Inflating hopes
By Jay Ambrose
William Saletan wrote in the online magazine Slate last August that stem cell research had become something like a religion to the Democrats, and that was before John Edwards' incredible words the other day.
The vice presidential nominee told us, if elected president, John Kerry would enable the lame to walk. It was as if he were talking about Mr. Kerry having supernatural powers.
"Christopher Reeve just passed away. And America just lost a great champion for this cause, somebody who was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through a tragedy," said Mr. Edwards. "Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
tierd of Tom?
To begin with, the Edwards spiel was utterly tacky — an attempt to use the premature death of a popular actor for political self-advantage. And then come the lies he and Mr. Kerry have told on the subject and keep telling, the overkill, the use of the phrase "stem cell" as a kind of religious beckoning unrelated to anything science has to say.
Mr. Saletan made that point after the Democratic National Convention, noting the phrase was used more often in that gathering than "unemployment" and "abortion" together.
He observed, too, that the distortions about stem-cell research result from stem-cell lobbyists, including biotech firms, coming together to exaggerate the issue and mislead the public.
What are the distortions? Mr. Edwards told one when he suggested cures could be forthcoming in a few years. Where is there a scientist in the field saying as much? Scientists do describe the research as "promising" but seem to agree it could be a decade or more before anything significant is accomplished, if indeed it ever is.
Tennessee's Bill Frist, Senate majority leader and a physician, said Mr. Edwards was cruelly "giving false hope to people."
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards say the research could lead to cures for Alzheimer's. Scientists tell us that is very unlikely.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards talk about President Bush banning stem cell research. Not true, as Mr. Saletan said. There is no ban on private research of embryonic stem cells and no ban or limits on publicly funded adult stem cell research ($200 million has been spent, Mr. Saletan reports). Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute has provided reams of evidence that adult stem-cell research is already producing results.
Mr. Bush has not even banned publicly funded research of embryonic stem cells. He is the first president to provide funds for this research, although it is true he has placed limits on it. And federal funding does drive most U.S. medical research.
Still, there is privately funded research and, as others note, private enterprise probably would be spending much more than now if investors were as taken by the stem-cell hype as are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards. As it is, institutions such as Harvard and Stanford universities put up private money for embryonic research.
Enough about lies. Let's talk about simple-mindedness. There is an ethical issue here. Embryonic stem cell research involves killing embryos. You take life to maybe help find cures for the living. In the research Mr. Bush has allowed, the embryos from which the stem cell lines were taken are already dead; nothing has to be killed.
I go back and forth on this issue, but what we have here is not just a matter of religions imposing their theology on the ill, as Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards claim. The nonreligious can surely find the makings of a moral dilemma. It's certainly not only an issue of science, as Mr. Kerry has said. Science enables us to do many things that ethics instructs us not to do.
We are at a divide in medical history when such questions are likely to become common. Might not we opt for some hesitancy of the kind Mr. Bush has prescribed: some truly serious limits on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, but no ban?
I can respect those who answer carefully that the Bush limits should go, but not someone like Mr. Edwards, who will next tell us that if we just put him and Mr. Kerry in the White House, they will raise the dead to life.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers. |
