Stem cell research has clearly emerged as an in issue in
Campaign 2004, both nationally and in California with Proposition
71.
Unfortunately, the whole issue ““ even before this current
election year ““ has been so surrounded by confusion and
misinformation that nonissues take center stage while crucial facts
remain unreported and thus virtually unknown.
As a member of Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for
Research Ethics, I am often asked why I oppose stem cell research.
The question, as asked, has no relevance. The fact is we do not
oppose stem cell research. We fully support adult stem cell
research. We do oppose on both practical and ethical grounds one
form of stem cell research: human embryonic stem cell research.
Human embryonic stem cell research is ethically contentious
because it requires the destruction of live human embryos in order
to obtain their stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research causes us
to treat human life as a mere commodity; like life has no inherent
value in itself ““ it is merely something that exists only to
serve another’s purpose. Adult stem cell research, on the
other hand, is ethically nonproblematic. And as far as we know, no
one is opposed to it. Hence one can oppose human embryonic stem
cell research but still favor other avenues of stem cell
research.
“Yes,” some will say, “but embryonic stem cell
research holds much greater promise than adult stem cell research
to cure disease.” This is where we encounter one of those
crucial facts that go all but unnoticed in the stem cell debate:
Despite all the hype about the great potential of embryonic stem
cells to cure a whole host of diseases, not one human patient to
date has been treated successfully using them, and their success in
animal models has been very limited.
In marked contrast, adult stem cells have been used successfully
to treat humans. A patient in California has enjoyed an 83 percent
reversal of his Parkinson’s disease symptoms after treatment
with his own adult stem cells. Two young women from Texas, told by
U.S. doctors that their spinal cord injuries would leave them
permanently confined to wheelchairs, are walking with braces after
receiving an adult stem cell treatment in Portugal. Researchers
used stem cells derived from cord blood to completely reverse
sickle-cell anemia in a 16-year-old black person. Harvard
researchers have reversed Type I juvenile diabetes in animals using
adult spleen cells and, having received FDA approval, are now
preparing for human trials.
No comparable results have been reported using embryonic stem
cells. In one recent animal trial, cells derived from embryonic
stem cells provided no benefit but only formed tumors instead. So
as adult stem cells are on the brink of treating diabetes in
humans, embryonic stem cells are not even close to treating it in
rats.
Which brings us to Proposition 71. While being promoted by its
supporters as essential for curing all types of diseases,
Proposition 71 when you go beyond the rhetoric looks more like a
perfect example of gross corporate welfare.
Proposition 71 would give funding priority to those avenues of
research that are ineligible or unlikely to receive federal
funding. That means priority will go to research using embryonic
stem cells (as the federal government provides funds only to a
limited number of embryonic stem cell lines). In terms of
therapeutic benefits, this avenue of research is unproven and
highly speculative and presents considerable obstacles. (For
instance, research on the scale envisioned by the Proposition 71
would require hundreds of thousands of human eggs, making them a
much sought-after research commodity. This in turn opens up vast
possibilities for exploiting women to obtain the eggs.)
Because the therapeutic benefits of embryonic stem cell research
remain distant and are strewn with obstacles, the private sector
has by and large chosen to ignore it. As an article in the Seattle
Times recently noted, researchers “don’t know how to do
it cheaply, conveniently or consistently enough to make it a viable
business.”
Enter Proposition 71, which bears all the hallmarks of a
special-interest money grab. Because research using embryonic stem
cells and human cloning cannot attract investors on its own merits,
the people of California will be made to foot the bill. If
Proposition 71 passes, those engaged in these types of research
““ including private sector big biotech companies ““ will
be guaranteed at almost $300 million a year even if
California’s already bad financial state worsens and, even
more troubling, even if the research fails to produce any viable
cures.
Meanwhile, equally or more promising avenues of research, such
as adult stem cells (which is actually providing therapeutic
benefits to real patients), would go to the back of the funding
line.
Toward the end of his administration, President Clinton’s
National Bioethics Advisory Commission stated that embryo stem cell
research could only be justified if there were no other “less
morally problematic alternatives.”
The evidence ““ not just assertions and speculation ““
clearly shows that adult stem cell research provides that
less-morally problematic alternative.
Mahatma Gandhi once noted that among the things that can destroy
us is “science without humanity.” The advances being
made using adult stem cells proves that human life ““ even
embryonic human life ““ does not have to be commodified and
destroyed in order for science to advance.
Tarne is the communications director of Do No Harm: the
Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.