As medical technology races forward toward new breakthroughs, the thorny questions of ethics and morality struggle to keep up. In no realm is this more evident today than in stem-cell research, the technology that holds enormous promise in the treatment of disease and injury but, say its critics, comes at too high a moral price.
Coming to UC Santa Cruz on Monday is Laurie Zoloth, one of the nation's leading biomedical ethicists, to discuss the ethical considerations surrounding stem-cell research, in an address titled "May We Make the World? Bioethics, Stem Cells and the New Biology."
Many scientists believe that stem cells, unspecialized cells known for their chameleon-like adaptability, have a nearly limitless capacity to replace and renew cells of all kinds. As a result, they have not only the potential to create new organs and muscles, but to halt the growth of, even cure, degenerative diseases. The problem is that stem cells must be harvested from fertilized embryos, which are destroyed in the process. There are "adult stem cells," but scientists believe such cells are more limited in their plasticity than embryonic stem cells.
To Christians who believe that life begins at the moment of conception, particularly Catholics and conservative Protestants, destroying embryos to harvest cells for whatever purpose is unacceptable, said Zoloth, the director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
"For many Christians, that's the most important issue. But for many people in the rest of the world — Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, liberal Protestants — the bigger question is how we deal with human suffering," she said.
For opponents of the research, the debate centers around the contentious question of when human life begins, which is a source of disagreement even among the world's leading religious traditions. But, said Ellen Suckiel, professor of philosophy at UCSC and the provost at Stevenson College, there is a debate beyond that debate.
"Even if one grants that human life begins at conception, then what is still debatable is what's more important: an embryo or the lives that this technology could save or enhance," she said.
Suckiel, who will introduce Zoloth's lecture, is planning on teaching a class in winter quarter 2007 called the Ethics of the Stem Cell Research. She said that such research is not an either/or question, but necessarily requires a weighing of moral values.
| Beyond the religious debate, she said, "there is a more spiritual perspective that says simply, we shouldn't tamper with nature, that there are natural laws that should not be transgressed. On the other hand, we transgress nature all the time. What are eyeglasses but a way to circumvent nature? If we never transgressed nature, we'd never take high-blood-pressure medication or any other medicine." |
"Everyone who is a witness to this research is extraordinarily optimistic that the more we know, the more we'll understand how the world is put together and what causes disease," Zoloth said. "That alone would be a good outcome. But in addition to that, there's the hope that understanding the causes of disease will help us understand how to treat them and how to cure them."
Critics of embryonic stem-cell research, however, say that the potential of adult stem cells, the harvesting of which causes no loss of life, is being underestimated in the rush to harvest embryonic cells.
Stem-cell research has, of course, entered the political mainstream in the U.S. as well, thanks in part to the Bush administration's 2001 decision to allow research on already existing lines of stem cells, but to deny federal funding for future research. Zoloth, at the time, felt that President Bush struck a harmonious compromise. "I thought it was a sensible compromise. He certainly listened to people and approached it in a reasonable way. The problem is that the science changed."
Since then, the state of California has passed a voter initiative to establish state funding of stem-cell research this week, UCSC was among the institutions that received funding from the initiative and the death of former President Ronald Reagan in 2004 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease revived interest in re-examining the Bush adminstration's stem-cell policy in Congress.
At the heart of the debate for many supporters of the research, said Zoloth, who serves on the executive committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, is the very practical consideration of where embryonic stem cells will come from. She estimates there are about 400,000 viable embryos being stored in fertilization clinics in the U.S. Such embryos are a byproduct of in-vitro fertilizations, and the vast majority of them are never used and are, in fact, thrown away. "These are embryos that will not be implanted, will not be used and have no future ahead of them, except to be treated as waste products to be disposed of," she said.
Theoretically, of course, embryos could be created with the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells, which opens an entirely new and troubling ethical debate. Suckiel says that that debate will lead to increasingly tough philosophical questions about social justice — will only the well-to-do benefit from newly created organs? — and human perfectibility — will stem-cell therapy turn into tomorrow's cosmetic surgery?
"These issues," said Suckiel, "are going to lead to some really big questions that we're going to have to deal with, questions that deal with the meaning of life and the significance of mortality. What worries me is the flaws of hubris which humans are heir to. But to say we shouldn't move ahead with this kind of research because of how we might abuse it, that's not showing a lot of faith of who we are as humans."
Contact Wallace Baine at wbaine@santacruzsentinel.com.
If You Go
WHAT: 'May We Make the World? Bioethics, Stem Cells and the New Biology,' a lecture by Laurie Zoloth.
WHEN: 4 to 6 p.m. Monday.
WHERE: Stevenson Event Center, Stevenson College, on the campus of UC Santa Cruz.
tickets: Free.
DETAILS: 459-3077.
