Tim Louis Macaluso’s interview
with University of Rochester
biologist Mark Noble, published January 4, brought quick response from readers
opposed to stem cell research. Their comments, and Noble’s response, follow.
Feminists for Life of
New York disputes Mark Noble’s claim that the controversy surrounding
embryonic stem cell research is solely a religious one (“Hope, Fear, and
Politics,” January 4). In addition to the objections of religious groups, based
on their belief that life begins at conception, there are objections from
within the scientific community itself. Do No Harm, the Coalition of Americans
for Research Ethics, is a group of scientists and physicians who encourage the
pursuit of adult stem cell research over embryonic stem cell research because
of known successful treatments with ASC verses no known treatments or cures
using ESC. This coalition also objects based on concerns that ESC research
violates ethical guidelines set in place for conducting research on human
subjects.
Feminists for Life of New York objects to ESC research based
its potential health, social, and emotional risks for women. For example, what
are the long-term effects of super-ovulation drugs on women’s health? What
population of women will the scientific community call upon for volunteers to
participate in creating and harvesting live embryos? Will certain populations
be offered compensation to become pregnant for the intent purpose of “embryo harvesting”?
If so, what will be the medical, physical and psychological effects on these
women?
FFLNY believes that ESC research is unethical. It steals a
life at its most vulnerable pointand directs millions of dollars away
from ASC research and its many proven therapies and cures.
Kelly Vincent-Brunacini, Rush-Henrietta Town Line Road, Rush (Vincent-Brunacini
is a member of the board of Feminists for Life of New York
Tim Macaluso states that the sources of embryonic stem
cells are only three: “umbilical cord placenta, aborted fetuses, and unused
fertilized eggs from fertility clinics.” Never mind the scientific distortion
this assumption makes, and save the limitations of frozen embryos for another
argument. Macaluso fails to mention what might be the
world’s most fruitful and economic source of embryonic stem cells: eggs that
women “donate” to science. We might have the ability to produce an embryo
without sperm, but we can’t do it without an egg. Every woman who continues to
ovulate, in other words, every woman who still experiences her period, has
access to such eggs. She can choose how to use them.
Mark Noble likes to have us imagine scenarios that help
determine the value we assign to life, like the one he poses about a fire that
forces a choice between saving thousands of human embryos or a single
5-year-old child.
I suggest another scenario, which invites us to determine
the value of a woman’s body. Which women will be donating the millions of eggs
science eventually will require to perform experiments on human embryos? Women
inspired by the illness of friends and the hype given possible cures? Women lab
assistants whose positions are more secure through their donations? Women
driven by guilt, who become pregnant to save family members? Women too poor to
pay their bills who sell their monthly ova? Women who can sell even more by
using fertility drugs to produce eggs instead of producing children?
The possibilities are endless. Where are the feminists
worrying that “my body is myself?”
The recent Korean scandal over stem cell research is a case
in point. Not only should it cause us to pause before leaping on to advance
such projects, but it should cause us to ask: “where do we want to obtain the
eggs?” Veterinarian Hwang Woo Suk’s first ethical breach
involved the source of eggs. When scientists discovered that Hwang used ova
“donated” from two of his junior scientists rather than volunteers, they
condemned the practice.
I fear in our rush to obtain funding for research not yet
proven ethical or even possible, we might fall into the Korean trap. I offer
two suggestions: 1) continue intensive adult stem research, and 2) advance the
new research that creates embryonic stem cells without destroying life. Do we
all know that’s what happening?
Suzanne Schnittman, Highland Avenue, Rochester
Regarding Dr. Mark
Noble’s “thought experiment” about choosing between rescuing a nitrogen
tank containing frozen embryos and a child: is he posing this question to the
owners (also known as parents) of the embryos? Their answer might not be as
obvious as the one Dr. Noble presumes. I would venture that they would value
the child and the nitrogen tank of equal and infinite value. Therefore both are
worthy of rescue.
In the discussion of embryonic stem cell research, much is
said about using the embryos that “will be discarded anyway.” For anything to
happen to an embryo, consent is required by the parents. Why haven’t we heard
from all these parents who are supposedly lining up to donate their “extra”
embryos for research? My guess is they are unwilling. Maybe they have witnessed
at least one of their embryos as the younger selves of their current children
and wouldn’t dream of donating them for research; so why donate their siblings?
A recent study showed 59 percent of parents who initially planned to discard
extra embryos changed their minds later, choosing another pregnancy or donation
to infertile couples.
Dr. Noble cites estimations that “between 40 and 80 percent
of blastocysts are washed out in the menstrual flow.” This language not only
seeks to liken early life to waste products, but it is misleading. If these
blastocysts are so necessary for embryonic stem cell research, why not collect
menstrual blood and extract them? Besides being an inefficient process, the
answer is obvious. Blastocysts present in menstrual blood are products of a
very early miscarriage. In short, they are not viable. And it is living human
embryos, donated with the consent of their parents, which are necessary for
ESCR.
Calling those who question embryonic stem cell research
anti-science or uninformed is not fair; many of them are the ones who will not
be manipulated by language likening embryos to waste and hypothetical scenarios
that ultimately only bring out differences in the age of living beings.
Margaret Smerbeck, Pittsford
Mark Noble’s
response: It would be wonderful if these readers, and those of like mind,
lobbied the government to provide $2 billion to more rapidly test the idea that
adult-derived stem cells do the wonderful things the readers claim. This amount
of funding —ยญ equivalent only to the current expenditure for about one week
in Iraq —
would provide critical findings for a discussion that needs to proceed based on
real data. At present, however, claims that adult-derived stem cells are all we
need have no sound scientific basis.
The continued assertion otherwise by opponents of embryonic
stem cell research reflects an ignorance of the science, or an insistence on
using false statements to support a particular belief. Neither of these
approaches is useful. We in the scientific arena do not now quote the
discredited work of the Hwang Woo Suk laboratory, and antagonists of this
research need to be similarly dedicated to accuracy.
The quality of human-ness means different things to
different people and in different cultures. Some people may believe that a ball
of 100 cells that contains no nerve cells, gut cells, muscle cells, or
differentiated cells of any kind is equivalent to a living, breathing person.
There are many more who, like myself, see clear differences.
Utility is currently unproven for use of adult-derived cells
in treating anything other than conditions (almost always cancer-related) in
which bone marrow transplants are used to replace cells of the bloodstream.
Claims of equivalency of 100-cell blastocysts and living, breathing humans thus
need to be very carefully weighed, particularly as I believe we will relatively
soon learn to use cells derived from a single such blastocyst to treat dozens
or hundreds of living, breathing people.
Even if I accept your claims about blastocyst numbers, this
leaves many tens of thousands of excess blastocysts being discarded from
fertility clinics every year. Some may think it preferable that these
blastocysts be incinerated than to first remove a small number of cells that
might prove useful in treatment of serious diseases. I disagree. As for the
many women who volunteer to be egg donors in the hopes of advancing medical
research, isn’t this their prerogative — and not yours to decide for them?
In addition, the scientific community is working to obtain
unfertilized eggs from the many ovaries that are removed for medical reasons, a
procedure that would greatly reduce any need for egg donors.
Given the potential of stem cells, opponents of research
must ask what right they have to obstruct potentially useful treatments for the
millions of children and adults with serious diseases for whom stem cell
therapy might change their lives. Moreover, it is ironic that if those opposed
to embryonic stem cell research were successful, the most likely effect would
be to slow down this particular research — this at a time when cells derived
from fetuses voluntarily aborted for personal reasons of the mother are
potentially proving their use in the clinic.
We in the scientific community are trying to progress beyond
this stage, while the effects of such obstruction would be to make such fetal
cells a valuable market commodity. Wouldn’t it be better to conduct the
necessary research that develops treatments in the near term, and eventually
also will enable us to manipulate adult-derived cells to restore the incredible
regenerative capacity of early development ยญnot in fantasy, but in reality?
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This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2006.
