The Stem Cell Wars Live On

I love how they always say how scientists face a lack of financial support for potentially lifesaving research and attempts to ban it outright. Let's examine a couple of facts.

1) Potential? Has there been ANY significant breakthrough yet? NO. All we have are some scientists saying that there are great possiblities. If there really was evidence that this research was so potentially lifesaving then there would be no shortage of funding from the private sector. Look how much money is spent each year on aids or breast cancer research in the private sector. There is a fortune to be made for real cures. Big private companies understand this and would be financing the research if it was bearing any fruit at all.

2) Nobody that I've heard wants to ban all forms of stem cell research. Most people want to make sure that this research doesn't include the possible attempt to clone a human.

3) Everyone who looks at this issue in an honest fashion knows that the core of the debate is really political. It all comes back to abortion. Those who are pro abortion cannot risk letting the embyos be classified as anything even remotely human life or they risk undermining their cause. Abortion is almost religion to the left and they will never accept anything that might not be in the interest of on demand abortion.

Have you ever noticed that you will see some who are otherswise conservative but support abortion rights, running for office on the Republican side but never, ever a person who is otherwise liberal but is pro life on the Democrat side.

Denial or not really thinking about it, there is no way most people know how many frozen embryos there are. Makes me think of some science fiction movie with rows and rows of babies but these are really too tiny to picture that way. I do wonder why no more uproar about it also. I think the "snowflake babies" came about because a few prolifers wanted to do something. Like Barbara said, there's only a small number being born. Most people, if they can have their own, they will have their own and won't adopt someone else's, no matter how prolife. Also, the expense of implanting someone else's embryos has to be high.

Dawn Meisenheimer Lewis
Midwest Voices 2007

Dawn is right about the Snowflake movement's importance to pro-life rationalization in support of fertility clinics. The fact that there are many more embryos than may be practically adopted doesn't discount the power of the argument that frozen embryos are future potential live births and not just left over tissue from a completed process.

Those folks have made an intellectual concession regarding the importance of fertility science to making happy new families possible, but they haven't turned away from their core belief. Efficiency and recycling may be admirable principles but can't compete with preservation of life, even if embryo exploitation leads to life saving therapies.

The growing number of frozen embryos, largely unseen in cold storage at private expense, was a bio-ethical dilemma even before stem cell research was on the public radar and will be one after stem cell research moves elsewhere.

If you want to see adults making some tortured sounding arguments about life and property rights look up some of the case law concerning disposition of frozen embryos in divorce and probate courts.

A half million extra embryos doesn't take up all that much room and energy, spread out as they now are among clinics, but at some point Dawn's idea of embryo reduction legislation may well be seen by both parties as the new humane course of action.

Dawn, you're right that some of the embryos created through fertility procedures are adopted. But the number is small. I did a quick search and found some figures that show fewer than 100 snowflake babies born so far, and about half a million embryos preserved in cryogenic freezers.

I've often wondered, while writing about opposition to medical research done with embryos, why there isn't more of an uproar about the embryos left in limbo after fertility procedures. It seems to me that research to save lives and cure the really awful diseases is no less virtuous than procedures to create babies.

--Barb Shelly

People actually adopt those frozen embryos...Dr. Buie, they call them snowflakes. I cannot assume you don't know that already though, but it has to do with two of your points. There are people out there willing to adopt the eggs to bring them to birth if possible. Also, you know that the GOP might try to put restrictions on how many embryos can be harvested if they really think through how many remain frozen. Of course, the risk to the party would be great if such a restriction came about. It depends on the percentage of couples who use fertility treatments, and if the Republicans care about their opinion. No matter what party, inconsistency keeps some in office.

I think Republicans who are against using prenatal stem cells, human embryos, I think they really believe there will be a viable alternative. True consistent prolifers don't even need the alternative to stand their ground. It's just that there may be wafflers, and many would like to see something come from science that proves their point.

Dawn Meisenheimer Lewis
Midwest Voices 2007

The GOP has up to this point basically depended on a bluff, that scientific research would eventually find a way to elevate the promise of adult stem cells so that embryonic stem cells would be unnecessary.

Right to life advocates had previously been fairly quiet on the topic of the morality of creating more frozen embryos than a mother strictly needs to overcome infertility, but that was before booming alternative stem cell uses from "discarded" embryos promised to turn fertility into a secondary reason for producing embryos.

The triple bind for the GOP is:

a.) that it has constituencies interested in the potential for popular and profitable life saving cures

b.) the popularity among family friendly interest groups of in vitro fertilization which has produced a freezer "limbo" full of unused embryos

c.) the need to demonstrate a strong commitment to preservation of unborn life which each unemplanted embryo technically represents once it leaves the freezer

Republicans like Blunt and Koster in Missouri, who went out on a limb with many in the party to defend embryonic stem cell research, and Bush, who tried to "split the baby" by allowing research to continue on a few existing lines of stem cells, would probably have preferred an even earlier breakthrough announcement.

The GOP would have settled for something less promising than Thomas's converted adult skin cell discovery but they are very happy to run with what he has provided, no matter how long it takes to get it off the ground. The discovery equals GOP vindication for holding the line regardless of Thomas's ambivalence to becoming a hero to the Bush administration.

This all assumes Thomas's research doesn't turn into a blind alley like cold fusion.

Did you read the article? Non-embryo stem cells don't do scientists a whole lot of good.

Politics sometimes makes for strange Petri Dish fellows. Bush, Blunt and others with right to life support have been painted into a very small corner by the embryonic stem cell/human cloning debate. No one is happier to see Dr. Thomson come along than they are, including Michael J. Fox.

Thomson, without even working out the bugs out of his own discovery which at the moment produces only cancerous stem cells, has let Republicans off the hook. They need no longer be seen opposing scientific research and development to retain culture of life credentials.

Thomson may not much like the way Bush has approached federal funding of embryonic stem cell research but he should get ready for a flood of pent up reseach dollars aimed in his general direction.

Why don't we all get together and support the new technology developed from adding proteins to skin cells? There could be funding and a much better environment could be fostered, rather than the rancorous one that currently exists over Amendment 2 which so divides the state. Couldn't we all support the newer approach and move forward together, rather than insist on harvesting eggs and destroying embryos and not going anywhere because we are divided and calling one another names?