http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/michael_gerson_and_the_new_rep.phpMichael Gerson and the new Republican alibi for crippling stem cell research
Category: Politics • Reproduction • Science
Posted on: August 29, 2006 10:13 AM, by PZ Myers
This
Newsweek article on the latest innovation in stem cell research is infuriating. The author, Michael Gerson, is a Republican hack with no competence in biology, which seems to qualify him to be a serious judge of science to this administration.
The issue of stem cells was the first test of the infant Bush administration, pitting the promise of medical discovery against the protection of developing life and prompting the president's first speech to the nation. His solution--funding research on existing stem-cell lines, but not the destruction of embryos to create new ones--was seen as a smart political compromise. In fact, the president was drawing a bright ethical line. He argued that no human life should be risked or destroyed for the medical benefit of another. This was an intentional rejection of the chilly creed of utilitarianism--the greatest good for the greatest number--because the greatest number would gain the unrestricted right to extend their lives by ending or exploiting the lives of the weak.
Seen as a smart political compromise…by who? Everyone I know saw it as a sham, a transparent attempt to put in place an effective ban on the research while keeping a few excuses handy to block criticism. The rest of the paragraph is built entirely on a false assumption, that what Bush was doing was defending "human life" (it's a tiny collection of cells, the humanity of which wasn't even accepted by religious tradition) and phrasing blastulae as "lives of the weak" is putting a ridiculous spin on it.
The author could have rewritten this to support a Bush ban on blood transfusions. "He's making a smart political compromise by allowing the blood banks to use their existing stocks. He was highly ethical in ending the chilly utilitarian practice of sacrificing millions of lymphocytes—living, active human lymphocytes—for the gain of relatively strong accident victims and hemophiliacs."
The new technique is to take an early embryo and just extract one or a few cells from it, leaving most of the cells intact and in place. This has been done in many cases to get a sample to analyze for genetic diseases; the few cells removed are destroyed, but the embryo as a whole can survive, be implanted, and brought to term with no detectable deficiencies. This is being viewed as an ethical way to harvest stem cells with no loss of "human life."
It's a way to get stem cells, sure. But it's also a hopeless kludge, one that doesn't seem to me to have much hope of actually being useful.....
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