"Use a Stem Cell, Save the Embryo?" AOL today hilites a CNN video by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in which he describes a technique in which a single cell is taken from an embryo of perhaps 100 cells and then "coaxed" into yielding a stem-cell line. (In order to see that video on AOL, you must sit thru a commercial. I am livid at this ever-growing abuse, and in general will close a video window rather than submit to being forced to watch corporate propaganda. Alas, I really wanted to see this story and didn't want to have to track down the story in another form. I afterward went to CNN.com to see if I could give you a URL for a print version of the story, but did not find any alternative to that video and its compulsory commercial.)
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In the video, Dr. Gupta reveals what pretty much nobody knows: that an embryo of 100 cells killed to create stem cellS might produce only one stem-cell line. One. What he did not say is that that one line might not produce any usable results of any kind, in any area of science whatsoever. All we can know for sure is that a child has been killed. That's the one certitude: death. Not life, not a cure for anything nor even a reasonable expectation of a cure. Only death.
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The new technique would take only one of the cells of a 100-cell embryo and try to produce a stem-cell line from that one cell, leaving the remainder of the embryo to grow normally. Gupta does point out that there is a second-step moral dilemma here: could that one cell grow into a human being if it were not prevented from doing so? I suspect it could, so we aren't really solving the moral dilemma, only creating a second-stage moral dilemma: instead of killing the first embryo, we would be killing a second. And again, no useful scientific advance might proceed from that death. Death would. But we don't know that a cure for anything would.
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Medical researchers urge us to be patient about advances from stem-cell research. We are told they might take years to emerge. What they don't say is that great advances may never occur. The whole premise may be wrong.
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Nor do they tally the price in death. How many dead children is an acceptable number for restoring some mobility to a quadriplegic — who is a stranger to the children killed? My answer: zero. No child deserves to die so some stranger for whose condition s/he bears no responsibility might be cured of anything, or aided in healing in any measure, slight or complete.
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Embryonic stem-cell research is scientific vampirism: some must die so others might live. A vampire kills human beings to preserve its own life. What is embryonic stem-cell research but the same phenomenon? Some must die so that others might live? — or live somewhat better lives? That is, if anything comes of the slaughter of innocents. If the whole idea turns out to be mistaken, and we can't cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, or heal spinal-cord injuries with stem cells, then what? We will merely have slaughtered literally uncounted numbers of children for nothing.
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That someone might have a health problem is unfortunate. But that is his or her own problem. It's not some child's problem that some stranger has a bad kidney or liver or spinal cord, or a problem in the brain. You don't grab someone off the street and cut out his heart to give to someone else. One person's medical problem is not another person's reason to die. If Bob Jones has a bad heart, that's Bob's problem. You don't kill Stanley Warren and transplant his good heart into Bob Jones just so Bob can live. Neither Stan nor a nameless infant has any obligation to die so Bob can live. It's really that simple.
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Perhaps we won't reach the point where we decide that Bob's life is so important and Stan's so worthless that we can "justify" ripping out Stan's heart and giving it to Bob. Then again, we might. Cheapening life is self-generalizing, outward. If embryos are dispensable, how about fetuses? If fetuses are dispensable, how about infants? If infants are dispensable, how about adults? If the march of medical progress is supremely important, it doesn't matter how many innocents die along the way. Josef Mengele used concentration-camp prisoners in medical experiments, and was looked down upon for it — but largely because his experiments had 'dubious scientific value'. By contrast, the "scientists" of Japan's infamous Unit 731 used local civilians, POWs, and others in medical experiments that produced results so valued by the United States that the U.S. Government protected those "scientists" from prosecution for crimes against humanity. Where do we draw the line on medical research?
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Perhaps we need to establish a Josef Mengele or Unit 731 or Frankenstein Prize in Medicine to wake people to the fact that there are a lot of "scientists" who are perfectly willing to cross all bounds of propriety in fanatical pursuit of "progress".
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,615 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:39 AM