Traction is a funny thing; you get it when you least expect it and it’s nowhere to be found when you really need it. Like the stem cell research controversy, for example. I wrote about President Bush II’s doublespeak on the issue more than two years ago. I sensed a groundswell of opposition to Bush’s position within the medical research community that I thought would percolate into the American consciousness. It didn’t happen.
But here it comes again. Maybe we’ll catch the bus this time around.
Michael Kinsley wrote a wonderful piece earlier this week for Slate—“Taking Bush Personally”—that precisely explains why those of us to the left of Grover Norquist don’t only disagree with Bush II’s policies but just don’t much like him. Kinsley deftly uses the stem cell research quagmire to illustrate why we have a hard time abiding his intellectual and ethical dishonesty.
Two years ago President Bush banned all embryonic stem cell research outside of the existing lines. Leftover embryos at the nation’s fertility clinics could not be used for research; they had to be destroyed. Bush based his decision on the assumptions that more than 60 embryonic stem cell lines were plenty for research purposes and that adult stem cell research was just as promising as embryonic stem cell research. As a nice flourish, he appointed Dr. Leon Kass, known for his opposition to embryonic stem cell research, as the chairman of his Council on Bioethics.
At the time of Bush’s address, he knew that his first assumption was probably false—some researchers were arguing that there were between six and fifteen embryonic stem cell lines, and at any rate, the more the better—and now there’s evidence that his second assumption is on shaky ground as well.
Two years ago I published a very short piece reporting that an English medical school had found that adult stem cells in bone marrow may be capable of developing into kidney cells useful for treating permanent kidney failures like mine. Kinsley reports that more recent research indicates this may not be the case after all:
“A new study, reported last week in Nature, concluded that when earlier studies thought they saw new specialized cells derived from adult stem cells, they were really seeing those adult cells bonding with pre-existing specialized cells.”
Since Bush’s doublespeak speech on the matter, researchers have used embryonic stem cells to reverse Parkinson’s disease in rats.
Kinsley, who has Parkinson’s, has a personal interest in issues related to stem cell research, and presumably would gratefully accept embryonic stem cells to treat his Parkinson’s if and when it’s possible. I’ve written that I would refuse such treatment for my kidney failure. While I demand freedom to refuse (and freedom to subsequently change my mind), I’m just as adamant that Kinsley have freedom to accept.
Understand that the embryos used in stem cell research are a microscopic bunch of about 100 undifferentiated cells five days old. They have no brain cells. Thousands of embryos routinely die in fertility clinics every year. Once a usable stem cell line is developed, the cells can be developed in a lab; no additional embryos are needed.
So, we find ourselves in a situation where the assumptions upon which the President has based a decision have turned out to be false. As Kinsley points out, “If you claim to have made an anguished moral decision, and the factual basis for that decision turns out to be faulty, you ought to reconsider, or your claim to moral anguish looks phony.”
But—and this is the key to Kinsley’s piece—it’s much worse than phony moral anguish as Kinsley clearly articulates:
“None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem-cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem-cell speech.”
“It’s not a complicated point. If stem-cell research is morally questionable, the procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity.”
There’s a parallel question here that’s not being addressed: While thousands of embryos are destroyed in fertility clinics each year, why is the religious right focusing exclusively on the few dozen whose stem cells were removed for research?
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