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Have a blessed and triumphant Pentecost.
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5/17/13
Advocates are quick to point out that stem cell research is
about helping those who are living. This is not quite correct. Certainly adult
stem cell research is about helping the living. Embryonic stem cell research,
on the other hand, is about destroying some of the living, namely those who are
still young and vulnerable as embryos, in the name of helping others who may be
struggling with diseases. Recent research from the laboratory of Shoukhrat
Mitalipov at Oregon Health & Science University involving the production of
human embryos by nuclear transfer (a form of cloning) relies on this same
immoral step of intentional human embryo destruction in the interest of
achieving a therapeutic result.
Prior to this breakthrough, human embryonic stem cell research
had largely sought to utilize abandoned embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen,
“left over” from fertility treatments, to destructively obtain stem cells. The
frozen embryo approach was plagued with a persistent difficulty, however. If
Jane Doe were to request that a random embryo, stored in the freezer of a local
fertility clinic, be destroyed to obtain stem cells to treat some ailment or
disease she had, those cells, when introduced into her body, would be seen as
foreign because they came from an embryo to which she was not genetically
related, and they would be summarily rejected by her body.
"Therapeutic" cloning of the type reported by the
Mitalipov laboratory purports to get around the rejection problem by producing
a genetically related embryo, that is to say, an embryonic human clone who is a
genetic identical twin of the treatment recipient. Starting from one of Jane’s
body cells and an egg cell, this new embryonic twin sister would be grown for
about 5 days of gestation in the laboratory before being destroyed to extract
the desired stem cells. Because identical twins can exchange kidneys and other
organs without rejecting them, stem cells taken from the cloned embryo (the
younger genetic twin) would not be rejected upon transplantation into Jane (the
older twin). Yet producing our own twin brothers or sisters as embryos merely
to harvest them for their desired cells – producing life simply to extinguish
it – remains a gravely unethical and morally indefensible proposal. Twenty
human eggs were used in the attempt to therapeutically clone a patient with
Leigh syndrome in Mitalipov’s work, but only two of the cloned embryos ended up
yielding stem cells. Numerous human embryos, produced for the explicit and
premeditated purpose of their destruction, are typically required for the
success of this technique.
We ought not sanction the creation of a subclass of human
beings, comprised of those still in their embryonic or fetal stages, to be
exploited by those fortunate enough to have already passed safely beyond those
early and vulnerable stages. The research from the Mitalipov laboratory
represents a turn in the wrong direction for the future of science, and needs
to be repudiated as inherently unethical, even more so in light of the
continual and impressive progress being made with morally acceptable
alternatives such as induced pluripotent stem cells and various forms of adult
stem cells.
Father Tad Pacholczyk
