CAN I JUST GO PART WAY DOWN THE SLOPE?:

Welcome to the Brave New Jersey (Paul Mulshine, May 26, 2005, Newark Star Ledger)

As a coldhearted, rational type of guy, I can't get too excited about the pro-life objection to embryonic stem cell research. The pro-lifers argue that it's wrong to destroy fertilized human eggs for research purpose. But the eggs in question are going to be destroyed eventually anyway. Why not put them to good use?

However, the other day I came upon some aspects of the research that frightened even me. Wesley J. Smith is the author of a book titled "A Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World." He's a lawyer and sometime Ralph Nader collaborator who is skeptical about just where the biotech industry is leading us with its incessant call for infinitely more spending on the research.

It's not leading us to test-tube cures for such diseases as diabetes and Parkinson's, Smith said when I gave him a call at his California home. There is simply no reliable method for turning an embryonic stem cell into the type of cell that can be safely implanted in the body of a disease victim.

"Embryonic stem cells cause tumors in mice," Smith said. "You simply can't control their growth."

The same problems are likely to occur in any attempt to implant embryonic stem cells in humans, he said. But there's a much easier -- and more ominous -- means of employing the technology, he said. The most efficient way of turning embryonic stem cells into the cells needed to treat a certain disease would be to create an embryo that is a clone of the patient. If that embryo could then be implanted into a uterus, the resulting fetus would contain a perfect copy of every cell in the patient's body. The ominous part is that the only way to gain access to those cells would be to abort the fetus. Smith fears that's where we're headed.

"What I think will happen is that when everything that can be obtained from research in a petri dish is obtained, then there will be a move to go from a petri dish to early gestation," Smith told me.

That's a disturbing thought. Even more disturbing is that such a practice would be perfectly legal in at least one state: New Jersey. A bill signed into law last year by Gov. James McGreevey permits exactly that sort of practice, Smith said. The bill's ostensible purpose was to enable stem cell research, but it also contained language regulating the traffic in fetal tissue. And the only way to turn stem cells into fetal tissue is through implantation in the womb, Smith notes.

The bill also purports to ban human cloning, but it defines cloning as "cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages."

That would seem to permit cloning as long as the fetus in question were to be aborted, Smith notes.

Smith's reading of the bill is supported by Princeton University ethicist Robert George, who serves on the president's council on bioethics.

Stinks when reality disturbs reason, huh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2005 10:00 AM