable”—we really can’t be expected to stop scientists from discarding young human beings as medical waste, because that could have the practical effect of generating suspicion around the sacred cow of in vitro fertilization. Hence, it must follow that it is okay for researchers to directly cause the death of young humans who have been thawed out and are now growing in the Petri dish on the laboratory bench, as long as somebody else was going to do the dastardly deed “anyway.” So long as clinics were planning to do evil anyway, that makes it okay for me to jump ahead of them in line and do the evil myself as a researcher. The flawed logic here is glaring, yet it sadly passes for respectable thinking and illuminated discourse in our universities and legislative bodies every day.
Yet another reason that embryo-destructive research will still likely be promoted in the future has to do with abortion. Several astute commentators have observed how the whole field of embryonic stem cell research has come to serve as a kind of “hedge” for abortion. In the same way that a hedge is placed around a garden in order to protect it, embryonic stem cells are becoming a place holder for abortion. As long as a kind of medical neo-cannibalism of embryos can be declared necessary for the maintenance of our personal health and well-being, then abortion on demand will more likely curry favor in our culture as well.
We Were Embryos
The argumentative continuity behind this position springs from the fact that each of us, remarkably, is an embryo who has grown up. This biological fact stares researchers in the face every time they choose to “disaggregate” a human embryo with their own hands. It makes many researchers edgy, touching them on some deeper level of their being. It makes many Americans queasy and eager to find alternatives. Dr. Thomson, who has overseen the destruction of numerous embryonic humans himself, had the honesty to acknowledge this fact in comments he made to The New York Times: “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”(5) Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese researcher who developed the reprogramming approach and published one of the two recent breakthrough papers, memorably described the problem after visiting a friend who worked at a fertility clinic. After looking down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic, he later reflected back on the moment: “‘When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,’ said Dr. Yamanaka, forty-five, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. ‘I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.’”(6)
Drs. Yamanaka and Thomson have managed to pioneer another way, a powerful and practical way, but it is clear that several complex factors will influence how this major new stem cell discovery plays out in medicine and society. One thing is certain, however: those renegade researchers, lawmakers, and Hollywood personalities who have long dismissed ethical concerns and advocated human embryo destruction now find themselves at an important juncture because of this breakthrough. We can only hope that in the wake of this discovery, the siren call of harvesting human embryos will cease ringing in their ears and allow for a new era of ethical science to begin.
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.
Father Pacholczyk is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center. This article is based on a nationally syndicated column.
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1 - Gretchen Vogel, “Researchers Turn Skin Cells Into Stem Cells,” Science Now Daily News, November 20, 2007, 1.
2 - Rick Weiss, “Advance May End Stem Cell Debate,” Washington Post, November 21, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112000546_pf.html.
3 - Marilynn Marchione, “Wis. Stem Cell Pioneer Shuns Limelight,” Associated Press, November 20, 2007; available at http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1151927/wis_stem_cell_pioneer_shuns_limelight/index.html (reference updated March 31, 2008)
4 - Sarah Freeman, “‘Science Is a Wonderful Thing,’” Yorkshire Post, December 5, 2007, http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/features/Science-is-a-wonderful-thing.3555334.jp.
5 - Gina Kolata, “Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It,” New York Times, November 22, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/science/22stem.html.
6 - Martin Fackler, “Risk Taking Is in His Genes,” New York Times, December 11, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/science/11prof.html.
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