Stem Cell Research: At the Crossroads of Religion and Politics

by Christine Vestal, Staff Writer, Stateline.org
July 18, 2008

Embryonic stem cell research, which uses special cells to seek cures for a host of chronic diseases, has sparked a major moral and political debate in the United States. In the 10 years since University of Wisconsin scientists announced they had harvested potentially life-saving cells from surplus embryos donated by fertility clinics, the ethical dilemma presented by the studies has absorbed activists on both sides of the issue and has risen to the top of state and federal political agendas.

For patients and their families, embryonic stem cell research offers the hope of cures for chronic and debilitating conditions, such as juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and blindness. For scientists, it represents a revolutionary path to discovering the causes and cures for many more human maladies. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, that is, they have the unique ability to develop into any of the 220 cell types in the human body. In addition to their versatility, embryonic stem cells are easier to grow in the laboratory than adult stem cells. (See The Science Behind Stem Cell Research.1 )

But many opponents, including some religious leaders, believe that stem cell research raises the same moral issues as abortion. Furthermore, opponents maintain that scientists have other promising ways of reaching the same goals, including non-controversial adult stem cell research. (See The Case Against Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An Interview with Yuval Levin.2 ) But proponents (see The Case For Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An Interview with Jonathan Moreno.3) of the research point out that there is no substitute at this time for research using embryos. In addition, they say, the research has resulted in the destruction of only a few hundred embryos, making it fundamentally different from abortion, which results in the destruction of millions of human embryos every year.

Different religious groups hold a wide variety of opinions on embryonic stem cell research. (See Religious Groups' Official Positions on Stem Cell Research.4 ) For the Catholic Church and many other Christian groups, life begins at conception, making the research tantamount to homicide because it results in the destruction of human embryos. "Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and are subjects with rights; their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence," the late Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life. Other religious groups do not take a position on the issue, and some, including many Jewish and more-liberal Christian groups, support embryonic stem cell research

National polls indicate that a slim majority of Americans support the research. According to a 2007 national poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 51 percent say it is more important to conduct stem cell research that could result in new medical cures than to avoid destroying the potential life of human embryos. The same poll found that 35 percent say it is more important not to destroy embryos.5

As the pace of the cutting-edge research quickens and the prospect for cures moves closer to reality, advocates on both sides of the debate see the possibility that, within a few years, scientists will find a way to harvest stem cells without destroying embryos. In late 2007, researchers in Wisconsin and Tokyo announced they had transformed ordinary human skin cells into those that appeared to have the same properties as embryonic stem cells. Religious leaders hailed the discovery as proof that the destruction of embryos is unnecessary. President George W. Bush, in his 2008 State of the Union address, said the groundbreaking new research "has the potential to move us beyond the divisive debates of the past."

But far from resolving the moral quandary, the highly publicized breakthrough has only intensified the discussion. Scientists around the world quickly cautioned that, although promising, the new research did not guarantee that adult stem cells could successfully be transformed into pluripotent cells. Many, including James Thomson, the researcher who led the team at the University of Wisconsin, publicly argued that embryonic stem cell research should continue.

In Europe, only the United Kingdom, Sweden and Belgium allow all forms of embryonic stem cell studies. On the other end of the spectrum, Austria, Ireland, Poland and Lithuania have outlawed all forms of stem cell research. Germany and Italy have criminalized the extraction of stem cells from human embryos, but scientists are permitted to conduct research on stem cells created elsewhere. Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands restrict scientists to producing stem cell lines from surplus embryos that fertility clinics plan to destroy. (See Stem Cell Research Around the World.6 )

Political Debate in the U.S.

In the United States, the primary question is whether the federal government should fund embryonic stem cell research. Unlike Japan and most European countries, no federal laws actually limit the research, although six states - Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota and South Dakota - prohibit the creation or destruction of human embryos for medical research.

At the national level, most Democratic politicians favor federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, including Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. In 2005, Obama voted for legislation that would have allowed federal funding for stem cell research using embryos slated to be discarded from fertility clinics. Bush vetoed the bill.

The issue has split Republican lawmakers. Some oppose any research that involves the destruction of human embryos. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, for example, are vocal opponents of the research. Others, including Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona, favor certain aspects of the research. For example, McCain supports federal funding not only for adult stem cell research but also for research using embryos slated for destruction by fertility clinics. Still other high-profile Republicans are vocal supporters. Former first lady Nancy Reagan, who watched her husband, President Ronald Reagan, succumb to the devastating effects of Alzheimer's disease, has joined other patient advocates in seeking federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Even staunch abortion opponent Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has proposed legislation to support this research.

Still, powerful forces on both sides of the issue have created a deadlock in Washington, D.C., over the funding issue. In 2006 and 2007, for instance, Bush vetoed bipartisan bills that would have unlocked federal funding for the research. Meanwhile, attempts in the U.S. Congress to ban any research involving human embryos have repeatedly failed.

With a stalemate in Washington, much of the debate has shifted to state capitals. At least seven states saw the shortage of federal funding as an opportunity: By investing in the nascent science, they hoped to attract top scientists and incubate what experts predict will be a new multi-billion-dollar biotechnology industry.

In early 2004, New Jersey became the first state to invest in stem cell research. California followed in November of the same year, when voters approved a $3 billion bond measure to fund the research. Over the next two years, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin joined the list of states making a commitment to fund stem cell research. Three states - Iowa, Massachusetts and Missouri - made the research legal but did not offer state funding; Massachusetts lawmakers are currently considering an investment in the science.

While these states have taken action to move forward on stem cell research, the issue is unsettled in much of the country. Because the U.S. government allows the research as long as no federal money is spent, state universities and private, nonprofit and corporate laboratories are free to pursue it, except in states that prohibit it.

History of the Debate

Embryonic stem cell research first drew widespread media attention in 2001 when Bush, under pressure from both opponents and supporters, attempted to forge a compromise. That compromise entailed allowing the nation's medical research underwriters, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to begin funding these studies using stem cells harvested from surplus embryos before Aug. 9, 2001, the date of his decision.

Religious opponents, who had argued for a federal ban, were disappointed, while scientists complained that most existing stem cell lines (cultured embryonic stem cells grown in a Petri dish) were either contaminated or dying.

Although most Americans became aware of the issue once Bush made his controversial funding decision, the ethical debate over research involving human embryos began much earlier. In the mid-1970s, for example, federal policymakers prohibited funding for so-called test tube babies, laying the groundwork for future discussions of whether the U.S. government should fund research that many people consider immoral.

Around the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. That historic decision mobilized abortion opponents, many of whom would later oppose stem cell research because of what they consider to be the destruction of human life.

Some two decades later, President Bill Clinton approved, for the first time, funding of stem cell research involving surplus embryos from fertility clinics. At the same time, he placed a moratorium on support for research involving human cloning, a restriction Bush extended in 2000.

In 1995, Congress overrode Clinton's decision to fund some types of stem cell research, enacting an appropriations rider, still on the books today, that prevents NIH from funding any research that harms or destroys human embryos. Bush sidestepped this law in 2001 when he allowed funding for stem cell lines that already had been created, also assuring many of his supporters that no new embryos would be destroyed.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research object to two basic techniques: harvesting stem cells from human embryos, and creating cloned human embryos from a human egg and an adult donor cell - a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In both cases, the embryo is ultimately destroyed.

Although many abortion opponents oppose both techniques, some supporters say harvesting potentially life-saving cells from embryos that otherwise would be destroyed is justified. But some supporters of the research also argue against the creation of embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting cells and then destroying them.

Bioethics experts say the stem cell debate marks the first time in U.S. history that medical science has played such a prominent role in electoral politics. Indeed, the issue had a significant impact on the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Missouri, where voters debated and ultimately approved a proposed state constitutional amendment ensuring the legality of embryonic stem cell research. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, who supports the research, ousted Republican incumbent and stem cell research opponent Jim Talent in part because of their differences over this issue. McCaskill backed the first-in-the-nation amendment; Talent opposed it.

If the next president decides to drop Bush's restrictions on stem cell funding, Congress could press again for federal money. But with an economic downturn and a growing budget deficit, competition for NIH funding is expected to be stiff. Even without federal money, however, state and private investment in stem cell studies is expected to continue.

http://pewforum.org/bioethics/

The Case For Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An Interview with Jonathan Moreno

Scientists largely agree that stem cells may hold a key to the treatment, and even cure, of many serious medical conditions. But while the use of adult stem cells is widely accepted, many religious groups and others oppose stem cell research involving the use and destruction of human embryos. At the same time, many scientists say that embryonic stem cell research is necessary to unlock the promise of stem cell therapies since embryonic stem cells can develop into any cell type in the human body.

In late 2007, researchers in the United States and Japan succeeded in reprogramming adult skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells. The new development offers the possibility that the controversy over the use of embryos could end. But many scientists and supporters of embryonic stem cell research caution that this advance has not eliminated the need for embryos, at least for the time being.

Recently, the Pew Forum sat down with University of Pennsylvania professor Jonathan Moreno to discuss the ethical and moral grounds for supporting embryonic stem cell research. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and of History and Sociology of Science at Penn as well as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and served as a senior staff member for two presidential advisory committees.

Featuring:
Jonathan Moreno, David and Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Interviewer:
David Masci, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life


Question & Answer

Recently, scientists in the United States and Japan succeeded in turning adult skin cells into cells that appeared to behave like embryonic stem cells in that they could be programmed to act like any cell in the body. When this breakthrough was announced, some pundits and commentators said that it essentially ends the debate over whether to destroy embryos for stem cell research. Is this true?

From the very beginning of this controversy, there has been a tendency for non-scientists to talk as though they were scientists. If you talk to any of the stem cell biologists, they’ll tell you that the need for human embryonic stem cells continues and will continue for the foreseeable future for a number of reasons. For one thing, in order to know what those alternatives can do, they’ll need to be compared with something, and the gold standard continues to be human embryonic stem cells. For another, there may be some biological limits to the utility of alternative sources, such as these skin cells. And, of course, the techniques now being used involve a genetic factor that is carcinogenic. At this point it is still too early to tell exactly what this news means.

There is some work about to be published suggesting that adult stem cells are less capable of being reprogrammed to become like embryonic stem cells if they come from older people, which would obviously greatly compromise their utility for therapeutic purposes for that donor. I think all the evidence suggests that, for the foreseeable future, human embryonic stem cell lines will be needed to continue this research.

Do you believe a human embryo has intrinsic worth? And if it does, what sort of rights should we accord it?

First, it is important to note that not all Abrahamic religions universally agree with the notion that a human embryo has any moral status at all. Orthodox Jews, imams in the Islamic tradition and many Protestant denominations do not equate the embryo with the moral status of a born human person. The Roman Catholic Church did not traditionally attribute personhood to the embryo, and this view only started to change in the middle of the 19th century. Even now there are many people who are pro-life who support human embryonic stem cell research.

So I think there is not, in fact, a neat division between people who are pro-life and pro-choice on this question, nor is there a neat division between people who ascribe a great deal of moral status and relatively little moral status to a human embryo. There is a lot of variation here, which is one of the reasons the debate has been so complicated. It is not a bumper-sticker debate.

I don’t consider myself a great moral theologian. I am trained in philosophy, and I’m an observer of those thinkers. In this country, at least, the consensus among people who think about these things, like theologians and philosophers, seems to be that the human embryo has a greater moral status than a sperm and egg alone, but the embryo does not necessarily have rights. That being said, I would say that the embryo that is intentionally created has to be respected. This means that, for purposes of medical research, before one can justify the destruction of an embryo, one must give a sound argument that existing human embryonic stem cell lines are not adequate for this research purpose and demonstrate the importance of the research purpose – for example, something related to a serious disease. I would say that we are at the stage of what the theologians and philosophers call “weighing and balancing.”

Of course, there is another view.

Yes, there are people who attribute the absolute same moral status to an embryo as they would to you or me. These people believe – and I think many of the bioconservatives fall in this category – that unless we ascribe a very high level of respect to the human embryo, biotechnology will take us down a very dark road, a kind of slippery slope or revival of eugenics. I don’t see that as the course that we are on. It seems to me that our empathy for people who suffer has become greater in the last 2,000 years rather than less, and that medical science is an expression of concern about suffering and an attempt, as the rabbis put it, to heal the world.

If a child dies from a disease that might have been preventable if we had been able to research that disease using embryos already slated for destruction or persistent refrigeration – such as embryos used at in vitro fertilization clinics – I don’t see how the death of that child contributes to human dignity.

You dismissed the slippery slope argument. But what if we get to the a point where genetic manipulation for therapeutic purposes reaches a level of sophistication where we can really begin to alter who we are as human beings?

I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t think we will have strenuous, vigorous debates about which kinds of genetic interventions to entertain in the next decades. I think we will. But I don’t think that the course of those debates is so settled that we can give up the potential for improving the opportunities for human flourishing. I certainly don’t dismiss those concerns, but I also think we should be very careful to ground these debates in facts.

When we look at these questions, we have to be careful not to mystify the power of science by thinking that these discoveries will take us in the direction of our wildest imagination. If we do that, we really damage the opportunities that science gives us to expand our consciousness.

There are people of faith on both sides of this debate. Do Judeo-Christian teachings inform your views on this issue? If so, how?

It would be hard to say that the Judeo-Christian tradition doesn’t inform, in some sense, everybody’s views about everything. But after five-plus thousand years of Judaism and a couple thousand years of Christianity, that tradition does not speak with a single voice. I’m very leery of those who purport to offer the univocal interpretation of that tradition. As I’ve already mentioned, there is variation within traditions about the nature and significance of the human embryo.

As for myself, there is one concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition that I find particularly important: the sense that we are all basically made of the same stuff and have an overwhelming obligation not to be cruel to each other. Cruelty can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, including – in my view – a failure to take advantage of the opportunities for the human good that medical science can provide.

What about the idea, taken from both Judaism and Christianity, that there is essential human dignity based on God’s care for each individual in his creation? Has this notion of God-centered concern for each individual made Western societies, in particular, more careful about ethical issues than countries with different traditions, such as China or Korea?

I think one has to be careful. You know, one country that is especially vigorous in the stem cell research field is Israel, which is, of course, the birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity. So I would be reluctant to generalize based on geography.


The Pew Forum and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press have done polling on the stem cell issue over the last six or seven years and have found that Americans generally favor embryonic stem cell research. Today, a slim majority supports it. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research often say this support indicates a public that is misinformed about the research and its potential benefits. In particular, they criticize celebrities, politicians and others who claim that stem cell research will soon cure many of the most dreaded diseases. Is that criticism fair?

There’s certainly plenty of hyperbole on both sides. There have been descriptions of disemboweling embryos as though they were fetuses, exploiting the fact that most Americans don’t have a Ph.D. in embryology or fetal anatomy. I think that opponents of stem cell research are losing the American people because Americans don’t like to see an area of potentially important medical research or science closed off.

Recently, I’ve been reading a history of science policy in the United States, and it is fascinating to be reminded that virtually every one of the founders considered him- or herself a scientist or a natural philosopher. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, gave a very vigorous speech at the beginning of his term of office advocating vast internal improvements including not only canals and roads but also scientific improvements. The main objection at the time was that such activities should be undertaken by individual states rather than the federal government – it was a states’ rights issue.

That’s interesting, because the states are helping to drive policy on stem cells in a way that they don’t in many other research endeavors.

That’s right. I think having the states take the lead is a good thing in the short term. In the long term, however, we will rue having states drive policy because it’s going to make other issues a lot more complicated, such as policies on intellectual property rights. Without greater federal involvement, there will be a huge coordination problem. Ironically, it was that coordination problem that led the federal government to build canals and roads because the big states insisted that they needed them, and the federal government was in the best position to coordinate these projects. The same is true today for stem cell research.

Regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election, do you anticipate the federal government becoming much more involved in embryonic stem cell research in the coming years as a result of the change in administration?

I think that there is a real impetus for change because the science is taking us there and the public feeling is taking us there. So, I think the federal government will get more involved no matter who wins. The devil is in the details, but, on the whole, I think the next administration will change policy. The important questions now are how much of a leadership role will the next administration take and how efficiently will the government be able to push this very promising field of scientific research forward?