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A 'Breakthrough' in the Stem Cell Debate
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Just because two sides disagree over the issue of stem-cell research doesn’t mean both arguments should be given equal weight.
You call this a quandary?
“Potentially closing the book on this decade’s definitive medical ethical quandary,” the Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet reports (crediting the Guardian), “British and Canadian scientists have discovered a way to produce stem cells without destroying an embryo.”
This is good news, to be sure. But let’s be clear: There is NO “medical ethical quandary” involved in the decade-long dispute over stem cells. There is only the appearance of an ethical quandary, created by people who either don’t understand or willfully misrepresent the facts. “Quandary” is a particularly insidious word. Compare it to “controversy.” There is undeniably a controversy about stem cells: two sides, disagreeing strongly. But “quandary” suggests that the controversy is legitimate—that a fair-minded person would have to recognize some degree of merit in both sides of the argument, wherever he or she might ultimately come down. In a “quandary,” there actually are (dread phrase) “no easy answers.”
The anti-abortion forces who have delayed stem-cell research by a decade are not morally serious. If they were, they would be trying to get laws making the work of fertility clinics illegal.
The stem-cell controversy is really about abortion, of course. And abortion is both a controversy and, for most people, a genuine quandary. That quandary usually is defined as, “When does human life begin?” I think a better way to put it is, “When do human rights begin?” That avoids the whole hopeless search for agreement about some mystical moment when humanity is conferred, all of which (conception, birth, “quickening,” sundry trimesters) are equally illogical, and concentrates on a question that can be debated or negotiated with some hope of progress. But many will disagree even with that preliminary assertion, claiming that it’s a setup for the pro-choice answer I prefer. It’s a quandary.
The debate over stem-cell research is different. There is a controversy, but no real quandary. Here is why. Virtually all stem cells used (or that will be used) in medical research come from fertility clinics. Standard operating procedure in fertility clinics is to fertilize and implant multiple eggs in the hope that at least one will survive. For that matter, Mother Nature’s method of producing a human being is not very different in this regard, and also involves fertilizing far more eggs than ever grow into babies.
If you wish to believe that every fertilized egg is a human being with full human rights, that is your privilege. I disagree, which makes it a controversy. If I felt you were serious, we would have a quandary as well. But there’s no quandary because you’re not serious. Your actions are too different from your words. You are doing absolutely nothing about the millions of fertilized eggs that are destroyed naturally every year (in miscarriages so early that the potential mother is not even aware of them), or the thousands that are produced and unused by fertility clinics going about their normal work (which are either discarded or pointlessly frozen in the hope of some miraculous ethical breakthrough).
The anti-abortion forces who have delayed stem-cell research by a decade are not morally serious. If they were, they would be trying to get laws making the work of fertility clinics illegal, not concentrating on the tiny fraction of surplus embryos from those clinics that are going to a worthwhile purpose. They would still be severely mistaken, in my view, but at least that could legitimately be described as an “ethical quandary.” But there is no political pressure against fertility clinics. While abortion clinics are routinely terrorized, fertility clinics advertise on the radio. If you really think that a microscopic embryo is a human being, which kind of clinic kills more human beings every year? It isn’t even close.
What difference does this all make, now that George W. Bush is gone and his ban on federally funded stem-cell research has been eliminated? It makes a big difference. When something is stamped as an “ethical quandary,” people and organizations that wish to avoid controversy stay away. Or they appoint well-meaning but slow-moving commissions to study the issue. Or they split the difference in some silly and irritating way. Whatever, the result is that the promise of stem-cell research is delayed or unrealized.
The essence of today’s report is that scientists have found some incredibly complicated way to create—someday, maybe even soon—a valuable research tool that already exists by the thousands and has for years. Some people think we should have been using it for years, while others say they think using it would be immoral, but can’t give a coherent reason. What a quandary.
Michael Kinsley’s column appears Fridays in the Washington Post. He has Parkinson’s disease, the condition for which stem cells are believed to hold the greatest promise.
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TheWiseBard
Thanks to Michael for "saying it like it is" on this contorted set of questions.
As a professor of bioethics, I've had considerable difficulty figuring out how to address this issue in my classes. Unlike some colleagues in my field, I take religious arguments seriously, and believe that religious traditions provide important perspectives on enduring values often taken insufficiently seriously in our materialistic and consumer-oriented society. At its best, religion also recognizes the importance of community and relationships across time in our highly individualistic society.
All that said, the religious arguments opposing (and there are some religious traditions strongly favoring) research on stem cell medicine seem to me especially weak, indirect, and difficult to translate into any kind of persuasive secular language. Like Kinsley, I find many of these claims, advanced in the name of ethics, difficult to take at face value. I have great difficulty finding a way to present these claims in a respectful way in the classroom as part of a serious ethical debate, and am astonished that so many in the media and public life treat this as if it presented one of the important ethical questions of our times. It does not. Religious, yes. Political, yes. But not ethical--at least not in any terms I can understand and respect. It is simply a surrogate--and a poor one at that--for continuing to fight the abortion wars. I can respect competing views on abortion, but not on stem cell research. It's sadly all too rare to find a coherent public statement of that reality, and I appreciate this one from Mr. Kinsley--and I wish him well.
philipjames
"When does human life begin?" I think a better way to put it is, "When do human rights begin?" That avoids the whole hopeless search for agreement about some mystical moment when humanity is conferred...
LOL, dancing on a pinhead isn't effortless and Kinsley must have sore legs...
why muddy the waters with the question of when life begins because if it does then ending it means killing it... can't have that so lets figure out when human rights begin... LOL ... I guess you could be alive but not have human rights conferred on you, but what department of the government do you go for that?? The Kinsley Multi-Level Life Conference Department???
Kinsley is just jealous because he will never have to consider an abortion, a right of passage for liberals
Vetinari
thank you, man. your article is well-reasoned and intelligent. the real moral problem is that actual people have died because stem cell research has been delayed.
qnofrogs
Lovely article, succinct argument. I am a university educator teaching biology. I'm still toiling in the trenches trying to explain evolutionary theory, which ought to be even less controversial than stem cell research. We are living in a time when being an anti-intellectual is being a 'real' American, and when 'truthiness' trumps evidence, data, and critical thinking.
EmmaElisabeth
I hate to be the one to call out other commenters, but phillipjames, your hardly coherent statement seems to have been made without reading through the article and actually thinking about it. Mr. Kinsley was saying that if you are opposed to abortion, fine, but do not try to use your right to that belief to slow down the scientific progress that could be made with the help of stem cell research.
misha1000
Life begins at birth, and ends at death.
The end.
MTFinch
I think this is a fair article on this issue. The stem cell research issue was hijacked as a political issue, and that is where the "quandry" really came from. When this became an issue, there was a fight going on in Congress about abortion, and this was brought into the debate as a stepping stone. I don't think the Bush administration would have felt compelled to prohibit the use of embryos for this purpose otherwise. And stem cell research continued, because all of the stem cells that were already harvested or could be harvested in other ways were still legal to use.
I personally believe that life begins at conception. Maybe that is because when I first had children it was through in-vitro and I saw my children through a microscope at 4 cells prior to implantation. They were a life to me. He makes a good point about the fertility clinics and the intellectual dishonesty of ignoring them in the debate.
pricklypear
Where have you been for the last 36 years, Michael?
First of all you dehumanize these human embryos by calling them fertilized eggs. A fertilized egg is a unique human life at its earliest existence. That is a unique being with its own unique DNA which if not destroyed, will grow to be a unique, living breathing human being.
You degrade humans by dehumanizing human life, a tiny one- cell created human.It is wrong to kill human life.
It is great that we have made discoveries about the human reproductive system so doctors can help people conceive a baby successfully.The line is drawn on conceiving a baby in the test tube and fiddling around with it as if it were a amoeba cell in a slide smear.
If abortion isn't wrong then, nothing is. It is evil. As Elie Wiesel oserved, "When you enter evil it is not static. You go deeper in."
ebenspinoza
Life begins on passing pre-college calculus, and ends at death.
The end.
pricklypear
Also, Michael. For too long, we have been going down the wrong road with fertility clinics. We are, as Elie Wiesel would so accurately characterize it, "going deeper in" to evil.
It is never too late to back out of this gravely immoral practice. And don't tell me I want to "to turn back the clock". None of us knows the future may bring. But we have the past to give us some clues of what happens when humans are degraded and dehumanized. Human lives become useful and disposable.
The human life you value and spare today may value and spare yours and your loved ones tomorrow.
misha1000
"You degrade humans by dehumanizing human life, a tiny one- cell created human. It is wrong to kill human life."
Are you actively opposed to Iraq? Are you a pacifist? Are you against the death penalty? What is your stand about James Kopp?
pricklypear
Michael Kinsley,
I beg you and your readers to read this article. It will explain the Catholic position concerning embryonic personhood. Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and at the King's College (Empire State Building), in New York City
Human Personhood Begins At Conception - by Peter Kreeft
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/BEGINSCN.TXT
BaileyM
Beautifully argued, as always, Mr. Kinsley. Here's hoping this discovery helps end the unconscionable delays. (So happy to see you're back in the Post every week, too.)
pricklypear
The fact that some people controvert a position does not in itself make that position intrinsically controversial. People argued for both sides about slavery, racism and genocide too, but that did not make them complex and difficult issues. - Peter Kreeft
island945
pricklypear...."will grow to be a unique, living, breathing, human being." Exactly, WILL BE, but not yet.
Thank you.
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