Thu 19 Feb, 2009
Stem Cells: The Bad, the Good, and the Question of Science
2:54 pm Comments (5) Filed under: Ethics, Life and Choices, Origins and ScienceTags: Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Ethics, Stem Cell Research
Makes you wonder….
In May 2001, Israeli parents of a nine-year old boy with a crippling disease that left him wheelchair-bound took their child to see doctors in Moscow. In a highly experimental procedure that was presumably unavailable in their home country, those doctors injected embryonic stem cells into various regions of his brain…. Then he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005. That tumor, it turns out, grew out of the stem cells, obtained from at least two aborted fetuses, used in his brain.
[Link: Embryonic stem cells cause cancer in a teenage boy: Scientific American Blog]
There is an error either in the headline or in a sentence within the story that says the tumor was benign. What’s clear is that the tumor, having been surgically removed, is growing again, and that researchers are clearly concerned about the likelihood of embryonic stem cells causing cancer. Meanwhile, from the same article,
Treating neurological disorders with stem cells from fetal brains is a “great scientific goal to pursue,” but there is simply not enough evidence from animal studies, let alone human studies, to prove it is safe or effective for treating these diseases in children, says Sean Savitz, a neurologist at The University of Texas Medical School in Houston.
Savitz has just begun enrolling patients in a study on treating adult stroke victims with their own – adult — stem cells. The intent of the boy’s treatment must have been to use these fetal stem cells to regenerate tissue lost in certain areas of the brain, Savitz speculates, but he adds, “we don’t have a full understanding of how [brain-like] stem cells can generate different cells in the brain.”
Savitz says that the stem cells used in his trial are not likely to cause cancer because they are adult cells taken from bone marrow that die once they have accomplished their mission of repairing brain tissue.
I applaud Scientific American for reporting this so forthrightly. Also, related to this, there is this report today from EurekAlert. It’s very close to my own heart, for I have actually have this disease; it put me in the hospital for a total of 69 days in 1978. It’s been in remission for many years, but this disease never gets pronounced “cured,” no matter how long it stays quiet. I’m close to several other people who are dealing with it actively. Here’s some good news involving stem cells not taken from a recently killed young human being:
New therapy with stem cells to treat Crohn’s disease
* When drugs don’t work and surgery is not possible, transplanting stem cells from the patient’s own bone marrow is an effective alternative for the treatment of this chronic disease.
• The procedure has been tested successfully in the US and Italy, where total remission of the disease has been shown in 80% of cases, and considerable improvement in quality of life in the remaining 20% of cases.
There is a frequently stated fiction that those of us who oppose embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) are “anti-science.” Actually I can (and do) thank science that I didn’t die in 1978, for I surely would not have survived without some very aggressive, scientific treatment. The “anti-science” label is not merely wrong; it’s either a dishonest rhetorical trick, in which case it’s actually offensive, or else it’s stated out of ignorance.
Here’s why I can say that so confidently. There are many issues in which science and ethics interact. I’m opposed to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. I’m even opposed to underground testing. I’m willing to bet you are too. But that’s anti-science, isn’t it? Just think of how much more we could learn by opening up that kind of experimentation!
I’m also opposed to anyone re-initiating the torturous experiments Josef Mengele did on the Nazi’s prisoners during WW II. A few years ago Discover magazine ran an article on the dilemma his work still poses: he actually learned things about the human organism that no one has been able to replicate through other means. The hard question is whether it’s ethical to use knowledge that was gained by such monstrously-conducted research as his. But isn’t it being rather anti-science even to ask a question like that?
It is if you think that ESCR opponents are “anti-science,” for the matter of embryonic stem-cell research is exactly parallel to this. The only difference is that there’s less agreement on whether ESCR is wrong. Those of us who believe that it is wrong make our objections not because we’re anti-science, but for ethical reasons, just as (I am quite sure) you are ethically opposed to nuclear weapons testing or torturing human beings, regardless of how much scientific knowledge it might produce. We’re opposed to growing, killing, and harvesting young human beings for the sake of medical knowledge. If it’s not anti-science to object to nuclear weapons testing, or to Mengele-style human experimentation, then why must it be anti-science to object to ESCR?
The answer is all too obvious, of course. Earlier I mentioned the possibility of the label being applied out of ignorance. That’s possible, I suppose, but I suspect far more often it’s political maneuvering, all bound up together with the abortion question. Our opponents label us anti-science because it’s rhetorically useful to do so: if the label sticks, it makes us look like Luddites or cretins. Never mind that it’s inaccurate, as long as it works—that’s the approach represented here. Don’t worry about using honest methods if mislabeling is more politically effective.
If I were to respond in kind, I think the label I might choose for the other side would be “anti-baby,” as in, “People who support ESCR are obviously anti-baby! Look at how many babies they want to kill for their research!” I’m not using that label, though, nor am I recommending it. I present it just to show what symmetry might look like in this matter, if both sides were being equally careless about the truth. The other side can play its games; I won’t play along.
[...] Stem Cells: The Bad, the Good, and the Question of Science [...]
Some other labels used against those who oppose ESCR that bother me:
“Anti-cure” – as if ESCs are the only viable form of stem cells with the potential for cures
And the most ironic label, “Anti-life,” as in, “If you oppose ESCR you are condemning the millions of people who could be helped to lives of suffering.”
These negative labels are harmful because they not only misrepresent what I stand against, but they also hide the values that I stand for. No one in their right mind would fight against a medical technology that could potentially help others just because….
I am a proponent of advances in science that strengthen–as opposed to decrease–the value of human life. And it isn’t just the life of the unborn that I am concerned for. I am thinking about the lives of the women who could potentially be taken advantage of in order to harvest the eggs necessarily for continued human ESC research. I am thinking of those who know that they can be better treated using adult stem cells watch all the media attention and funding and political clout go towards unproven ESC research.
And the self-assured scientists said unto the the general public, ‘Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye put science above moral considerations, then ye shall have a real shot at immortality (or at least at looking good on the tennis courts until age ninety)’.
And when the public saw hyperbolic press reports that the embryonic stem cells seemed good for postponing their inevitable physical deaths, and to be desired to make them healthier, (for awhile), the public took of the fruit thereof, and did swallow it whole…
And their wallets were opened, and they forgot, for a time, that they would die anyway… and that their souls were much worse off for ignoring the lives they had snuffed in their haste.
I think we can add a practical dimension to this, as well. ASC (adult stem cell) research has generated some pretty impressive results, so I don’t just feel that ESC (embryonic stem cell) work is unethical, but also that it’s distractingly impractical. Why pour millions of dollars into an ethical minefield with no reasonable hope of success…when the very results we (might) hope to (maybe) get from ESCR in (as little as) twenty years are coming out of ASCR now?
I can understand why moral / ethical reasoning makes little difference to those who reject the foundations and conclusions of the moral statements. What I find harder to believe is why they have such a hard time accepting the validity of the practical argument against ESCR. Isn’t it “pro-science” to endorse the approach most likely to give the desired results?
Not just millions, but billions ($6 billion with interest added in) in the case of California’s prop 71, to the tune of $350 million per year. And the language is worded such that even in the midst of California’s huge current budget shortfall, that taxpayer money must still flow into these institutions.
And while the wording of prop 71 implied that it would “provide funding for stem cell research and research facilities in California,” the fine-print restricts that funding only to that which is not already funded by the federal government, which means that all of it goes towards embryonic stem cell research, and none for ASCR or iPSC research.
Art aptly captured the deception with his comment.
Consider the misleading respresentation of the state of stem cell research in this recent news article titled, “US approves 1st stem cell study for spinal injury”. The article suggests that embryonic stem cell research is the only form of stem cell research. Consider the title: “1st stem cell study for spinal injury.” Consider also the quote later in the article: “Other human cells, called adult stem cells…” which implies that adult stem cells are not in fact also stem cells.
The general reader who is not versed in issues regarding stem cell research will be led to believe that this is a significant milestone in the process of obtaining human treatments using stem cells, and that stem cell researchers can finally gain some federal support for their work.
But my problem is that this article makes no mention of the fact that paraplegics have already regained the ability to walk from treatments using adult stem cells from the patient’s own body:
Paraplegics Return to Normal Life After Adult Stem Cell Treatment
Paraplegic breakthrough using adult stem cells
Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute made this pointed comment at the end of the 2nd article, which I think accurately describes the media representation of embryonic versus adult stem cell research:
“Like most breakthroughs using adult stem cells, this one has been completely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, Smith pointed out.”
“Can you imagine the headlines if the cells used had been embryonic?” he asked.”