Double standard of embryo destruction
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If harvesting stem cells kills the embryos, then the morally correct alternative will be to ban stem cell research and not just limit federal funding to a few cell lines.
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CAN THE macabre experiments carried out by the Nazi doctors ever be justified even if it led to discoveries that ultimately alleviated human suffering? Not really. For some, the same holds good even if cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson disease or diabetes were possible but only by destroying the embryos (by fishing out stem cells).
Their argument is `destroying embryos is tantamount to killing human beings.' And that, according to Michael J. Sandel, one of the members of the (U.S.) President's Council on Bioethics, which advises the administration on several issues including stem cell research, is a flawed argument.
For the opponents of stem cells research, ensoulment begins at conception.
The difficulty in pinpointing the moment when the human person emerges during the passage from conception to birth means embryos should be treated with the same respect as an individual. But Dr. Sandel writing in the New England Journal of Medicine says the argument is flawed.
"The fact that every person began life as an embryo does not prove that embryos are persons," argues Dr. Sandel. According to him, every oak tree was once an acorn. But that does not imply that all acorns are oak trees.
Stretching the analogy further, he says, if all acorns are indeed oak trees, then an acorn eaten by a squirrel will mean loss, or to be more specific, death of an oak tree. But that is not so. So in spite of their developmental continuity, acorns and oak trees are different kinds of things. The fate of embryos and human beings is no different. Human life, like the acorn, develops by degrees.
To further debunk their arguments, Dr. Sandel challenges the critics' insistence of according embryos the same moral status generally reserved for human beings. "Perhaps the best way to see its implausibility is to play out its full implications," he says.
If indeed harvesting stem cells from embryos is akin to harvesting organs from a baby, then the morally correct alternative will be to ban stem cell research and not just limit federal funding to a few cell lines.
God forbid, imagine a situation when doctors killed babies with an explicit intention of harvesting organs for transplantation. Will the government take the moral high ground and declare that such a practice of killing children be ineligible for federal funding and force the doctors to seek private funds?
If that is ghastly to our senses, what explanation does it have to justify its restricted funding pattern for stem cell research, he wonders. "If we were persuaded that embryonic stem-cell research were tantamount to infanticide, we would not only ban it but treat it as a grisly form of murder and subject scientists who performed it to criminal punishment," he writes.
Going by opponents' view, if one were to regard an embryo as a person, then embryonic stem cell research should not be the only one to stand close scrutiny. Fertility clinics around the world routinely create excess embryos with an express mandate to spare the woman the ordeal of repeated procedures and to increase her chances of pregnancy. Excess embryos are then summarily destroyed or frozen indefinitely in the process. Now come the double standard of accepting or allowing the destruction of embryos created to treat infertility but protesting when used for stem cell research. "... if it is immoral to sacrifice embryos for the sake of curing or treating devastating diseases, it is also immoral to sacrifice them for the sake of treating infertility," he avers.
The issue gets further complicated. Natural pregnancy that outnumbers in-vitro fertilisation by thousands is no saint either. It is a well-known fact that natural procreation entails the loss of several embryos for every successful birth.
"Perhaps we should worry less about the loss of embryos that occurs in in-vitro fertilisation and stem-cell research," he opines. But the critics may take refuge in the argument that high infant mortality does not justify or sanction infanticide.
Of course not. But then the manner in which we respond to natural loss of embryos suggests that we do not consider the loss akin to either moral or religious equivalent of the death of infants. "Moreover, if the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions," he writes. "Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined."
Even as the embryonic stem-cell debate heats up in the Congress, the most vocal opponents of embryo research are yet to mount a national campaign calling for a ban on in-vitro fertilisation or to prohibit the fertility clinics from creating and discarding excess embryos. Then what else can be the justification to limit federal funding? There is a fear that stem cell research will lead down the slippery slope of abuse and exploitation. And this fear is not unfounded.
The answer lies in legislation and not in outright banning of technology. It serves none.
It is time the U.S. revisits its policy. While the federal law is silent on the issue of therapeutic cloning, the President's Council on Bioethics has already recommended a moratorium on the practice. And last week the National Institute of Health announced to start a stem cell bank to grow and distribute cell lines. Though belated, it is still a step in the right direction. This comes when France has banned both reproductive and therapeutic cloning but allowed stem cell research using embryos produced through in-vitro fertilisation to continue. Canadian and Sweden have legalised the use of excess embryos for stem cell research (therapeutic), the U.K. has authorized a private firm to begin deriving embryonic stem cells and Singapore has gone fast forward with its plans to spend $300 million on `Biopolis,' a science park focused on stem cell technology.
R. Prasad
in Chennai
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