Stem Cell Research: An NPR Special Report
A ‘Virtual Roundtable’ on Federal Funding

David A. Prentice

David A. Prentice, founding member, Do No Harm — The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics:

Federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research is illegal, unethical, and unnecessary.

Illegal: Current federal law enacted by Congress is clear in prohibiting “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.” Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of live human embryos to obtain their stem cells. Even President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) called it a “mistaken notion” to think that there can be any meaningful separation between destroying the embryo, and research that relies on this destruction. The NIH attempt to argue that federal funds can be used for research made possible only by destroying human embryos, so long as private dollars fund the act, does not clarify the law but only circumvents it.

Unethical: Destroying living human embryos for research violates the basic tenet of the healing arts: “first do no harm.” It is ethically wrong to harm or destroy some human beings for the potential benefit of others. Setting some human life as lesser in value for utilitarian purposes harms the individual and corrupts the integrity of medical research. If the President approves federal funding for such research, it will mark the first time in our nation’s history that our government has endorsed the deliberate destruction of human life to obtain raw research materials.

Nor will such research be limited to so-called “excess” embryos for long. In congressional testimony, representatives of the biotechnology industry have been clear that such “excess” embryos will not be sufficient for the research envisioned. Rather, they say, it will be “essential” to approve the even more disturbing prospect of human cloning for creation of embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them for their genetically matched tissue.

Unnecessary: NBAC was clear that use of “excess embryos” is not justified if “no less morally problematic alternatives” exist for advancing the research. There is ample published scientific evidence showing that adult stem cells and other post-natal stem cells can and do provide this alternative (see www.stemcellresearch.org). Animal research using adult stem cells has had many successes, including reversing diabetes in mice and repairing damage from heart attack and stroke. In addition, adult stem cells are already being used successfully in humans to repair heart damage, treat cartilage defects in children, restore vision to legally blind patients, and in treatments for systemic lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, immunodeficiencies, and cancer.

Despite the often-extravagant claims made about them, embryonic stem cells have no such track record of success. They have never helped a single human patient and have a poor record in animal research. Even those who work with embryonic stem cells note that they are difficult to grow, hard to control, and have a potential to form tumors.

Given all the recent advances in adult stem cell research, more researchers now say that embryonic stem cells may not be needed after all for medical progress. President Bush should continue the prohibition on funding human embryonic stem cell research. Instead, we should increase funding for adult stem cell research, which protects the inviolability of individuals, rejects harming some for the potential benefit of others, and — unlike embryonic stem cell research — is already helping real human patients.

David A. Prentice is a professor of life sciences at Indiana State University; an adjunct professor of medical & molecular genetics at the IU School of Medicine; and a founding member of the organization Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics (www.stemcellresearch.org), a national coalition of researchers, health care professionals, bioethicists, legal professionals, and others “dedicated to the promotion of scientific research and health care which does no harm to human life.”