Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Date Published: 08/31/2010

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth's preliminary injunction prohibiting the National Institutes of Health from funding the research in which human embryos are destroyed brought this longstanding debate to public attention. While his ruling seems to rest on following the intent of Congress, the issues raised by partisans on all sides of the question are not so much about how to interpret the law passed by Congress or about the relative power of the legislative and executive branches of government. While there are many layers of complex issues, much of the discussion seems to be cast as religion versus science. One of the ironies is that Dr. Francis S. Collins, who was appointed by President Obama as Director of the National Institutes of Health, is a self-identified evangelical Christian who supported the NIH embryonic stem cell research.

I have neither interest nor information for evaluating Dr. Collins’ faith. I know that some have questioned his evangelical credentials because of his acceptance of embryonic stem cell research and his rejection of creationism and intelligent design. I must say that I don’t see why that should negate his faith. I am certainly not qualified to probe the intricacies of the science, and maybe not even the theology, involved in this debate. But I do want to raise two ethical questions, without having come to a conclusion about the answers myself.

My first question is: Is destroying a human embryo for research any more or less ethical than keeping it frozen indefinitely or discarding it once the couple who produced it no long needs or wants it? I know some groups have made it their cause to find women who will “adopt” these embryos by having them implanted and bringing them to term, but that seems a hugely impractical solution for the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos that are already in storage. I know legal debates rage about the rights of ownership and control of these frozen embryos. While I suppose some women might donate eggs and men donate sperm for the purpose of creating embryos for research, what I have read and heard, however, is that the main source of embryonic stem cells is the “excess” embryos from in vitro fertilization performed so couples can have children. We know that in the natural processes, some percentage of embryos do not implant and are lost, often without the woman even being aware of it. Are those embryos morally equivalent to the “excess” embryos of a fertility clinic? Is the ethical debate about embryonic stem cell research being waged at the wrong point in the process? If the ethical problem is producing an embryo that will not be brought to term as a child, does not that put the focus of the debate in the fertility clinic rather than the NIH?

My second question concerns a broader ethical issue. What costs, risks and even moral hazards are legitimate in the pursuit of a worthwhile end? To cast this in terms of this specific debate, does the good of helping a couple have a child justify producing embryos that will not be used? Or does the good of healing some grievous injuries and diseases justify destroying “excess” embryos that would otherwise be discarded? Can one of these questions be answered “yes” and the other “no?” On what basis? These questions raise age old ends-and-means and slippery-slope arguments. How does a secular, pluralistic society make these judgments when religion (not to mention different religions) and science seem to give different answers?