Embryonic Stem Cell Research - A Closer Look
Volume 2 | Fall 2005
Editor in Chief: Anthony
R. Souza, MTS
Editor: Alton Pelowski
Contributing Writers:
Bishop Elio
Sgreccia - President, Pontifical Academy for Life
Kimberly Zenarolla - Director
of Strategic Development, National Pro-Life Action Center on Capitol Hill
Contents
Introduction
- Anthony R. Souza, MTS
Turning the life of the embryo into a
"thing" - H.E. Msgr. Elio Sgreccia
The Search for
Stem Cells: a brief examination of alternatives to embryonic stem cell research
- Alton Pelowski
5 Reasons for the Continued Push for Embryonic
Stem Cell Resarch - Kimberly Zenarolla
Dear Fellow Christians,
We know that from the moment of conception human beings are to be treated as persons - each with immeasurable worth. Yet, human personhood remains hidden, in a way, in the beginning stages of life. Is this hiddenness a license to treat a person like an object in the name of the so-called "greater good"? To treat all persons equally, don't we need to consider the common good, which takes up the hidden potential of all persons, rather than the sacrifice of some for others?
Our society has continued to ignore the hidden personhood of the unborn child, and the substantial human pain of abortion in the mother's womb has led to the horrific practice of partial birth abortion. We must conclude from history that what began as the woman's right to determine her future has spilled over into a death sentence for more than forty million of God's children - in America alone. The law of our land has not only allowed this utter disrespect for human life, but it has promoted indignantly this "right to a dead baby."
Now, embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) has the potential to make the death count to innocent human life since Roe v. Wade seem miniscule. Whether altruistic, entrepreneurial or political in their motivations, supporters of ESCR are led to ignore an important fact. The inviolable and eternal dignity of the human person - which is not tied to race, gender, skin color, creed, intelligence, heritage, privilege, social status, economics, success, peer affirmation, or possessions - can neither be measured nor extinguished.
Embryonic stem cell research is a complicated issue, but I believe it is still comprehensible to the ordinary citizen. We have a responsibility to think, probe, research, ponder, discuss, challenge assumptions, and pray for understanding when considering real-life issues that impact innocent human life. Embracing a fundamental understanding of human life and dignity leaves abundant "room" for also embracing science, informed by faith and reason growing together, for the benefit of all.
Therefore, as we work in communion with science, let us remain patient in the face of an overwhelmingly impatient political agenda. Let us seek the cures we hope for while observing the moral boundaries that protect innocent, nascent human life. Let us work together for the common good.
Yours in communion
for innocent human life,
Anthony R. Souza, MTS
Turning
the life of the embryo into a "thing"
The following was excerpted from a lecture titled "Bioethics Today: Epochal Challenges and Fragile Anthropological Foundations," by H. E. Msgr. Elio Sgreccia
The
legalization of abortion took place first in Russia in 1920, but then spread throughout
the Western world, especially beginning in the 1960s, in the name of women's right
to self-determination. This triggered a cultural process clearly intended to devalue
human life in its first moments of existence, depreciating it to the point of
holding it to be an object, a thing, a means or instrument for other ends.
The demands for the legalization of abortion were making themselves heard,
and gave rise to various theories according to which humanization ought to be
conceived as gradual - in connection with the manifestation of the "self-conscious
consciousness," in the "capacity to feel pain and pleasure," the
capacity to establish "social relations with the mother," the "recognizability
of the maternal image," even as dependent on "procreative intentionality,"
or with an appeal to the distinction between "human" and "humanized"
life.
The strongest attack against the life of the embryo, however, lay
in the practice of artificial human procreation, as can be seen in the report
of the Warnock Committee, [1] which was called to issue
norms for the application of artificial procreation in Great Britain. From then
on, the "embryo until two weeks" became the pre-embryo, which
could be frozen or on which experiments could be performed.
The reasons
employed for this devaluation of the embryo are as follows: 1) before fifteen
days the embryo is not yet implanted and therefore is not guaranteed the continuation
of its intrauterine life; 2) before that date the rudimentary nervous system has
not yet formed; 3) before the fifteenth day twinning is still possible, and consequently
the embryo does not yet have a precise identity.
We know very well that
these reasons are invalid, because the phenomena they describe presuppose the
consistency of the embryo itself, with its capacity to implant and develop, through
the formation of minimal tissues and in the generation of organs. In the case
of twinning, the original embryo persists in its vitality and individuality; the
second embryo begins its path of life in the moment in which it detaches itself
from the first.
Even the Warnock Report affirms, in a pregnant contradiction,
that the fifteen-day limit was the fruit of a "decision" and a "compromise,"
and not a conclusion derived from biological fact.
I cite several fairly
eloquent and "compromising" phrases contained in the sources of the
Warnock Committee's final report: "Because the temporalization of the various
stages of development [of the embryo] is critical, once the process of development
has begun, there is no particular stage that is more important than another: all
are parts of a continuous process and, if each of these is not realized normally,
at the right time and in the exact sequence, further development ceases. Hence,
from a biological point of view no single stage of embryonic development can be
identified beyond which the embryo in vitro ought not to be kept alive."
[2]
But a little later, the report continues,
"Nevertheless, this is an area in which a precise decision must be made,
in order to calm public anxiety…" [3]
This
presumed necessity has also been put forward by several gynecologists who wish
to freeze in vitro "fertilized eggs," no longer considering them embryos
but "pre-zygotes" or "ootids." A debate was carried out in
Italy on this topic before the referendum on Law 40, which regulates the procedures
relating to artificial procreation.
This last semantic attempt - the "ootid"
- refers to the early embryo from the moment the sperm penetrates the pellucid
membrane of the eggs to the moment the two pronuclei "blend" (the phase
involves about 24 hours). The motive behind considering this phase to be preparatory
and a "not yet" consists in the possibility of freezing the "ootid"
or "2n [two-nucleus] zygote," since it is not yet possible to freeze
non-fertilized eggs. The terms "ootid" and "prezygote" are,
according to many gynecologists, pure inventions; the difference between it and
a true and proper embryo is merely the artificial name. In fact, the fertilized
egg in this first phase is an embryo and, within the cell membrane, the two nuclei
work in synergy from the moment the sperm penetrates the egg, giving rise to a
conglomeration of events that even affect the maternal organism [4]
before preparations begin for the first division. In brief, we are dealing here
with successive attempts to devalue the embryo.
Cloning, which took place
with the sheep Dolly and which was announced in South Korea as the true hope of
mankind, confirms the depersonalization and non-naturalness of generation on a
higher level, since it involves asexual generation without gametes. In it, the
fundamental familial relations - paternity, maternity, and childhood - disappear.
There is no doubt that an individual "reproduced" in this way would
be a human being, with all the dignity and rights of children generated according
to natural processes, but the offense against the child's identity would be maximal.
This is, after all, one of the ways in which a human being can be fashioned
with a predetermined patrimony and according to a eugenic method. The fact that
such a subject can then become a provider of stem cells or even bone marrow compatible
with a specific disease of the nucleus' "donor" simply confirms the
instrumental character of cloning.
Along the same lines as this attempt
to instrumentalize the human embryo for medical purposes, we recall, too, the
search for and use of stem cells, which, together with cloning, has occupied biomedical
research in recent years. An awareness of the existence and the function of stem
cells within our organism represents one of the most precious discoveries in the
biomedical field and appears to herald great hopes for therapy.
What is
altogether peculiar in the sphere of bioethics today is that, while the use of
somatic stem cells derived from various tissues of the adult organism and from
the umbilical cord seems to be rich with real therapeutic hopes, different groups
of scholars insist on the use of embryonic cells (harvested from embryos that
are either "left over," created specifically for this purpose, or cloned)
in a hope that has yet to be supported by experimental success.
But even
if the success of this practice, which would destroy the embryo, could be proved,
the instrumentalization of the embryo would reach a degree of ethical impermissibility
that could be compared to the crime of cannibalism.
This absurd and irrational
insistence on the use of the embryo even when therapeutic results could be pursued
in other ways makes one think of real duplicity and a forcing of the argument
on the part of scientific research, linked to industry, in their desire to win
legal recognition at all costs for the use of the human being in its first stages
of life. The embryo is consequently devalued from the level of a human individual
to that of an object and instrument.
If we are to overcome this dynamic
of the use and instrumentalization of the embryo inherent to the various techniques
of artificial procreation, which reach their high point in cloning, the call for
an anthropology yet again makes itself heard - an anthropology that is complete
and sees the human individual in the totality of body and soul in unity, corpore
et anima unus, from the moment of fertilization.
The ontological dignity
of the human individual, which grants this individual his worth, must provide
the basis for and sustain the ethical attitude and contemplative gaze toward that
existence; this human existence already has a fullness that belongs to it even
if it is advancing in a continual and uninterrupted development. With regard to
the problems surrounding nascent life, it is from this complete anthropology that
the work of reconstructing the society of the future will have to begin. –
Bishop Elio Sgreccia
1.
M. Warnock, "A National Ethics Committee," in Br.Med J. (1998/297) 1626-1627;
also A Question of Life: The Warnock Report on Human Fertilization and Embryology
(Oxford 1995).
2. Department of Health and Social Security, Report of the
Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology, ch. 17, p. 2.
3. Ibid., p. 65 of the Report.
4. These quite complex events were described
in a memoir presented to the Italian National Committee on Bioethics on July 15,
2005, by the gynecologist A. Bompiani.
The
Search for Stem Cells
A brief examination of the alternatives to
embryonic stem cell research
The absolute personal dignity of the
human embryo is either rejected or brushed aside by supporters of embryonic stem
cell research (ESCR). While it is perhaps inspired by altruistic motives to alleviate
suffering and cure diseases, ESCR, unlike adult stem cell research, involves the
destruction of innocent human life. Many of those who recognize this simple fact
also sympathize with the desire to make use of embryonic cells' "pluripotent"
capacity - that is, their ability to differentiate into any bodily cell type.
As a result, there have been several methods proposed to obtain pluripotent cells
without killing embryos in the process. In May 2005, the President's Council on
Bioethics published a white paper on "Alternative Sources of Pluripotent
Stem Cells," [1] in which the ethical considerations
of four of these proposed alternatives to ESCR were explored.
A process
known as altered nuclear transfer (ANT) was among the proposals considered by
the President's Council. ANT is "conceptually based" on somatic cell
nuclear transfer (SCNT), a method of human cloning. In SCNT, the nucleus of an
oocyte (egg cell) is removed. Then, a cell is obtained from an adult, and its
nucleus - which contains the complete genome (genetic instructions) of the donor
- is transferred to the enucleated egg. The process involves the "functional
equivalent" of fertilization and the result is a cloned embryo - an identical
twin of the adult donor. Whether "reproductive" or "therapeutic"
in its intent, cloning results in a cloned embryo (i.e. human being).
A
modification of SCNT takes place in ANT, which involves a genetic alteration of
the somatic cell before the nucleus is transferred. In ANT, as originally proposed
by Dr. William Hurlbut, the removal of a gene (CDX2) from the somatic cell nucleus
precludes the organizational development of the zygote and (normal) embryogenesis.
The result is a "biological artifact" that is "brought into
existence with a genetic structure insufficient to generate a human embryo."
[2] Proponents claim that due to the lack of its organizational
structure, the resulting "artifact" is a "non-embryonic" entity
and not an organism. However, critics of ANT observe that the biological artifact
produced by ANT could alternatively be seen as a severely defective, deformed
or crippled embryo, rather than being a "nonhuman" entity. In other
words, the "embryo-like" artifact created by the nuclear transfer would
not be expected to undergo normal development due to the pre-programmed genetic
defects, and the lack of normal embryonic development would not prove a lack of
human identity. Moreover, the white paper published by the Presidents' Council
points out the ambiguity of "Hurlbut's criterion for being a truly human
organism - 'organization of the species-typical kind,'" and questions whether
such a description could, for instance, be extended to justify creating and destroying
"fetus-like" entities that lack the organizational ability to develop
into adults. [3]
Some have attempted to modify
the ANT process in such a way as to avoid encountering the ethical concerns raised
by the initial proposal, while still resulting in pluripotent stem cells. On June
20, 2005, a group of pro-life scholars issued a joint statement [4]
endorsing a proposal to produce pluripotent stem cells through a process called
oocyte assisted reprogramming (OAR), a modified form of ANT. Unlike the earlier
ANT proposal, OAR involves the "reprogramming" of a cell rather than
"gene deletion that precludes embryonic organization." In OAR, the single
cell that results from the nuclear transfer would have the molecular characteristics
of a pluripotent cell, rather than that of a totipotent embryo, as a result of
the "forced expression" of certain factors in the nucleus before transfer.
In other words, "the somatic-cell nucleus would be formed into a pluripotent
stem-cell nucleus and never pass through the embryonic stage." [5]
Recognizing the personal dignity of the embryo, the signatories of the
joint statement hope OAR will be a way to develop pluripotent stem cells "without
creating or destroying human embryos and without producing an entity that undergoes
or mimics embryonic development." The research proposed would initially use
only nonhuman animal cells, and "if, but only if, such research establishes
beyond a reasonable doubt" that OAR does not create embryos, would human
research be supported. Based on the premise that "the nature of each cell
depends on its epigenetic state," it is maintained that if the reprogrammed
cell is not allowed to regress to a totipotent state, but only exhibits pluripotent
characteristics from the beginning, then no embryo comes into existence.
The terms of the proposal in the joint statement are reasonable, but several
questions come to light when one considers the fact that OAR involves more than
"dedifferentiating" an adult somatic cell back to an earlier pluripotent
state. It also involves the fusion of a nucleus containing 46 chromosomes and
an enucleated egg cell - an event that at least resembles (normal) fertilization.
In other words, a new entity comes into existence - which is neither the adult
somatic cell nor the egg, but a fusion of the two - when the "reprogramming"
takes place. From this perspective, can we be certain that oocyte assisted reprogramming
of human cells would not bring new human life into existence? Does the reprogramming
of the cell nucleus remain external to its relationship with the enucleated oocyte,
or is it possible that this reprogramming is the (interior) movement of a new
(severely disabled) human being?
The joint statement suggests that testing
OAR on animal cells could lead scientists "beyond a reasonable doubt"
to the conclusion that an embryo is not involved in the process. However, if empirical
observation demonstrates that OAR does not produce something that either "undergoes
or mimics embryonic development," would this conclusively prove that the
fusion of the enucleated oocyte and somatic cell nucleus does not produce a new
human life? Put another way, are we sure that the coming into existence
of human life is not related to fusion, but only to the epigenetic state of a
cell? If not, then it is impossible for animal testing to yield conclusive answers.
These questions are raised because what is at stake is vitally important. We must
cast the language of "reasonable doubt" aside, for no method of obtaining
pluripotent stem cells should be considered unless there can be absolute certainty
that a human person is not brought into existence in the process.
Perhaps
these questions about OAR can be answered satisfactorily, and we can indeed have
certainty that no embryos are created or harmed in the process. However, at least
one further issue would have to be addressed, before it could be endorsed. OAR,
like both SCNT and other models of ANT, is dependent on the availability and use
of women's eggs. The Presidents' Council on Bioethics notes that proposals such
as OAR would require "a (probably large) supply of human oocytes, which would
have to be donated, purchased, or produced for research purposes. … Obtaining
human oocytes currently requires hormonal stimulation and superovulation in the
women who would be donating or selling their eggs, practices that carry significant
medical risks …" [6] This is just one of many
serious problems associated with acquisition and utilization of eggs, others of
which include concerns about "commercializing human reproductive tissue,"
"the exploiting of poor women," and "consequences of coming to
regard human eggs and sperm as fungible raw material." [7]
In the end, the desire to pursue genuine scientific research that is
in accordance with pro-life principles is to be applauded. Because alternatives
to embryonic stem cell research are associated with the very origins of human
life, there are inevitably a number of questions to be asked, each of which must
be taken seriously. In the search for pluripotent stem cells, one wonders why
there is not more focus on and support of ethical adult stem cell research, which
is yielding a growing number of successful treatments. Adult stem cell research
involves dedifferentiating adult somatic cells "back into their corresponding
multipotent progenitor cells (that is, adult stem cells)." The Council on
Bioethics states that further research on adult somatic cell dedifferentiation
"might very well turn out to yield the big payoff: fully pluripotent stem
cells, obtainable at will and altogether without any involvement of embryos -
and well suited for autologous transplantation." [8]
We are left then with one final question. Is our apparent preoccupation with eggs
and the origins of life justified, or is it merely a distraction? – Alton
Pelowski
1.
The President's Council on Bioethics, "Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent
Stem Cells." http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/white_paper
2. Ibid., p. 38
3. Ibid., pp. 43-44
4. "Production of Pluripotent
Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming: Joint Statement." http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2374/pub_detail.asp
5. Ibid.
6. "Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells,"
p. 40
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid. p. 52-53
5
Reasons for the Continued Push for Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Aside from the moral dilemma, embryonic stem cells behave erratically and so far have only produced tumors instead of treatments. So why is there still so much hype?
Political Pressure: Organizations such as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), along with misguided celebrities, have brought about enormous political pressure for the government to fund embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). One of JDRF’s most successful strategies is to bring children ages 2-17 who are suffering from diabetes to D.C. to lobby Congress through dramatic emotional appeals. These pleas from crying, sick children sometimes affect even the legislators who otherwise vote pro-life.
Misinformation and Confusion: Many in the media discuss “stem cells” without distinguishing between adult and embryonic – either deliberately or out of ignorance. Unfortunately, many believe that embryonic stem cells hold the key to freeing mankind from all disease. To date, not one disease has been cured using embryonic stem cells, while at least 65 diseases have been successfully treated using adult stem cells, and the list continues to grow.
Money: In the United States, embryonic stem cell lines are patentable, whereas adult stem cell lines are not. There is the potential of billions of dollars for the organization or person who is able to patent an embryonic stem cell line. (However, because of its lack of success, this research remains highly speculative, and private businesses are not investing; hence, there is the push for federal funding.) While the United States offers patents on human embryonic stem cells, the patent systems in Europe contain provisions which prohibit the patenting of inventions "which are deemed to be immoral or unethical," and, as such, refuse to allow an organization to patent an embryonic stem cell line. In addition to patenting in the U.S., the possibility of state and federal money can be significant, as seen by California’s Proposition 71, which is already allocating $3 billion to fund embryonic stem cell research and cloning.
Justification for the Culture of Death: Some organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, realize the threat to the legalization of abortion in affording rights to embryos. Conversely, embryonic stem cell research justifies abortion. In objectifying the earliest stage of life, the ability to objectify later stages of life is insured. The entire abortion debate will shift if the embryo is offered protection.
Utilitarian Mindset: Even if embryonic stem cells could be controlled and utilized for treatments, we would still be faced with the issue of creating life to destroy it for the potential benefit of another. A recent AP article admitted that researchers must “sacrifice” human embryos to obtain their tissues and cells for hopeful treatments. This acknowledgement demonstrates that embryonic stem cell research involves a utilitarian justification of human sacrifice, similar to cannibalism, in which one human being “feeds on another of its own kind.” – Kimberly Zenarolla
Additional resources
- Life Brief Issue 1 - "The Great Embryonic Stem Cell Myth" - PDF | HTML (with full-length articles)
- Fact Sheets, Articles, News Releases - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- More articles
- For more on ANT/OAR:
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