Dan

Calabrese

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November 26, 2007

Stem Cell Silence: Maybe Democrats Want to Destroy Embryos

It appears as if it may soon become easier for lives to be saved without lives being destroyed. Great news, right?

You’d think so, but in the everything-is-partisan world in which we live, celebrations are limited to one side of the aisle.

Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin – the man who pioneered embryonic stem cell research even while harboring ethical misgivings about the destruction of life it required – is now reporting he may have found a way to get the same kinds of stem cells from adult skin.

If true, the debate is over. Those who object to the creation of life for the purpose of destroying it can rest assured that no such abomination is necessary. And those who want to press ahead with stem cell research in the pursuit of cures for horrible diseases will be able to do so.

Everybody wins!

Oh, you silly. It’s never that easy, now is it?

After the news broke last week, statements abounded hailing the potential breakthrough. They came from President Bush, who refused to use federal funds for embryonic stem cell research (except on existing lines) because of ethical concerns – inviting round condemnation from many corners. They came from Republican presidential candidates. They came from Republican senators. They came from various church officials.

And those leading the celebrations on the left included . . . well, hang on, we’ll think of someone . . .

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were silent. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) issued a statement dismissing the relevance of the development and vowing to press ahead with embryonic stem cell research anyway, because “scientists may yet find that embryonic stem cells are more powerful.”

Despite Sen. Harkin’s fondest hopes, that’s not likely. Research using embryonic stem cells requires the subject’s DNA to be inserted into the embryo, thus producing a replication of the subject’s own cells in an attempt to make them as close to the original as possible. But no replication can possibly be as accurate as the original itself, so if Thomson’s breakthrough is for real, the stem cells taken from adult skin would be – by definition – better.

There would thus be no reason whatsoever to destroy embryos for the purpose of conducting stem cell research, and certainly no reason to create embryos for the purpose of sacrificing them. Unless, of course, destroying embryos is really your agenda, and no one would embrace the destruction of embryos as an agenda in and of itself.

Or would they?

Embryonic stem cell research has become one of the left’s strange article-of-faith type issues in recent years – along with their certainty about global warming and their emotional investment in America’s defeat in Iraq. Embryonic stem cells not only could cure various diseases, but to listen to some activists, there is no doubt whatsoever that they will – and if you oppose this agenda, you simply oppose helping suffering people.

How did they become so convinced that this research is destined to find these cures? Isn’t the whole point of research to find out what you don’t know? And if we don’t know what the cure is, how do we know that this is the way we’re going to find it?

And when skeptics suggest that other forms of research would present fewer ethical dilemmas, why do activists insist that it simply must be embryonic stem cell research, because nothing else will work?

Here’s a thought: While conservatives are troubled by the creation of life for the purpose of its destruction – an act that reeks of playing God – many liberals embrace it for that very reason. What could be better, after all, than doing anything to which the Christian right objects?

If liberals joined in the sigh of relief over not having to destroy embryos, they would be acknowledging that there was any ethical dilemma in the first place. They don’t want to acknowledge that. It would require a tip of the hat to the notion that life is precious.

The left has a hard time with the whole sanctity-of-life proposition. If one life could be cast aside to save another, and public officials can pronounce the former life to be less important than the latter, why spare it? If the only reason is your belief that God might object to its destruction, you’re just singing from Pat Robertson’s playbook.

Most of America will be relieved if crucial research can go forward, and we don’t have to destroy human embryos. Will some Americans be disappointed that they don’t get to destroy human embryos?

Still waiting for those Democratic words of praise for Dr. Thomson’s latest breakthrough. Any day now.

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