“Embryos are Humans” Says U.S. Government Report on Stem Cell Research

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new report by the United States governments’ Domestic Policy Council admits that embryos are human beings; the only differences between embryos and other human beings, says the report, are accidental differences in levels of development.

“Embryos are humans in their earliest developmental stage,” writes the Council.

“We do no have to think that human embryos are exactly the same in all ways as older humans to believe that they are entitled to respect and protection. Each of us originated as a single-celled embryo, and from that moment have developed along a continuous biological trajectory throughout our existence. To speak of ‘an embryo’ is to designate a human being at a particular stage.”

The Domestic Policy Council, which coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House, and which is under the direction of President Bush, made these unequivocal statements about the human embryo in its report on stem-cell research entitled, “Advancing Stem Cell Science without Destroying Human Life.”

The report, released earlier today, condemns the destruction of human embryos for the purpose of stem-cell research, and instead advocates alternative sources of stem-cells, including cells derived from amniotic fluid and adult stem-cells.

Research on these sources of stem-cells, says the report, hold much more promise on a purely scientific basis of producing results than the ethically condemnatory and scientifically uncertain research on embryonic stem-cells.

“In sum,” reads the Executive Summary, “it increasingly appears that the qualities researchers value in embryonic cells may also exist in other stem cells that are easier to procure, more stable to grow, safer to use in therapies, and free of the ethical violations of embryo destruction.”

Therefore, “There is no reason to sacrifice longstanding moral concerns in a shortsighted rush for therapeutic payoffs.”

“We must make certain we don’t force ourselves into a false choice between science and ethics—because we need both. And there is good reason, and growing scientific evidence, to believe that we can have both.”

Nevertheless, while defending the humanity of the embryo with a clarity that is rarely, if ever, encountered in government reports, the document has significant areas that will undoubtedly be areas of concern in the eyes of many pro-life advocates.

The Domestic Policy Council goes to some length in its report to console President Bush’s opponents on matters pertaining to stem-cell research by pointing out that there is no Presidential ban on embryonic stem cell research. The report instead boasts about the large sums of federal dollars that have been given towards embryonic stem cell research under President Bush’s policy of permitting federal funding for research performed on pre-existing lines of embryos.

Furthermore, while admitting that embryos are human beings, and therefore (presumably) deserving of the same rights as all other human beings and U.S. citizens, the report does not indicate that any action will be taken in the future towards what might seem as the logical conclusion of the admitted humanity of the embryo—that is, a federal ban not only on the funding of, but on the performance of all embryonic stem-cell research, including that which is privately-funded.

“Private-sector human embryonic stem cell research has been and continues to be permissible without restriction in the U.S.,” boasts the report. “Contrary to common misperceptions, there is no Presidential ban on human embryonic stem cell research…In fact, funding by individual states is expected to add up to several billion dollars in the next few years.”

The report also presents the possibility that so-called adult “pluripotent” cells—that is, adult cells that are “reprogrammed” to act like embryonic cells—may hold some promise as an ethical source of stem-cells. However, while avoiding making a definitive statement about the ethicality of the use of these unique pluripotent cells, neither does the report delve in any noteworthy depth into the serious concerns that numerous renowned ethicists and pro-life advocates have brought up about the procedure.

According to some prominent ethicists, the destruction of these “pluripotent” cells derived from adult cells may be no different than the destruction of embryos, since the pluripotent cells are essentially no different than human embryos.

The report concludes saying, “there has been tremendous scientific progress of late in exploring methods of deriving pluripotent stem cells without destroying embryos…With continued support for non-destructive alternatives, new developments will continue to unfold in this field in the years to come, holding the potential for innovative progress toward new medical cures, while at the same time upholding human dignity and the sanctity of innocent life.”

Read “Advancing Stem Cell Science Without Destroying Human Life” by the Domestic Policy Council:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/stemcell ;

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

American Life League Statement - Problems with Santorum-Specter Bill S. 2754
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jul/060714a.html

Catholic Church NOT Opposed to Stem Cell Research: Catholic Bioethicist
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jul/06072709.html

UK Researcher: Embryonic Stem Cells Have Never Been Used to Treat Anyone and no Plans Exist to do so
Part I: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06081804.html
Part II: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06082401.html &nbs...;

Is a look back in order?...

What’s it all about, Alfie? Why the fuss over embryonic stem cells?

News/Current Events Free Republic Keywords: EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS, ABORTION, CLONING

Published at FreeRepublic.com : 8/16/2001

There is often a way to simplify a complex issues. With the current debate on embryonic stem cell research this is not the case, for the issues are tied up in a Gordian knot having moral, ethical, medical, scientific, and political strands. With the indulgence of my fellow Freepers—whose opinions and input I value far above the agenda-laden media—I will attempt to give some clarification on the goals of embryonic stem cell researchers and other implications found in the twisted strands.

To be fair, I shall start by stating my belief regarding individual human life … it helps readers to pigeonhole the author if they don’t wish to think through the offered thoughts and want to post opinions and responses anyway.

I believe the life of every individual human being alive began with their conception, whether in a petri dish (Orrin Hatchling’s opinion not withstanding), the pelvic cavity, fallopian tube, or uterus of their mother. To my mind, individual life in the body begins at conception and follows a God-ordained continuum of unknown length; it’s a sure bet the individual identity in the body starts with conception, somewhere. To me, the moral and ethical questions regarding embryonic stem cell research center on answering the notions of whether it is wrong or merely discomforting to use the cells of embryos who were killed for their body parts—that’s what the embryonic stem cells are in the final analysis, the body parts of embryos, individual human embryos, and that’s how we ought identify them in a pro-life mode.

So, what is it the researchers want to do with stem cells harvested from embryos? Well, there are several possibilities:

***** 1- the cell lines would be studied to understand how embryonic cells transition from pluripotent into slightly differentiated multipotent cells that give rise to the specific tissue lines such as blood, muscle, neurons, etc. (transition from cells able to turn into any of the more than 250 tissue cells of the human body—pluripotent cells—into the more differentiated cells of specific tissue lines);

***** 2- the cell lines would be studied and cultured to produce tissue lines closely matched to tissues of ethnic/racial groups, from which tissue banks of less rejection-prone organs and tissues might be implanted in patients to effect cures of diseases and accident complications such as Nick Bonaconti’s son suffered to his spine during a football game;

***** 3- the cells of embryos would be stripped of their DNA (nuclear material taken out in a process called enucleation) and the DNA of a donor/patient would be implanted and then the cells cultured and reproduced then differentiated to produce more histocompatible tissues for treatments (histocompatible means little or no anti-rejection meds after surgery)

There may be other goals, but those three are the main directions researchers might take with embryonic stem cell lines. Please note, only the first would be undertaken without necessitating the killing of more embryos, using only the cell lines established by earlier killing of in vitro fertilization clinic embryos—it’s the 43rd president’s proposal, in a nutshell, to limit the exploitation to the lines already established, banning any further killing to harvest body parts as the 1995 law enumerated as below. The other two approaches would almost certainly require a much larger variety of embryonic stem cells and thus require extensive killing (scientists might use the term sacrificing or utilization instead of killing; the act is the same to this author, the killing of the individual human embryo to harvest its body parts). Number three would require a nearly continuous supply of embryos for their body parts, in order to as closely as possible match the antigens and proteins of the ‘to be implanted’ patient.

Well, you might ask, why open this Pandora’s box at all? Sadly, the box was opened decades ago, when in vitro fertilization began to conceive ‘extra’ embryos, to make clinic fertilization procedure more cost effective, with the resultant leftover embryos being stored in liquid nitrogen tanks. [To this writer, that is the base wrong at the heart of all this harangue, and IVF ought be regulated to avoid such an obscenity to human life. IVF came before the Roe decision and may have contributed heavily to the cheapening of pre-birth human life. It’s hard for me to believe the IVF clinics thought the embryos were individual human beings because the implications of that and the crass ‘processing’ of the embryos not implanted to become babies nine months later would fit too closely with the antithetical notions of Nazi horrors. We’ll return to this notion in a minute.]

During the second term of the 42nd president the United States Congress wrote and passed a law against killing humans for harvesting, but the 42nd president skirted this late in his term, assuming the embryos in nitrogen tanks were not human beings, extending federal grant programs to ‘utilize’ these ill-defined globs of individual human parts for research—Bill Clinton used his executive position to open the door for thawing and or creating embryos, killing and harvesting their body parts, but didn’t fight the battle for funding; no doubt he is in the camp that do not consider the embryos to be individual human beings at their earliest developmental stage … as Jerrold Nadler, Mary Tyler Moore, Orrin Hatch, and others have so flatly put it, ‘they’re not humans if not in a womb’; which implies sanction for the slaughter of tens of millions who are human because they’re in wombs, but we won’t fight that battle today. It is my understanding that the first cell lines created from human embryonic bodies of ‘in vitro’ clinics were isolated in 1998 (by Geron, I think), but it is well to note that as far back as the late seventies, companies like Merck were taking tissue from aborted fetuses (lung and kidney tissues) for a form of cell regeneration (cloning specific tissues rather than whole persons, as in choice # 3 above, but using lung cells not embryonic cells) to create vaccines.

There are vaccines for polio, chicken pox, measles, mumps, and hepatitis routinely injected today that are creations derived from harvested human tissue of selectively aborted pre-born individual humans. As many are aware, there are now institutions purchasing embryos and eggs (the oocyte, female cell that is half of the conception process) destined for conceiving embryos for harvesting. The Pandora’s box of exploitation on killed then harvested human tissues has already begun, without government controls or laws as guidelines, though some would split hairs over tissue taken from aborted individual human beings, ignoring the undeniable truth that tissue harvesting is to some measuring driving the late term abortion statistics (and is therefore a heinous practice, in my book, far more inveigle of evil than harvesting frozen embryonic bodies, but these are degrees we fight over).

We might ask ourselves what would have been the best possible policy from the 43rd president, regarding stem cell research? Many will quickly say a flat ban on embryonic stem cells, whether as cell lines derived from embryos killed years ago—before the president offered his speech—or as a complete ban on killing any more embryos for their body parts. Some would say that embryos in nitrogen tanks aren’t individual humans, so harvest away, the more the better. There are a couple of other extreme notions, but they involve reproductive cloning and we won’t get into that sheepshank knot.

Let’s see if we can discern degrees of this argument. Could we say, A) banning all stem cell research would be the most extreme? Would banning B) only embryonic stem cell research be the next level? Then, would allowing C) embryonic stem cell research on JUST the cell lines already derived from the wrongful killing of embryos be next? Perhaps not banning D) research with the frozen embryos not implanted in wombs might be next, allowing the killing of as many as deemed needed from the nitrogen tanks. Finally, we would hear E) allowing any research with human embryos, allowing conception and killing at the whim of the researchers.

Selection E (and possibly D) above would be the brave new world of human exploitation, as far as this writer is concerned, for it would completely deny that individual human embryos are humans, it would allow all manner of dangerous research on genetic manipulation with living human tissues such that the most efficient weapons to decimate a racial grouping would be eventually isolated (and this may have already happened in secret US and other national labs around the world, make no mistake). To reject selection E is also to accept the notion that it is wrong to create human life for experimentation and exploitation.

Along the slippery slope of selection E lies acceptance of human cloning. Some scientists are already making the case for selective human tissue cloning, and as I’ve noted above, this procedure has already been undertaken with the production of certain vaccines now being routinely injected. We are already on this slippery slope. The question is, ‘How do we stop the madness before it reaches the more obvious horrors of cloning for body parts?

I tell you of a truth, this is already what the vaccine production labs have accomplished. The only clarification is, the cloning is of specific tissues (euphemistically called therapeutic cloning), not whole bodies or whole organs (euphemistically called reproductive cloning). Harken back to direction number 3 above, the enucleation and nuclear fusion using embryonic stem cells. That is the next step in designer organs and tissues. The more difficult task will be to avoid choices 2 and 3 and take only choice number 1, to eventually use the patient’s own stem cells for their specific tissues and organs without using embryonic individual lives. Choices 2 and 3 are within researchers’ grasps, as evidenced by the cry for more embryos from the nitrogen tanks. Choice 1 is the true holy grail of scientific medicine, for it will conflict with no moral or ethical standards as now established and will take our culture a step back from the horrors awaiting us with human cloning for body parts.

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