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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 .
Excellent article!
You used the phrase, "mass of undifferentiated cells." That is a false assertion on the face of it.
Sure it is. Hell, we both know it's a human child at a single cell. But whether the euphemism is "mass of undifferentiated cells" or something else, the fact is that there will be some label to "make it sound not human" that we're going to be forced to deal with. The other side will present the choice I stated above, whatever the euphemism happens to be.
The only way we answer their question successfully, is to have already won the moral battle. If we can't win that, then the war is lost.
Please understand: my purpose here is to try to identify the actual grounds of the debate in which we're engaged.
As we've already seen with the pro-aborts, they work very hard to get people to use their euphemism, as a means of hiding the true nature of what they're doing.
When there are many arguments in favor of one's position, I don't think one should eschew the pragmatic arguments merely because principled ones also exist. Indeed, I think one should put forth the pragmatic arguments as a means of exposing the fact that much of the support for ESC research is driven by a pro-abortion agenda rather than any bona fide desire to [non-fatally] treat diseases.
I suspect that it would probably be possible to produce a motor vehicle fuel from pine sawdust. If I spent enough money on such a project, I could probably succeed at such a venture. That does not mean that such an expenditure would be wise. Other uses of the money would make far more sense.
I have seen nothing to suggest that ESC research would have any more promise than ASC research, given the same level of funding. Even if the embryos destroyed in such research were considered to have no value beyond their production cost, I still see nothing to suggest that ESC research is an economically-sensible means for developing the types of treatments researchers are claiming to seek.
Of course, if the researchers really have other goals, ESC research may make a lot of sense...
Suppose you're trying to convince someone who hates rich people that he shouldn't rob them. Which is apt to be the more effective argument:
Adult stem cells work there is NO need to harvest babies for their body parts.
Adult Stem Cell Research More Effective Than Embryonic Cells
Embryo Vivisection and Elusive Promises Act--California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative
Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's
The Stem Cell Cover-Up By Michael Fumento
Lies About Fetal Stem Cell Research [Free Republic]
Stem cells without benefit of embryos
Michael Fumento Interview [DDT, Global Warming, Fuel Cells, Stem Cells, AIDS, Biotech, AD/HD, Etc.]
SELLING LIES (Stem Cell Myths exposed by Michael Fumento)
FREE Book on Stem Cells and Cloning in understandable language
| Alzheimer's gene therapy trial shows early promise | Drug slows advanced Alzheimer's disease |
*In 2000, Israeli scientists implanted Melissa Holley's white blood cells into her spinal cord to treat the paraplegia caused when her spinal cord was severed in an auto accident. Melissa, who is 18, has since regained control over her bladder and recovered significant motor function in her limbs - she can now move her legs and toes, although she cannot yet walk.
This is exactly the kind of therapy that embryonic-stem-cell proponents promise - years down the road. Yet Melissa's breakthrough was met with collective yawns in the press with the exception of Canada's The Globe and Mail. Non-embryonic stem cells may be as common as beach sand.
They have been successfully extracted from umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat, cadaver brains, bone marrow, and tissues of the spleen, pancreas, and other organs. Even more astounding, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep successfully created cow heart tissue using stem cells from cow skin. And just this week, Singapore scientists announced that they have transformed bone-marrow cells into heart muscle.
Research with these cells also has a distinct moral advantage: It doesn't require the destruction of a human embryo. You don't have to be pro-life to be more comfortable with that.
*In another Parkinson's case, a patient treated with his own brain stem cells appears to have experienced a substantial remission with no adverse side effects. Dennis Turner was expected by this time to require a wheelchair and extensive medication. Instead, he has substantially reduced his medication and rarely reports any noticeable symptoms of his Parkinson's. Human trials in this technique are due to begin soon.
*Bone marrow stem cells, blood stem cells, and immature thigh muscle cells have been used to grow new heart tissue in both animal subjects and human patients. Indeed, while it was once scientific dogma that damaged heart muscle could not regenerate, it now appears that cells taken from a patient's own body may be able to restore cardiac function. Human trials using adult stem cells have commenced in Europe and other nations. (The FDA is requiring American researchers to stick with animal studies for now to test the safety of the adult stem cell approach.)
*Harvard Medical School researchers reversed juvenile onset diabetes (type-1) in mice using "precursor cells" taken from spleens of healthy mice and injecting them into diabetic animals. The cells transformed into pancreatic islet cells. The technique will begin human trials as soon as sufficient funding is made available.
*In the United States and Canada, more than 250 human patients with type-1 diabetes were treated with pancreatic tissue (islet) transplantations taken from human cadavers. Eighty percent of those who completed the treatment protocol have achieved insulin independence for over a year. (Good results have been previously achieved with pancreas transplantation, but the new approach may be much safer than a whole organ transplant.)
*Blindness is one symptom of diabetes. Now, human umbilical cord blood stem cells have been injected into the eyes of mice and led to the growth of new human blood vessels. Researchers hope that the technique will eventually provide an efficacious treatment for diabetes-related blindness. Scientists also are experimenting with using cord blood stem cells to inhibit the growth of blood vessels in cancer, which could potentially lead to a viable treatment.
*Bone marrow stem cells have partially helped regenerate muscle tissue in mice with muscular dystrophy. Much more research is needed before final conclusions can be drawn and human studies commenced. But it now appears that adult stem cells may well provide future treatments for neuromuscular diseases.
*Severed spinal cords in rats were regenerated using gene therapy to prevent the growth of scar tissue that inhibits nerve regeneration. The rats recovered the ability to walk within weeks of receiving the treatments. The next step will be to try the technique with monkeys. If that succeeds, human trials would follow.
*In one case reported from Japan, an advanced pancreatic cancer patient injected with bone marrow stem cells experienced an 80 percent reduction in tumor size.
* In separate experiments, scientists researched the ability of embryonic and adult mouse pancreatic stem cells to regenerate the body's ability to make insulin. Both types of cells boosted insulin production in diabetic mice. The embryonic success made a big splash with prominent coverage in all major media outlets. Yet the same media organs were strangely silent about the research involving adult cells.
Stranger still, the adult-cell experiment was far more successful - it raised insulin levels much more. Indeed, those diabetic mice lived, while the mice treated with embryonic cells all died. Why did the media celebrate the less successful experiment and ignore the more successful one?
* Another barely reported story is that alternative-source stem cells are already healing human illnesses.
*In Los Angeles, the transplantation of stem cells harvested from umbilical-cord blood has saved the lives of three young boys born with defective immune systems.
“‘This [isolating stem cells from fat] could take the air right out of the debate about embryonic stem cells,’ said Dr. Mark Hedrick of UCLA, the lead author. The newly identified cells have so many different potential applications, he added, that ‘it makes it hard to argue that we should use embryonic cells.’” -- Thomas H. Maugh II, “Fat may be answer to many illnesses,” Los Angeles Times, 4/10/01
“With the newest evidence that even cells in fat are capable of being transformed into tissue through the alchemy of biotechnology, some scientists said they are beginning to conclude they’ll be able to grow with relative ease all sorts of replacement tissues without resorting to embryo or fetal cells…‘It’s highly provocative work, and they’re probably right,’ said Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas…Like many biologists, Olson believes that adult, fetal and embryonic stem cell research all merit support…it’s heartening, he said, that almost “every other week there’s another interesting finding of adult stem cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells. Apparently our traditional views need to be reevaluated.’” --Rick Weiss, “Human Fat May Provide Stem Cells,” The Washington Post, 4/10/01
“In a finding that could offer an entirely new way to treat heart disease within the next few years, scientists working with mice and rats have found that key cells from adult bone marrow can rebuild a damaged heart—actually creating new heart muscle and blood vessels…Until now researchers thought that stem cells from embryos offer the best hope for rebuilding damaged organs, but this latest research shows that the embryos, which are politically controversial, may not be necessary. ‘We are currently finding that these adult stem cells can function as well, perhaps even better than, embryonic stem cells,’ [Dr. Donald] Orlic [of the National Human Genome Research Institute] said.” --Robert Bazell, “Approach may repair heart damage,” NBC Nightly News, 3/30/01.
“[Dr. Donald] Orlic said fetal and embryonic stem cell researchers have not been able to show the regeneration of heart cells, even in animals. ‘This study alone gives us tremendous hope that adult stem cells can do more than what embryonic stem cells can do,’ he said.” --Kristen Philipkoski, “Adult Stem Cells Growing Strong,” Wired Magazine, 3/30/01
“Like several other recent studies, the new work with hearts suggests that stem cells retrieved from adults have unexpected and perhaps equal flexibility of their own, perhaps precluding the need for the more ethically contentious [embryonic] cells.” --Rick Weiss, “Studies Raise Hopes of Cardiac Rejuvenation,” The Washington Post, 3/31/01
“Umbilical cords discarded after birth may offer a vast new source of repair material for fixing brains damaged by strokes and other ills, free of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of fetal tissue, researchers said Sunday.” --“Umbilical cords could repair brains,” Associated Press, 2/20/01.
"PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, has succeeded in ‘reprogramming' a cell -- a move that could lead to the development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Scotland-based group will today announce that it has turned a cow's skin cell into a beating heart cell and is close to starting research on humans... The PPL announcement...will be seen as an important step towards producing stem cells without using human embryos." --"PPL follows Dolly with cell breakthrough," Financial Times, 2/23/01
“Because they have traveled further on a pathway of differentiation than an embryo’s cells have, such tissue specific [adult] stem cells are believed by many to have more limited potential than E[mbryonic] S[tem] cells or those that PPL hopes to create. Some researchers, however, are beginning to argue that these limitations would actually make tissue-specific stem cells safer than their pluripotent counterparts. University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Glenn McGee is one of the most vocal critics on this point: ‘The emerging truth in the lab is that pluripotent stem cells are hard to reign in. The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after a stem cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora’s box of stem cell research.’” --Erika Jonietz, “Biotech: Could new research end the embryo debate?” Technology Review, January/February, 2001
The war is not over the moral position of the 'other side', it is over the ignorant middle ... those ignorant of the truth and not already amoral.
That's an excellent point -- you're certainly correct in saying that the failures, and (over time) a continued lack of success argue against further funding. But note that this does not do two things: it does not address the moral aspect (indeed, it tends to push it aside by tacitly accepting the general idea of ESC research); and it also does not prevent private companies from performing ESC research using alternate funds.
The real reason we're against ESC research is not that it won't work, but because it's morally repugnant. That's got to remain front and center, because I think we have to expect that there will eventually be some treatment developed from ESCs.
Indeed, I think one should put forth the pragmatic arguments as a means of exposing the fact that much of the support for ESC research is driven by a pro-abortion agenda rather than any bona fide desire to [non-fatally] treat diseases.
While I think this is probably true in some cases, I think it's a lot harder to prove, because it's probably not true in general. One way to show a connection would be to demonstrate financial links between, say, Planned Parenthood and some ESC research facility. Another way would be to show links between particularly loud ESC supporters, and abortion providers. But it's a pretty difficult case to make, given that the media tend to be in favor of both abortion and ESC research.
Yes -- but that's not the case with abortion, which is the closest thing to the issue we're discussing. In a sane world, abortionists would be poor, on the run, and frequently imprisoned for murder. As it is, they're very well paid, protected by laws and guards, and have a very powerful cheering section in the media, powerful politicians, and the Democrat party in general. Why? Because we've lost the moral battle over abortion.
We agree.
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Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Suppose your car gets a flat with nobody around except you and a couple passengers. You then discover that you don't have a usable lug wrench, but there is a shed nearby. In front of the shed is a lug wrench. One of the passengers suggests breaking into the shed to look for a wrench, and tries to convince the other passenger to go along.
Which would be a better argument:
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