http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16510-2004Oct7.html
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Playing Politics With the Sick

By Leon R. Kass
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A35

 

Stem cell research is again a hot political issue. Scientists, biotech
companies and patients' groups continue their public relations campaign to
force President Bush to change his funding policy. On Monday Sen. John Kerry
accused the president of ""sacrificing science for ideology and playing
politics with people who need cures,"" adding that treatments ""could be right
at our fingertips"" were it not for ""the stem cell ban.""

Sadly, this rhetoric utterly distorts the president's policy, ignores the
weighty moral issues involved and seeks electoral advantage by cruelly
exploiting the hopes of patients and their families. We need to set the
record straight.

Wise public policy concerning embryonic stem cell research must attend to
three important -- sometimes competing -- responsibilities: to seek
scientific knowledge and cures for terrible diseases, to protect human life
in all its vulnerable stages, and to respect the diverse yet deeply held
moral views of the American people. The president's policy on funding this
research offers a prudent means of doing all three. It provides an effective
way to vigorously promote embryonic stem cell research and seek cures for
disease without violating respect for nascent human life, and without
conferring the nation's official blessing, through the awarding of federal
taxpayer dollars, on practices many Americans find morally reprehensible.
The Bush policy takes very seriously the potential of stem cell research to
provide cures for chronic diseases and disabilities. Far from banning it,
the president has made federal funding available for embryonic stem cell
research for the first time. The National Institutes of Health budget for
embryonic stem cell research has risen from zero in 2001 to $24.8 million in
2003; the policy sets no funding cap on future budgetary increases. The NIH
has built an in-house laboratory to characterize and test stem cell lines;
created a Stem Cell Task Force to determine priorities and allocate
resources accordingly; made numerous grants to individual researchers and
institutions; plans to fund three new multidisciplinary ""centers of
excellence"" around the country to focus on stem cell research directed at
specific diseases; and is developing a centralized stem cell bank of the
eligible lines to make them more easily and cheaply accessible to
scientists.

Thanks to the NIH's scientific and legal efforts, 22 lines of eligible stem
cells are available, up from just one line in the summer of 2002, with more
coming -- enough lines for years of essential basic research that must
precede any future therapy. Nearly 500 shipments of cells have already been
made to researchers; 3,500 more sit ready for delivery upon request. There
is no shortage of embryonic stem cells.

In addition, the current policy offers abundant federal support for
promising, morally unproblematic research using non-embryonic (adult) stem
cells. Also, private investment has mushroomed, with stem cell research
centers newly created at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Stanford, among
other universities. Far from banning stem cell research, the Bush policy
offers public funds to advance such research in a vigorous and responsible
way, and leaves it free to advance further with private funds.

Unlike its critics who see only ""ideology,"" the Bush policy recognizes the
moral difficulty surrounding the research and upholds important moral
values. Derivation of embryonic stem cells requires the deliberate
destruction of 5- to 6-day-old human embryos. The moral issue does not
disappear just because the embryos are very small or because they are no
longer wanted for reproductive purposes: Because they are living human
embryos, destroying them is not a morally neutral act. Just as no society
can afford to be callous to the needs of suffering humanity, none can afford
to be cavalier about how it treats nascent human life.

Since 1995 Congress has annually reaffirmed (with bipartisan support) its
respect for early human life in the Dickey amendment, which forbids federal
funding of research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed. The
president's policy upholds not only the letter but also the moral spirit of
that law. By restricting federal funding to research using only those
embryonic stem cell lines that were already in existence (the
embryo-destroying deed having already been done), the policy refuses to be
complicit in or to reward future destructive and coarsening practices. It
promotes health without violating life or the law of the land.

The Bush policy also offers a prudent means of addressing a divisive public
question. By refusing to reward future embryo destruction, it respects those
who regard this practice as immoral. Yet by refraining from banning
embryo-destroying research in the private sector, it also respects those for
whom the moral balance favors sacrificing embryos for the sake of medical
progress. The policy offers hope to those who might be aided by stem cell
medicine in the future without recklessly trampling over the most cherished
moral ideals of their fellow citizens.

It is not the president but his critics who are playing politics with the
people who need cures. It is cruel to suggest that stem-cell-based therapies
are ""at our fingertips"" when our best scientists have made it clear that it
will be at least several decades before anyone's disease or disability might
be cured by this means. It is cruel to suggest that a reversal of the
current Bush policy -- dishonestly labeled a ""ban"" -- is all that scientists
need to enable the wheelchair-bound to walk again, and soon.

Stem cell research -- embryonic and adult -- is a field of great potential,
though it is much too early to know where it will lead. Now is the time for
the researchers to take advantage of the great existing opportunities open
for exploration. Now is the time for the demagoguery to stop.

 

The writer is chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

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