October 17, 2005

Stem Cells Without Killing

Scientist may have found ways to get embryonic stem cells while not destroying human beings in the process. One technique takes a single cell from an embryo:

Taking off a blastomere from an eight-celled mouse embryo, [Robert Lanza] put the cell in a dish and let it grow. He discovered that if mouse embryonic stem cells accompanied the cell, it would create embryonic stem cells of its own.

The other technique changes the genetics of the embryo so it can implant itself to the mother's womb.

But because an embryo was created in this process, and then destroyed for its stem cells, it prompted objections.

[Alexander] Meissner and [Rudolf] Jaenisch, who is also affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said their research gets around this objection by making an embryo without the ability to grow into a person.

Not quite. Many pro-lifers don't define personhood by the ability or inability to attach to the womb. Many things happen in the early stages of a pregnancy that prevent the embryo from attaching. When this naturally occurs it doesn't take away the embryo's personhood. It's just a price paid from living in a tragic, imperfect world. Pro-lifers see a person from the moment of conception, that place in time where sperm and egg united to form cell with a unique genetic code. From that moment the cell is a person with a soul who is entitled to the right to life. What Meissner and Jaenisch have done is create a flawed embryo, a "terminally ill embryo" to use the words of bioethicist R. Alta Charo.

"New Stem Cell Methods Don't Destroy Embryo"

UPDATE: As was pointed out in the comments I engaged in some sloppy thinking by mentioning cloning as producing an embryo with a "unique genetic code." By definition it does no such thing.