How many ways did Barack Obama go wrong in yesterday's policy change on stem cell research? Here are a few of the larger themes, and some able dissections of them:
ONE: Why didn't Obama say more about the promise of adult stem cells--and do something to promote that promise? He said that the administration will support "promising research of all kinds, including groundbreaking work to convert ordinary human cells into ones that resemble embryonic stem cells." And yet his executive order yesterday also revoked Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which provided federal backing for promising adult stem cell research. At First Things, Wesley J. Smith slams this dumb rejection of easily occupied common ground.
ADDENDUM: As a commenter rightly noted in the combox, Obama had to reverse Bush's EO 13435 because of language tacked on to it about embryos as human life etc. (A nice little time bomb left behind.) And Wesley Smith could have and should have noted that. But Obama could easily have included Bush's language, or his own, regarding funding and support for adult stem cell research promotion. Easy, and would have been important in concrete and symbolic terms.
TWO: The decision, despite a few cautionary notes by the president, perpetuates the Holy Grail of magical cures for terrible diseases--and invoked the appealing but groundless Christopher Reeve example. Obama said: "There is no finish line in the work of science. The race is always with us--the urgent work of giving substance to hope and answering those many bedside prayers, of seeking a day when words like 'terminal' and 'incurable' are finally retired from our vocabulary." Well, likely not. And not for anyone but the wealthiest in the richest nations. The poor will be with us always, and so will suffering, alas--for all of us. At The Weekly Standard, Ryan Anderson takes apart the "bad ethics, bad science, and bad politics" of Obama's decision.
THREE: Anderson also gets at the other problem with Obama's speech--saying the previous Bush policy was "a false choice between sound science and moral values." No, there are ethical concerns with any scientific endeavor. To say that is not the case is to embrace another type of ideology. Obama's language conflates stem cell research and its undeniable moral ramifications and, for example, climate change. Apples and oranges. At The Washington Post, Yuval Levin drives a truck through the gap in Obama's reasoning. Also read Anthony Stevens-Arroyo for a Catholic view of the same problem.
FOUR: Slate's William Saletan hits a home run--as usual--with a pointed essay, "Winning Smugly: You just won the stem-cell war. Don't lose your soul." Saletan writes, in part:
Think about what's being dismissed here as "politics" and "ideology." You don't have to equate embryos with full-grown human beings--I don't--to appreciate the danger of exploiting them. Embryos are the beginnings of people. They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject. How long can we grow this subject before dismembering it to get useful cells? How far should we strip-mine humanity in order to save it?
If you have trouble taking this question seriously--if you think it's just the hypersensitivity of fetus-lovers--try shifting the context from stem cells to torture. There, the question is: How much ruthless violence should we use to defeat ruthless violence? The paradox and the dilemma are easy to recognize. Creating and destroying embryos to save lives presents a similar, though not equal, dilemma. [snip]
And as technology advances, the dilemmas will become more difficult. Already, researchers are clamoring to extend Obama's policy so they can use federal money to create and destroy customized embryos, not just use the ones left over from fertility treatments. The danger of seeing the stem-cell war as a contest between science and ideology is that you bury these dilemmas. You forget the moral problem. You start lying to yourself and others about what you're doing.
Read the whole thing, if you read nothing else.
FIVE...The Future: Obama punted on some of the most contentious questions, and the WaPo has a good story on the critical NIH decisions over the next 120 days that it has to formulate an ethical framework (which Obama indicated wasn't need, sort of). Today's Washington Post editorial also sums up the tough decisions the president avoided, and asks for more from him: "Some of these ethical questions need to be dealt with in the political arena, and not just by scientists."
Amen.
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Slate's William Saletan's piece was written very well and made interesting points. I didn't, however, find the comparison between torture and stem cells to be an enlightening one. When one thinks about ethics, trying to compare two separate issues is usually not very helpful because each venue of ethics is very different. For example, I could compare stem cell research to nuclear proliferation and would end up confusing the reader. I could compare torture to pre-emptive war and confuse the reader. It seems to me that ethical discussions need to focus on a single issue at a time, but maybe that's just me.
One thing that people like to do is separate the stem cell debate from
in vitro fertilization (IVF). People seem to be generally ok with IVF
because it lets a potential mom be a mom through the use of
technology. However, the technology of IVF is somewhat flawed and
requires the production of additional embryos. These extra embryos are
then discarded. No one seems to have any problem with this. But as
soon as a scientist proposes researching these extra embryos, then all
of a sudden people start to have a ethical problem. Basically, people
who are ok with IVF but oppose stem cell research are saying: it is ok
to create life artificially and toss a fraction of that life in the
trash, but don't you dare do anything with that extra fraction of
life. This is an easy-out and lets people feel good about helping
people to be mothers and also feeling like they are ethical, but it is
a logical fallacy.
I haven't really decided my position on IVF. I mean, who wants to tell
a woman who wants to be a mother that she can't be? At the same time,
though, I don't really know if it is ok to create her a bunch of
embryos and implant them into her and throw away all the excess.
It is a very complicated issue, but I think as long as IVF treatment
is standard in the US, the extra embryos should be used for a good
cause. Unlike nuclear bombs, at least stem cell technology is clearly
aimed toward curing human disease. I am always a believer in taking
multiple approaches, so I hope that we try to get as much out of adult
stem cells and induced stem cells as we can, but really only embryonic
stem cells have the greatest potential to cure disease, especially in
the near future. It may take 10 years to find a Parkinson's cure with
embryonic stem cells, but 100 years to find a cure with adult or
induced stem cells.
Ethical concerns with *any* scientific endeavour? Really?
What are the ethical concerns with, say, understanding the composition of Dark Matter?
As a life-long if not fully practicing Catholic, I've embraced the Catholic church if not fully it's ideology for 50+ years. To me, the Catholics were different from the religious zealots of other faiths. At least in my early days, and at least in the church that I grew up in, those of us that sinned in what-ever manner the church deemed at the moment, either by being homosexual, or by marrying out of the church, or by getting an abortion may have been criticized, but they were still welcomed into the church as just another of God's human with human frailties.
Today's church has removed itself from that view. Today's church is now part of that religious zealotry. Today's church now deems incompetent, ignorant, deceitful and corrupt leaders like the Bush and Cheney administration to be fit leaders and intelligent, honest men like Barrack Obama to be unacceptable.
For me, the decision is over. It is clear that the Catholic church is no longer part of the solution, but part of the problem. From now on, I will do my best to help to remove the Catholic church along with the rest of the conservative criminals who ran our country from the last 8 years from society.
I wonder why people not not have an issue when the embryo's are dis graded and thorn in the trash when they are not used in invetro. The church really needs to catch up and be reasonable or they will continue to loose followers. I would rather the few cells be used to help the greater good, rather than site in a trash can.
I understand the great benefits of stem cell research; however, I have a problem with this type of sciencific study breaching to close to God's work. I don't think man should be cloning animals or humans. I can not support taking the life of an unborn child and any digestial age for the possible support of another life.
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