ARTICLES

The Moral Status of a Stem Cell

What Should We Do With Them?

By Norris Archer Harrington

The Bay Area is home to dozens of universities, biotechnology firms, and fertility clinics. As such, it is in the forefront of the controversy over human embryonic stem-cell research. A letter signed by eighty Nobel laureates and urging support for federally funded stem-cell research was faxed to President Bush on February 22. Of the eighty Nobel laureates, twelve hail from the Bay Area and represent Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, and University of California at San Francisco. A similar letter from 112 university presidents included signatories from Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at San Francisco, and San Francisco State University.

The letter to President Bush touted possible benefits of the research such as cures for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Nobel signatories argued that benefits are too great and hazards too slight to deny funding: "While we recognize the legitimate ethical issues raised by this research, it is important to understand that the cells being used in this research were destined to be discarded in any case." Ethical issues are raised because it is claimed that the preferred source of stem-cell tissue is the human embryo. The legitimacy of "harvesting" human embryos depends on the moral status of stem-cells. If a four-day-old human embryo is just biological material, what could be wrong with destroying it to save the lives of countless loved ones? Determining the moral status of the embryo at the earliest stage of development is the primary question. Dr. Michael D. West, president of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, agrees, "What's really central in this debate (and the problem is we don't have any real solid ground here) is the moral status of the pre-embryo. It keeps coming back to that." According to West, the pre-embryo is a fertilized embryo that has yet to develop into a person.

Dr. West is a leader in biotechnology and a major advocate of stem-cell research. He was founder and director of Geron Corporation in Menlo Park from 1990 to 1998, where he initiated the human embryonic stem-cell programs. In 1998, he co-founded Origen Therapeutics of South San Francisco. With his colleague Robert Lanza, he was the creative force behind the letter to President Bush. He is, in his own words, "essentially pro-life." He says, "It is terribly important how we treat unborn humans. I say 'I'm not absolutely pro-life.' I think the pre-embryo has a different moral status." Despite claiming no solid ground for establishing the moral status of the pre-embryo, he is convinced that there is no individuation prior to implantation in the uterus at around the 14th day after fertilization. 'No individuation' for West means that no "biological decision" has been made whether the stem-cells that make up the pre-implantation embryo will become a single individual, twins, or what have you. This development is seen when the embryo exhibits what is called the primitive streak. This streak is the new individual, head to toe. If there are two parallel steaks, twins will be born. And if the streak is in the form of a "Y", the embryo will develop into conjoined twins. It is the appearance of this primitive streak that signals, for West, the creation of the individual. His argument that no individual exists prior to this appearance is two-fold. First, upwards of 75 percent of an embryo's stem-cells can be removed without harming the developing child. Second, when two pre-embryos (one male and one female) fuse together, the result is an individual with two sexes -- a hermaphrodite. West says, "I think if you met one of these people you would say, 'That's not two people in one body. That's a single human being.'"

West holds that even if the pre-embryo is a person deserving of protection, stem cell research should go forward because there is no need to destroy any more human embryos. There are stem cells cultured in laboratories to provide all the material needed for research. Due to "cellular immortality" these cells can divide for thousands of years, yet their cellular progeny will not age. This is not so with other types of cells. If you were to culture skins cells from a newborn baby, in seventy years one would have the skin cells of a seventy-year-old person in your dish. With cultured stem-cell lines there is never any need to destroy an embryo, again; a fact that West wants the public to know. This begs several questions: Why is there a debate over funding research that will destroy embryos if from now on no embryos will be destroyed? And, why destroy an embryo at all if you can remove 75 percent of the stem cells and leave it intact? Finally, how many human embryos are still being destroyed?

Fertility clinics can be reticent to discuss the particulars of their business. Katharine Herbert of the San Francisco Fertility Centers refused to answer questions of treatment procedures, explaining that such information was "between doctor and patient." When it was mentioned that the questions of protocol were of a general nature she replied, "your group does not approve of what we are doing. We do not wish to participate."

Dr. Victor Fujimoto is the director of the University of California at San Francisco's in vitro fertilization program. Fujimoto states that his facility does not "harvest surplus embryos for research," yet he confirms, "donation of embryos does happen."

But even if no new embryo is threatened with continued stem-cell research, at some point embryos were destroyed to provide for stem-cell lines that now can provide for all future research. West argues that that if one rejects funding for research because it uses stem cells from an embryo destroyed ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago, consistency requires one to give up immunization programs because vaccines were developed in the cells of aborted fetal tissue thirty-five and forty years ago. He says, "Even if you're right" regarding the claim that the pre-embryo is a person, the issue becomes what to do with the existing stem-cell lines. The embryos have been destroyed, the stem cells exist, to turn away from them when they can provide a cure to so much suffering and death would be an added evil. West quotes James 4:17, "To him therefore who knoweth to do good, and doth it not, to him it is sin." Clearly for him, the evil is past, leaving only the great good of overcoming death and suffering.

Scripture, the Magisterium, and tradition are all opposed to stem-cell research. The catechism states, "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception." In Donum Vitæ, Cardinal Ratzinger quotes Pope John Paul II when he mentions the "inviolability of the innocent human being's right to life from the moment of conception until death." And the Lord told Jeremiah "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you."

For a Catholic faithful to the Magisterium there is no question. Stem-cell research is immoral and prohibited.

But how does one respond to West's arguments in a public forum hostile to the principles of the Church? Given that faith comes through grace and grace builds upon nature, our venture into the public forum requires natural reasoning when discussing the soul and its origin. When asked what moral principle gives rise to the human right to be protected from harm, West replied, "That is a very difficult question. The little I can offer is that a collection of cells that has no body cells of any kind, and that has not even individualized, should not fall into that category any more than would sperm, egg, or skin cells." It is sobering that practitioners of material science cannot identify what gives rights to an adult person, but are certain that whatever that may be, the embryo does not have it. Ultimately, physical science cannot provide any ground for determining the nature and origin of the immaterial human soul.

Aristotle taught that all living things have some type of soul, or anima. This is what guides and sustains the physical components of a body and gives organisms their life. Our rights, like our souls, do not arise from some mere arrangement of tissue. An embryo has some type of anima, and is ordered to union with a human soul. It does not logically follow from having survived the loss of 75 percent on one's substance that one has no soul. Nor does it follow that one child from two fused embryos demonstrates that there were not originally two souls involved.

Regardless of these considerations, what of the stem-cell lines replicating ad infinitum? In other words, what do we do with the existing cells? Despite the nobility found in healing others, Dr. West's call to moral consistency does not dictate that we publicly fund the exploitation of these cells. We do not justify a wrong by appealing to having done so previously, but even so, the difference between exploited tissues from a long dead baby does not compare with tissue exploited by virtue of the fact that it will never be allowed to die.

West's goals for science call to mind the passage of scripture immediately preceding the passage he quoted from James 4:17: "For what is your life? It is a vapour which appeareth for a little while, and afterwards shall vanish away. For that you should say: If the Lord will, and if we shall live, we will do this or that. But now you rejoice in your arrogancies. All such rejoicing is wicked."

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