Let us talk of something else other than my impending arrival in the states.(eight days! I mean eight days! Are you excited? Can you tell I am excited?) We could discuss bioethics, for instance.
Scientists in South Korea (familiar territory for me) have recently discovered ways to speed creation of stem cells. These men and women have opened up the biggest can of worms in science today. Stem cell research on new stem cell lines has been banned in the United States. To understand the debate you must understand what stem cells are and their huge potential. My definition is taken from the National Institute of Health's website.
Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body. Serving as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.
In layman's terms that means that means that stem cells are magic. In effect, scientists hope to one day make little pills or an injection that would heal injuries like Wolverine does in comic books. Really. Stem cells are of special interest to people with damage to their central nervous system - Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, etc - because ordinarily nerve cells never grow back. Scientists hope that stem cells can grow to replace any cell in the body.
The problem with stem cell research is that to collect stem cells you usually have to destroy an embryo to do so. If you believe that abortion is ok, then by all means destroy away. However, if you believe that abortion is evil, heinous, wicked, and just a plain wrong thing to do, destroying embryos would definitely leave you with a guilty conscience. (I happen to think that abortion is wrong.)
The policy of allowing no stem cell research to be conducted on new cells was great for keeping me and the abortion crowd happy - no tiny babies were harmed by our drug - but stifled promising research - Christopher Reeves couldn't get doctors to grow him a new spinal cord in a test tube.
The technique used by the South Korean scientists could raise some other interesting issues as well. A cursory glance at the article makes me think that the Koreans did something that looks suspiciously like cloning. They created embryos that were a "genetic match" from skin cells and donor egg cells with no DNA information. Sounds like cloning to me, but I am not a geneticist or even a biologist. The scientists involved ruled out any possibility of cloning humans, noting that animal trials yielded more failures than successes. As a rule, most people are against human cloning; however, in unscrupulous hands, who is to say that it couldn't be done?
So do we allow the research? What's wrong and right in this situation? I am of the belief that evil never begets good. Well intentioned evil is still evil - one should never do something wrong in the process of doing a good thing. But in the face of what stem cells could do for mankind... I really want to close my eyes and say "Destroy those babies!" Luckily, I am not in charge.
No tiny babies were harmed in the making of this blog.
