Posted on 06/24/2004 6:13:22 AM PDT by nina0113
The Embryo’s New Clothes: A Modern Fairy Tale
by Steve Kellmeyer
06/24/04
“People need a fairy tale,” said Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”
The Promise
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a creative man needed a patron, a rich nobleman who was willing to pay an artist’s upkeep so as to give the artist time to create. Long the backbone of artisans, patronage has only recently become the backbone of technologists. Sadly, in the seventy-odd years since the Manhattan Project spawned the government subsidy boom in technology, biological sciences have generally been a poor step-child.
But biological experts, like everyone else, have house payments to make. The advantage of getting a government subsidy instead of a private subsidy to do your work is obvious: the government is not likely to go bankrupt. Thus, if you want to assure yourself a steady income, the most efficient way to do it is to get on the public dole. And therein lies a fairy tale, deliberately concocted and purposefully promoted.
Like Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet, everyone is for stem cell research. The promise of a disease-free life, lived longer and painlessly is very alluring. What’s not to love? Indeed, since the very first successful bone marrow transplant, stem cells have been used to successfully treat dozens of diseases.
There’s just one problem. There are not one, but two, kinds of stem cells. These two kinds of cells are not interchangeable, either medicinally or morally, but certain people are deliberately confusing the two in order to promote a specific political agenda. I. Richard Garr, president and CEO of Neuralstem Inc., a private company in Gaithersburg, Md., working with adult neural stem cells, points out: "This is a field that has more hype in it than almost anything outside of professional wrestling. The last thing we want to do is take away hope from anyone, but even a higher priority for us is not to give anybody false hope. I think the hype that's out there is not productive."
The Facts
As you might recall from high school biology, all of us started as a single cell in our mothers’ fallopian tubes, we began as a zygote, a fertilized egg. By the time we reached the uterus, we had grown into embryos. As embryos, we implanted into our mothers’ wombs and eventually grew into the fine, upstanding people we are today. But all the hundreds of different kinds of cells we have in our bodies today came from that first cell and its progeny.
A stem cell is one of those very early cells; it is a cell capable of turning into essentially any type of cell the body needs, depending on the mechanical and hormonal influences it is subject to. There are two kinds of stem cells: embryonic stem cells (ESC) and adult stem cells (ASC).
ESCs come exclusively from embryos. Children are deliberately conceived in artificial conditions, these children are allowed to grow to a specific stage of embryonic development in the laboratory, and they are then torn apart so their cells can be used for experimentation. Notice three things. (1) Embryos are torn apart, not fertilized eggs — zygotes are too immature. (2) This work requires the deaths of thousands of embryonic children. (3) This research is happening right now. It just doesn’t receive government funding. Yet.
Researchers who support abortion like to argue that ESCs are the best thing to use for research. Since they clearly have not differentiated, we can learn more from these kinds of cells and we can adapt them for treatment more easily. Unfortunately for abortion supporters, getting stem cells from embryos has not turned out to be a good idea. Stem cells from embryos don’t know they are no longer part of an embryo. No matter where they are placed in the human body — heart, pancreas, skull — they tend to try to grow into a child. Since having a child growing inside your skull does not usually contribute to improved health, this kind of growth is considered cancerous.
In short, ESCs — unlike the fetal and post-natal varieties — have a tendency to produce tumors after implantation. "We have to find ways to minimize that," says Pamela Gehron Robey, chief of the Craniofacial and Skeletal Diseases Branch of the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. She doesn’t mention that she is quite willing to kill thousands of embryonic children in order to get what she wants.
ASCs, on the other hand, are found in anyone who has grown past the embryonic stage of development. Umbilical cord blood is the best source because the cord is easily accessible, the newborn immune system is not very advanced and the resulting ASCs tend to be accepted by the recipient’s immune system. But, ASCs have also been obtained from blood, bone marrow, olfactory nerve endings (these are constantly regenerated, so taking them from an adult’s nose has no side effects), skin cells, even fat. That’s right. You can go ahead and eat that Big Mac. Just donate the results to science.
The Fairy Tale
Now, stem cells are really only useful for one thing: replacing dead or dying cells that can no longer do their job. As noted above, ASCs have have been used for decades to treat disease. Leukemias, immune system and other blood disorders, cancers, auto-immune diseases: the list is nearly 100 illnesses long , with more on the way. As you can see, adult stem cells work very well and they work right now. There are no moral issues involved with ASCs, absolutely no one is trying to stop ASC research and thousands of people have benefited from ASC therapy.
What about ESCs? Well, as noted above, obtaining ESCs involves killing children. Just as we shouldn’t (even if we can) kill people and snatch their heart, lungs and kidneys in order to solve the organ transplant shortage, so we shouldn’t (even if we can) kill children in order to snatch their embryonic stem cells. To make matters worse, there is absolutely no evidence ESCs work. Though ESC “therapy” has been tried dozens of times, no one has ever been successfully treated with embryonic stem cells. No one. Typically, ESCs make people more sick or kill them. Less often, they simply have no effect.
So, we have ASCs — a morally acceptable, medicinally useful stem cell therapy available right now, and we have ESCs — a morally illicit, medicinally useless stem cell therapy that is not likely to ever work. So, which do you think people want funded? The second, of course. People like Nancy Reagan and Michael J. Fox think embryonic stem cell research is useful for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease because, like the communists that Ronald Reagan fought, embryonic stem cell researchers deliberately misrepresent the facts in order to drum up public support. The researchers need to feed at the public trough because private enterprise refuses to fund them. The ESC approach doesn’t work. Private enterprise does not stay in business by funding failure.
On June 10th’s World News Tonight, Ned Potter and Dr. Michael Shelanski, Alzheimer’s researcher, Columbia University, hinted at the chicanery:
Potter: “Stem cells, which are found in human embryos, may be able to replace almost any damaged cell in the body. But with Alzheimer’s it’s not the cell that need to be replaced.”
Shelanski: “The early changes of Alzheimer’s disease are a loss of the connections between nerve cells without death of the nerve cells themselves.”
Remember, stem cells, whether ASC or ESC, can only replace dead or damaged cells. They can’t fix living cells that don’t communicate well.
Why aren’t these embryonic stem cell researchers being exposed as frauds? Because they are tearing apart human embryos, and that reduces respect for children in the womb. Journalists like Tom Shales, William Safire, Tom Brokaw, Sandra Hughes, Barbara Walters, the crew of Good Morning America, the president of the Alzheimer’s Association, and a couple dozen Congressmen all push for more embryonic stem cell research either because they don’t understand the issues or because they actively support legal abortion and recognize that the more our society takes a utilitarian view of very small humans, the less likely we are to end the slaughter of them. Scientific research is being prostituted for political ends. The embryo has no clothes.
© Copyright 2004 Steve Kellmeyer
Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally known author and lecturer, specializing in apologetics and catechetics. His new books Sex and the Sacred City: Meditations on the Theology of the Body and Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code are now available on-line and by phone through Bridegroom Press as are his other books, audio recordings and teaching tools. If you would like to comment on his columns or other writings, please visit www.skellmeyer.blogspot.com .
Can you break out your pro-life ping lists?
This is probably the single, most succinct and accurate summation of the whole "stem cell research question" I have seen anywhere. An excellent article.
But you can't blame Nancy. As everyone saw once again last week, she's still madly in love with the guy. She'd probably support harvesting full-grown, living humans if it would bring back Ronnie. Of course, I thought it was cute and not creepy that she consulted an astrologer about Reagan's schedule after he was shot. That didn't make astrology a hard science. But liberals who once lambasted Nancy for having too much influence on Reagan's schedule now want to anoint her Seer of Technology.
Will do immediately. This article needs very wide reading, even making paper copies and sharing with Pastors and Priests. God-fearing people instinctively know embryonic stem cell harvesting from alive embryonic humans is wrong. They need the science facts as well, to debate the issues.
Typically, ESCs make people more sick or kill them
ASCs have have been used for decades to treat disease. Leukemias, immune system and other blood disorders, cancers, auto-immune diseases: the list is nearly 100 illnesses long , with more on the way. As you can see, adult stem cells work very well and they work right now.
Repeated for emphasis. Thanks for this article.
Specifically, his claims that ESC research has gone nowhere is probably false. That's unfortunate, because in making the claim that ESC's don't work, he has basically given up the moral argument in favor of a utilitarian one. Once you've done that, you've lost the war -- the first successful use of ESCs destroys the opposition.
The reason to oppose ESC research is that it is wrong. If Kellmeyer had left it at that, he'd have been OK. Once you've given that up, it's extremely difficult to get back on track.
Abortion provides a good analogy. The abortion industry thrives, and is primarily defended, on utilitarian grounds (primarily variants on "convenience of the mother"). The moral argument was lost long ago when convenience was placed ahead of a moral principle. These days, the pro-life side typically argues on utilitarian grounds, primarily the consequences that may befall a woman who has an abortion. It's rare that you hear the public argument broken down into a dissection of the moral implications.
(1) Embryos are torn apart, not fertilized eggs — zygotes are too immature. (2) This work requires the deaths of thousands of embryonic children. (3) This research is happening right now. It just doesn’t receive government funding. Yet.
That's all I need to know.
I'd rather remain in my wheelchair than be responsible for tearing baby embryos apart. It sucks being a paraplegic, but at least I can look at myself in the mirror.
BTTT!!!!!
"... the first successful use of ESCs destroys the opposition." Well, that's an astonishing bit of hyperbole! Kind of like saying, 'the first person kept from dying by eating fellow survivors of a plane crash on a remote mountain and everyone will start eating their neighbors.' Opposition to ripping the fetal stem cells from embryos doesn't fair or fall based on what the liberals can say about the person debating the issues or upon one man's way of phrasing the argument. Even if one 'trial' has found success, the entire methodology is cannibalism. Does that change when one success is rigged up?
No, it's not. Once ESCs are used successfully to treat something, the lid is off. The argument moves to whether or not you want to "deny this life-restoring treatment" just to save a "mass of undifferentiated cells." That argument ought to sound awfully familiar to you -- it's the same one used to justify abortion.
So, point out where he is wrong. Admittedly, I'm not a biologist (just a Ph.D. chemist), but AFAIK, his summation of the "state of the science" is right on target.
As ole Justin Wilson would put it, "I garontee" that if there had been even ONE successful use of embryonic stem cells, it would have been front page news in 3-inch high letters.
Thus far, the pro-ESC arguments are all theoretical, not backed up by facts, whereas the ASC arguments are based on multiple real-world successes.
Any appeal to utilitarian aspects of the debate is dangerour because it moves the terms of the debate onto their ground, rather than ours, which is the principle that killing for spare parts is intrinsically and universally unaccepable. So long as the argument is pragmatic, the pro-death side will always be able to argue the need for more research and better technique.
Oh, I agree that ESC work is bad on moral grounds, and that such is the basic reason it should not be done.
I'm simply pointing out that the article has a succinct, precise, and accurate statement on the current state of the technology.
Thus far, the pro-ESC arguments are all theoretical, not backed up by facts, whereas the ASC arguments are based on multiple real-world successes.
I won't dispute it. However, there are some very real theoretical advantages to ESCs over ASCs -- Kellmeyer's own article makes that point (if only to note that there are technical hurdles still to be overcome). Note also that the advantages of ASCs were also theoretical at one time -- so the fact that no ESC treatments currently exist, is not necessarily meaningful to the discussion.
Which is to say, it is not enough to hang our hats on "it doesn't work." Given time and money, it is very likely that some practical ESC-based treatments will be developed, just as has happened with Adult Stem Cells. It is also likely that the ESCs and ASCs would not be useful for the same things -- so we can't simply treat them as interchangeable approaches to the same set of problems.
We have to be honest, also, about the fact that one cannot help but be attracted to the medical possibilities, should ESC pan out. (That's the nature of temptation: it doesn't work if the potential results aren't attractive.) Once ESC does pan out -- as it probably will -- we will be hard-pressed to oppose it on anything other than moral grounds.
The utilitarian argument really does fail the first time a successful ESC treatment is found. That's why (just as with abortion) our only hope is to bolster the moral case against it.
But that IS the point. Those "theoretical advantages" have thus far turned out the be bullshit, despite the massive amounts of research already done in the area. The entire ESC position is based on hype and speculation---not real-world results. At some point, someone HAS to start pointing out that the emperor has no clothes on.
The same could be said of any number of other inventions which we now take for granted. How many thousands of trials did Edison make, before he finally invented a practical light bulb?
The unpleasant truth is that ESCs probably can, and thus probably will, be used to create successful treatments for certain ailments. You can't hang your hat on the failures to date, because the first success makes your argument moot.
Bless you.
That's a valid point.
But this article has explained to me why the ESC grant-seekers are seeking government grants. The article exposes their underlying motivation and is a useful addition to the argument contra, although not essential, as you point out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.