Law 40 was the outcome of a long and divisive debate between supporters and opponents of embryonic stem cell research and assisted reproduction. The Court allowed a referendum on several parts of the law, including on whether or not the prohibition on embryo research could be relaxed. A Ministerial Decree that confined research funding to tissue adult stem cell research, so excluding embryonic stem cell research, has so far been unsuccessfully challenged by a number of Italian scientists following several appeal cases before the Italian courts.
The Italian National Ethics Committee Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica was set up in to deal with the ethical and legal issues raised by scientific research and use of technological applications on persons. Members of this committee, which is made up of scientists, physicians and ethics experts, are appointed by the government. Understanding and stimulating this natural ability may be a far more promising avenue than efforts to harness and control cells that simply do not belong in an adult body in the first place -- cells with a tendency to form tumors, in an apparent effort to turn back into a complete embryo.
The kind of exaggerated claims now made for embryonic stem cells have been seen in this Congress before. A decade ago it was fetal tissue from abortions that was hailed as the magic bullet that might cure diabetes, Parkinson's disease and many other conditions in a few years if only federal funds were provided. By the time such funds were approved in , however, it was already becoming clear that fetal tissue from abortions would be largely useless in treating diabetes.
Millions of taxpayers' dollars were diverted toward fetal tissue transplant trials for Parkinson's disease — and the final results were not only disappointing but "devastating," according to the New York Times. Will embryonic stem cells prove to be equally disappointing or even disastrous? No one knows. However, a tragic occurrence following one particular fetal tissue transplant for Parkinson's disease should give us pause.
Some of the tissue placed in this man's brain may have been from an earlier gestational age than is customary in American clinical trials — that is, it may have been more embryonic than fetal in nature. Within two years after the transplant this man died mysteriously — and an autopsy revealed that masses of "nonneural tissue" such as skin and hair had filled the ventricles of his brain and cut off his breathing.
Researchers theorized that this tissue may have remained "pluripotent" and differentiated uncontrollably to cause the patient's death. At the very least, past experience argues in favor of greater humility than some researchers and organizations are now showing in their campaign for destructive embryo research. To quote two bioethicists who do not oppose such research on moral grounds, "much of the hype that surrounded the debate about the clinical value of fetal tissue implants was exactly that — hype.
This ought to be kept in mind by those now engaged in the debate over stem cell research. Finally, recent developments highlight a point made by opponents of embryonic stem cell research for years: Once our consciences are numbed to the moral wrong of using so-called "spare" human embryos for research, our society will move on to even more egregious abuses.
The Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Virginia has announced that it is using donated eggs and sperm to create human embryos solely to destroy them for stem cell research. In the past, this further step — that of creating life in the laboratory for the sole purpose of destroying it — was supported by the NIH, but widely condemned even by abortion supporters in Congress and editorial boards across the country.
President Clinton refused funding for this approach, and the Washington Post editorialized:. The creation of human embryos specifically for research that will destroy them is unconscionable Despite this strong consensus against creating embryos to destroy them, those actually involved in embryo research no longer see any serious ethical problem in it.
Some even argue that such research is morally superior to the use of "spare" embryos, because the egg and sperm donors understand from the beginning what the embryos will be used for. Similarly, when ACT testified before this subcommittee in December , it was virtually alone in insisting that success in embryonic stem cell research would require moving on to human cloning to make genetically matched tissues for each patient.
However, the nation's leading for-profit group promoting embryonic stem cell research, the Geron Corporation, soon acquired the Roslin Institute in Scotland to combine its own expertise in embryonic stem cell research with Roslin's expertise in cloning. These groups have engaged in embryo research long enough to deaden all sensitivity to the fact that they are dealing with human life.
If the federal government funds even a limited amount of research that relies on destroying human embryos, this deadening of consciences will occur on a wider scale and with government approval. The Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which favors federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, has argued that these developments actually show that the Bush Administration should proceed with the funding.
To stop such abuses, goes the argument, the federal government must fund embryo research so it will have the authority to set limits. But the first groups to make this claim were groups that favor destructive embryo research, including groups closely associated with the Jones Institute's abuses.
ASRM, which has given the ethical "green light" to the Jones study and published the results in its own journal, is an active member of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. So we are being told how to prevent special creation of embryos by the leading groups that favor and even perform it!
The argument that one must fund this research to regulate it is also absurd on its merits. The Jones study was done entirely with private funds, because for five years Congress has clearly prohibited funding of all destructive embryo research. If the federal government begins to fund some destructive research, it will be able to set standards for the research it chooses to fund, but the privately funded Jones study will remain untouched. In fact, such a policy change will signal that the government is moving in the Jones Institute's direction on this issue.
It will soon become apparent that the government must fund research involving special creation of embryos for research -- that is, must fund the very abuse it claims to oppose -- in order to set standards for such research. Even then, those choosing not to obey such standards will simply conduct that part of their research with private funds -- and encourage the federal government to catch up with their advanced thinking, as it already will have done on the subject of destroying "spare" embryos.
Indeed, supporters of embryo research in Congress have already introduced legislation that could fund research using specially created "research embryos," to take this next step Stem Cell Research Act of , S.
We know that destructive embryo research can be regulated or even prohibited without funding it. As noted earlier, nine states now ban all such research, whether publicly or privately funded. Like the argument that human embryos are not members of the human race, arguments that destroying them is necessary for medical progress or that funding such destruction is needed to prevent broader abuse cannot be sustained.
With these arguments out of the way we can return to the real issue at stake: Should the federal government subsidize — and force millions of morally opposed taxpayers to subsidize — research that requires the destruction of innocent human life? We hope that the President and Congress will answer that question in the negative, and will unite instead to support promising medical research that everybody can live with.
Federal regulations on Protection of Human Subjects include protections for the human fetus, "from the time of implantation. Implantation generally begins about six days after fertilization, at the blastocyst stage of human development.
Testimony of Lee M. Silver, Ph. Parents must be asked about having their embryos destroyed for federally funded stem cell research "only at the time of deciding the disposition if embryos in excess of the clinical need. Proponents seem to assume that the option of destructive research is to be offered after parents have decided to have the embryos discarded. Read strictly, the guidelines actually forbid clinics to do this.
For past testimony, including our public comments on the NIH guidelines and our testimony before this subcommittee in December and January , see: www. New developments in alternatives to embryonic stem cell research Since we testified before this subcommittee in , startling advances have been made in adult stem cell research and other non-embryonic avenues for repairing or replacing damaged organs and tissues. MS : Some base this belief on the religious conviction that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception.
Others defend it without recourse to religion, by the following line of reasoning: Human beings are not things. The reason human beings must not be treated as things is that they are inviolable. At what point do humans acquire this inviolability? The answer cannot depend on the age or developmental stage of a particular human life.
Infants are inviolable, and few people would countenance harvesting organs for transplantation even from a fetus. Every human being—each one of us—began life as an embryo. Unless we can point to a definitive moment in the passage from conception to birth that marks the emergence of the human person, we must regard embryos as possessing the same inviolability as fully developed human beings. SCL : By this line of reasoning, human embryos are inviolable and should not be used for research, even if that research might save many lives.
MS : Yes, but this argument can be challenged on a number of grounds. But this biological fact does not establish that the blastocyst is a human being, or a person.
But no one would consider a skin cell a person, or deem it inviolable. Showing that a blastocyst is a human being, or a person, requires further argument. Some try to base such an argument on the fact that human beings develop from embryo to fetus to child. Every person was once an embryo, the argument goes, and there is no clear, non-arbitrary line between conception and adulthood that can tell us when personhood begins. Given the lack of such a line, we should regard the blastocyst as a person, as morally equivalent to a fully developed human being.
SCL : What is the flaw in this argument? MS : Consider an analogy: although every oak tree was once an acorn, it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that I should treat the loss of an acorn eaten by a squirrel in my front yard as the same kind of loss as the death of an oak tree felled by a storm.
Despite their developmental continuity, acorns and oak trees differ. So do human embryos and human beings, and in the same way. Just as acorns are potential oaks, human embryos are potential human beings. The distinction between a potential person and an actual one makes a moral difference. Sentient creatures make claims on us that nonsentient ones do not; beings capable of experience and consciousness make higher claims still.
Human life develops by degrees. SCL : Yet there are people who disagree that life develops by degrees, and believe that a blastocyst is a person and, therefore, morally equivalent to a fully developed human being.
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