Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Apparently, science is amoral...

...Or, at least, scientists are, or so claims a Slate columnist.

The whole premise of the article (comparing George Bush's use of torture to Obama lifting the ban on stem cell research) is a joke. In particular, I found this paragraph particularly vile.

"The same Bush-Rove tactics are being used today in the stem-cell fight. But they're not coming from the right. They're coming from the left. Proponents of embryo research are insisting that because we're in a life-and-death struggle—in this case, a scientific struggle—anyone who impedes that struggle by renouncing effective tools is irrational and irresponsible. The war on disease is like the war on terror: Either you're with science, or you're against it."

This is fairly typical conservative spin. It represents all that is wrong with right wing of America: they'll defend you until you're born, and then you're on your own. In reality, we should be doing all we can to fight debilitating degenerative diseases. Lifting the bans on expanding the lines of available stem cells is a critical first step, but we still have a long way to go.

Embryonic stem cells are those that divide, differentiate, and specialize into all of the cells in our bodies. The brilliance of it comes from the fact that these cells are all genetically the same, and as such receive or produce some signals that cause them to become all of the various tissue types (brain, bone, skin, liver, heart, lung, etc.) in our body. Significant challenges remain to actually getting these cells to divide into particular tissue types, and then finding ways to incorporate them into the bodies of those suffering from degenerative diseases. Should we ever overcome these challenges, we may be able to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's, and MS (just to name a few).

Is this not worth the commitment to the research? The moral argument really doesn't hold here. The embryos are not derived from the eggs in a woman's body that do eventually become a person. Rather, they are derived from in vitro fertilization from eggs given by a donor's informed consent. These cells, obtained after 4-5 days of growth, are developed in a specialized in vitro fertilization clinic; bottom line, these cells are never meant to be people, and are never going to be.

And yet, they consist of the means to cure these debilitating diseases, diseases which cost people their quality of life and certainly have a great social and economic burden to all of us (this impact would make a great follow-up study). This really isn't a question of "Are you with us or against us?" Science will always continue to evolve and improve its methods; if one technique doesn't succeed or isn't allowed, others will be explored (as they have been). The primary objection to this one isn't valid, and kudos to President Obama for recognizing it, and not governing by religious ideology.

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