ANN PARSON
Stem cell research awaits shifting tideIF HE'S looking down from above, what would Ronald Reagan think of his son Ron Jr. expounding on the promise of stem cells for medicine at last week's Democratic Convention, a gesture that flies in the face of President George W. Bush's restrictions on federally funded stem cell research? It's a good bet that like many fathers, the former president would be proud of his son's spirit of conviction.
Reagan, as his son Michael wrote recently, was against creating human embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting their inner stem cells. Yet from his vantage point in the heavens -- free of politics and the strife of Alzheimer's disease -- maybe he would agree with culling stem cells from embryos that are in-vitro fertilization leftovers and join with others in questioning a glaring double standard. IVF embryos are started in a petri dish by fusing egg and sperm, and then, if not transferred into a woman, they are put into cold storage. Eventually, if still not needed, many are incinerated. In this country alone, hundreds of thousands of tiny embryos lie stockpiled in freezers, which raises this question: If it's allowable to create embryos that end up doomed waste, why can't surplus IVF embryos be used for research that might hasten new treatments, maybe even cures, for all sorts of illnesses? Since 1998, when stem cells were first collected from human embryos, the question at the center of the controversy hasn't changed. Is it morally and ethically OK to dismantle an early five-day-old or six-day-old embryo for its special inner cells? This fleeting window of opportunity is the only time when stem cells thrive in a heap inside the embryo. What makes the debate all the more unresolvable is that opinions coming from both sides can seem so valid. The Catholic Church and other groups who insist that, starting at conception, an embryo should be shown the respect granted a person, dismiss the claims that an embryo only achieves personhood when, on day 14, its neural anatomy begins forming; or when, on day 22, a heartbeat is detected. Life being a continuum from beginning to end, the day-five embryo is as valuable as the newborn, they say. The opposite camp claims that a five-day embryo is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. And isn't that true as well?
In a poignant instance of a government struggling to do the right thing, a few years ago Singapore's Cabinet-appointed |
