Creepy Solutions to Stem-Cell Debate
William Saletan writes:
The first, by Drs. Donald Landry and Howard Zucker of Columbia University, proposes that we take stem cells from embryos at the same point at which we take organs from children and adults: right after they die. All we have to do is agree on the point at which an embryo is dead. Landry suggests that this point is "the irreversible arrest of cell division," which conveniently applies to huge numbers of embryos frozen in IVF clinics. With further study, he argues, we can clarify the signs of irreversible arrest, which will tell us when it's kosher to start yanking stem cells.
This isn't such a bad idea. Assuming that we can come up with some reasonable definitions, most people will be satisfied (not everyone will be happy, but you can't please everyone). One question that needs to be addressed is whether this solution will limit the number of stem cells to the point where little or nothing can be done. Also, do we have to worry about consent? You can't harvest organs without consent from the individual or families, so how will it work here? People who take seriously the idea that embryos have a moral status can't ignore that.
The second idea, from William Hurlbut, is to create embryos that have crucial genes turned off. As a consequence, they could never develop into a real human being but they may still be able to produce stem cells. Because they can't become an adult human — or an adult of anything else, for that matter — there is no moral problem with creating and killing them at will for the sake of stem cells. Conservatives, then, are attracted to the idea but others are far more cautious.
Hurlbut calls them "biological entities" or "pseudo-embryos," but he prefers the term "biological artifacts," which marks them, in his view, as "a human creation for human ends." They would have "no claim on the moral status due to a developing human life," he writes. James Q. Wilson, a council member who likes the idea and loves to garden, puts it more succinctly. The product of Hurlbut's technique, he suggests, would be "a weed."
Paul McHugh, one of the council's moderates, finds the idea gruesome. He calls the proposed creation a "weird genetic hybrid" that is "very embryolike" and has been engineered to die. Hurlbut replies, coldly but correctly, that according to the technical definition favored by opponents of stem-cell research, the thing can't die because it was never alive. Leon Kass, the council's chairman, agrees, describing the thing as a "re-engineered entity" that is "embryolike" but not "embryonic." Michael Gazzaniga, the council's most liberal member, calls Hurlbut's strategy a perversion of science. Instead of tinkering with language to fit biology, he observes, Hurlbut is tinkering with biology to fit language.
The crucial thing, [Hurlbut] argues, is that such projects avoid "the moral ambiguity of the creation and destruction of full human embryos." What about the moral ambiguity of crippling a pre-embryonic cell so that it becomes a "creation" instead? Hurlbut is unmoved. "We're not trying to defend parts of things," he says. If Hurlbut's proposal breaks the stem-cell impasse, this will be the reason: People who are deeply conservative about creating and destroying human embryos can be surprisingly liberal about creating and destroying anything outside that boundary.
One problem is solved, but whole new problems — and far more fundamental ones at that — become exposed. We may not have the ethical problem of "murder," but don't we have an ethical problem with creating such beings? Just what distinguishes us from "us" and our "parts"? Inherited diseases are often the consequence genes not working properly — what makes people who have such conditions "human" and not "weeds"? Just which (or how many) genes need to be turned off or tweaked in order for us to justifiably dispense with the "human" label and begin the harvest?
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