Embryonic stem-cell research first became possible with human cells in 1998, and became a political issue immediately thereafter. To derive the cells, researchers had to destroy human embryos, which drew strong opposition from people (like me) who believe that nascent human lives should not be treated as raw materials for research.

Just a few months after the first human stem-cell experiments, President Clinton assigned his board of bioethics advisors, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), to consider the issues involved. Their report, published in 1999, has helped ever since to define the Democrats’ approach to the issue. In light of the headlines today about a new way to produce stem cells without destroying embryos, that report is worth another look.

The commission made a point of taking into account the ethical issues raised by embryo-destructive research. “In our judgment,” the report concluded, “the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research.”

At the time, there were no such alternatives. The NBAC’s conclusion was taken (and certainly intended) as an endorsement of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, which quickly became the view of the Clinton administration and of American liberals more generally. But the big stem-cell story of the past two years has been the emergence of precisely those “less morally problematic alternatives” imagined by the commission.

The news this morning deals with the most promising and significant advance yet on that front. Scientists at MIT and in Japan have managed to coax regular skin cells (in mice) to become cells that seem to have the abilities and characteristics of embryonic stem cells. If this pans out in human cells, it would mean that the benefits of embryonic stem cells could be attainable without the ethical (and political) drawbacks of embryo-destructive research.

This is just the latest in a series of such developments over the past two years. But the advocates of such research have not yet decided how to handle this new trend. Congressional Democrats, persuaded that stem cells are a powerful political winner for them, talked down the alternatives at first, insisting they were scientifically unworkable or unnecessary. But as more scientific publications have emerged enlarging on these alternatives, they have changed their strategy, attempting to co-opt the new alternatives into their effort to fund embryo-destructive research. A bill being considered in the House today (and which has already passed the Senate) would use taxpayer dollars to encourage the on-going destruction of embryos from IVF clinics for their stem cells, but at the same time would also fund the emerging alternatives.

The internal contradiction is stark: the bill stokes the controversy over stem cells even as it funds new techniques that might quiet it. President Bush has pledged to veto the bill because it violates the principles behind his stem-cell funding policy, and the Congress seems unlikely to muster the votes to override his veto. So the political status quo won’t change, but the state of the science is clearly pulling in the opposite direction from the Democrats’ political strategy.

Developments like the one making news today could (in time) mean the end of the stem-cell debate, and an end that lets everyone win: the research would advance without human embryos being harmed. In light of the news this morning, it’s time for the Democrats to rediscover the long-forgotten last clause of the Clinton commission’s stem-cell recommendation.

del.icio.us

Google

Facebook

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 2:44 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.