During the 2004 Presidential race, John Edwards, the Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate, made a statement that implied that “if you vote for us (Democrats) people in wheel chairs, such as Christopher Reeve, the paralyzed actor, would get up and walk again.”  I use this example because this is precisely what we are led to believe if we listen to the mass media promote stem cell research.  At every election the media parade Hollywood actors and plain citizens who know nothing about the subject on the air praising the wonders that will be if only we approve, fund, and elect those who support stem cell research. But wait a minute!  There is a very important part of the story that they leave out.  Consider the following:

•    They don’t tell you that not one cure has been discovered with embryonic stem cells.
•    They don’t tell you that the only success that science has had has been with adult stem cells.
•    They don’t tell you of the problems with embryonic stem cells that could be catastrophic and irreversible for an individual treated with embryonic stem cells.

In the last election of 2006 actor Michael J. Fox did a controversial TV ad, saying that the voters of Missouri should vote for the Democratic candidate because the Republican candidate, Senator Jim Talent, opposes stem cell research (a false assertion).  What I want to do in this article is to lay out what the real issues are in the simplest form, without getting too technical.  First I will define stem cell research, second, I will describe the two types of stem cells and the differences between the two.  Third, I will discuss why embryonic stem cells are controversial.  Lastly, I will summarize the status of the research as it stands today.

First of all, I want to say that I am not a scientist nor someone trained in this subject.  I have, however, done extensive reading and research on this subject since it first appeared in the news a decade ago.  The evidence I present here is well known and documented.   I will refer to the sources and provide the hyperlink for anyone to check these facts.  

What are stem cells?  One of the most eloquent and compelling writers on this issue is Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton University, so I will use his definition of stem cells from an article by Dr. George titled “The Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Human Cloning.” “ Stem cells are primitive cells that are capable of forming diverse types of tissue.  Because of this remarkable quality, human stem cells hold tremendous promise for development of therapies to regenerate damaged organs and heal people who are suffering from terrible disease.”

One of the most glaring omissions by the mass media on this subject is that they rarely mention that there are two types of stem cells, adult and embryonic.  I believe this is done on purpose.  If this was a court case the mass media would be accused of withholding relevant evidence critical to the defense, but this is exactly what they’re doing.  You will figure out why by the end of this piece.

 Adult stem cells are not controversial.  I know of no one who opposes them, yet we are led to believe by the media that if you oppose embryonic stem cells then you oppose stem cell research as a whole – a complete misrepresentation.  Adult stem cells can be harvested from umbilical cord blood, fat and bone marrow without harm to the donor.  Adult stem cells have shown to be superior to embryonic stem cells and more stable.  For a more complete discussion of this see Dr. Robert George’s article referred to earlier.

Embryonic stem cells are controversial because in order to use the stem cells from an embryo, the embryo is destroyed in the process. “Embryonic stem cells have not yet cured even a single human, while adult stem cells have successfully treated thousands of patients suffering from more than 50 types of ailments. It is also true that there are no clinical trials in humans yet using embryonic-type stem cells, while there are more than 200 clinical trials already underway using various kinds of adult stem cells.” See www.ncbcenter.org. As was established in my first article, “Pro-Life Pro-Logic,” those of us who are pro-life hold that life begins at conception, it follows then that the embryo is the first stage of the development of a human being.  Accordingly, it also follows that a human life cannot be destroyed at any stage.  Some say that an embryo is only the size of a pin and therefore does not look like a human being.  Well, we don’t measure the dignity of humans according to size.  A tiny newborn baby has the same human dignity as Shaquille O’Neill, the famous basketball player.  Size does not matter.

There are those who say that this is not enough to convince them that an embryo is a human life.  Let’s roll up our sleeves and dig deeper into this.  Scott Klusendorf, in a 2001 article titled “Harvesting the Unborn:  The Ethics of Embryo Stem Cell Research” gives the scientific reason why the embryo is a human being on page 18:

“It is genetically distinct from its parents.  Unlike sperm and ovum, the zygote possesses the active (inherent) capacity to develop itself into an embryo, fetus, infant, child, and adult.  True, sperm and egg are human cellular material, but left to themselves, they will never become a human being.  But what the zygote needs to function as a self-integrating human organism it already has.  Hence, what actually comes into existence at conception is not a “fertilized egg” (sperm and ovum cease to be at conception) or a mere clump of human cells, but a distinct, unified, self-integrating human organism.  All genetic material needed to drive the unborn’s development is there.”

Finally, I want to go over where we stand after all the years of research.  For this I will refer to a compelling article by Dr. Maureen L. Condic, MD, an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Utah, which appeared in the January 2007 issue of the monthly, “First Things."  What follows is excerpted from this article. Dr. Condic states that the challenges facing embryonic stem cells are formidable.  First there are concerns that the cells will be rejected by the patient’s immune system, requiring the patient to undergo lifelong immune suppression.  Second there is the serious problem that embryonic stem cells form tumors when transplanted to adult tissue.  Finally, there is the disturbing fact that science has thus far provided no convincing evidence that embryonic stem cells could be reliably differentiated into normal adult cell types.

Additionally, there is the problem that the dispersed integration of transplanted cells in the body of the patient would make it impossible to remove the stem cells derivatives surgically, should any problem occur. Thus the problem of immune rejection is of particular concern  - if transplanted cells are attacked by the immune system, the entire tissue in which the foreign cells reside becomes the target of a potentially disastrous immune attack.

Dr. Condic goes on to point out that it is was unambiguously clear five years ago that embryonic stem cells robustly form tumors when transplanted into adult tissues, and this remains the case today.  Optimistic predictions have not held up to scientific experimentation.  The tumor-forming potential of embryonic stem cells has proved to be a significant problem that does not show any signs of being resolved any time soon.  In several of these studies a shocking 70 to 100 percent of experimental animals succumb to fatal tumors.  In all cases, tumors were believed to be derived from embryonic stem cells that either failed to differentiate or from cells that somehow de-differentiated once transplanted.  

When cells derived from embryonic stem cells are transplanted into adult animals, their most common fate is to die.  The hubris of scientists in the field of embryonic stem cell research who confidently asserted, “give us a few years of unrestricted funding and we will deliver miraculous stem cell cures” was evident in 2002 and even more today.  They have had every conceivable tool of modern molecular research available to them and yet the serious scientific problems remain.  Dr. Condic’s opinion in this article is devastating.  I encourage you to read the entire article, which I’ve linked above.

One of the most divisive issues in our culture today is abortion.  Whatever side you’re on, have you ever debated your position with a person of the opposite position?  If your experience is anything like mine you know that the experience was not a pleasant one.  Most people defend their position at all costs, and this defense is usually based on emotion rather than logic.  What I want to do in this first of my postings is to bring this issue to the front without the emotion.  “Just the facts ma’m” was a favorite saying of Sergeant Joe Friday of the old TV series, “Dragnet."  I hope to discuss these issues based on the plain logic of the issues involved.  

You have those who call themselves “pro-choice,” those who favor abortion, and those who say they’re “pro-life,” those who oppose abortion.  For the last few decades the pro-choice advocates have been in the majority in the United States; this includes Christians and non-Christians, or for that matter, religious or non-religious people.  In recent times the percentage of those favoring abortion has come down to close to 50 to 55%, a very encouraging trend.   

The use of language today is decisive.  Those who control the definition of words control the debate.  I believe this has been true for this debate.  The pro-choice side gained the upper hand when they won the acceptance of this buzzword “choice” in popular culture.  But, just what does it mean to be pro-choice? Choice is a very broad word that can mean different things to different people.  Choice can be a positive word or a negative word, depending on its use.  No one would argue that we can choose what school we go to, and most, if not all, would agree that we don’t have the choice to steal someone else’s property.  

To answer this question of “choice," I believe, you have to first define what is the unborn.  If the unborn is not a human life, then being pro-choice is of no consequence, such as deciding whether or not to remove your tonsils.  But, if the unborn is a human life, there are huge consequences for being pro-choice.  We do not allow one person to kill another human person, it’s called murder, and we have strong laws against murder.  In California, murder can result in the death penalty for the murderer.  

How has the pro-choice side been allowed to dominate the meaning of this buzzword?  Abortion advocates usually answer their critics by saying that life does not begin at conception and that those who believe that life begins at conception base their beliefs on religious faith.  They claim that science is on their side and pro-life advocates are ignoring science.  This belief goes against known facts.  The fact that life begins at conception is not based on religious faith at all, but on science.  The popular pro-life web site www.priestsforlife.org posts the scientific evidence that follows under the “Fetal Development” section of their web page:

The widely used medical textbook The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition, Moore, Persaud, Saunders, 1998, states at page 2 that "The intricate processes by which a baby develops from a single cell are miraculous .... This cell [the zygote] results from the union of an oocyte [egg] and sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being ...." At page 18 this theme is repeated: "Human development begins at fertilization;”  Dr. Jerome Lejeune, "Father of Modern Genetics" and discoverer of the cause of Down's Syndrome, stated, "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence."  Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at Mayo Clinic, stated, "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

Scott Klusendorf, in his booklet Pro-Life 101 quotes Dr. Landrum Shettels, the first scientist to achieve conception in a test tube, on when life begins: “conception not only confers life, it “defines” life."  The quote came from Dr. Shettles’s book, Life in the Making.

You will be hard pressed to find any serious scientist who will dispute that life begins at conception, yet this fact is rarely mentioned by either side, as if it’s a big secret.  So if the unborn is a human life how can you destroy that life without legal or moral consequences?  The abortion advocates have an answer for this, too.  They claim that the unborn life is not a person.  This is a very simplistic answer that skirts the true issue.  When does a human being acquire personhood?  What is the difference between a human being and a person? Can you be a human being and not a person? Who confers personhood?  Personhood is inherent in human life itself, it is not conferred upon us by another human being or after one acquires a certain state of consciousness, as some propose.  If personhood could be conferred by another human being, then it follows that it could be taken away or denied without cause just the same.  In this scenario, society could decide to dehumanize someone, and then they could be easily killed.  Somehow the Nazi holocaust comes to mind.  

John Kerry, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2004, and a self-proclaimed Roman Catholic, stated during one of the debates with President Bush, that he accepts that life begins at conception but he could not force his morality on others.  Kerry voted against the ban on Partial Birth Abortion during the Clinton Administration. This answer avoids the essence of the issue at hand.  Our society forces morality on all of us all the time.  Why do we have laws against stealing, murder, tax evasion, pornography and hundreds of other similar laws?  Try stealing your neighbor’s car.  If the owner objects ask why does he/she thinks that stealing is wrong and who is forcing their morality on whom?

I’m puzzled by the logic just described.  If life begins at conception, then it follows that a human being begins his life at that very point.  How can you deny human rights to a human being?  Our human rights don’t start at a certain point of development; they start at the beginning of our lives.  This is simple logic.

I’m calling for an honest debate on these issues.  We can disagree and agree to disagree, but, as the popular talk-show host Dennis Prager is fond of saying, “I prefer clarity to agreement.”  In future postings I will discuss issues such as the death penalty vs. abortion, stem cell research; common reasons used by pro-choice advocates to rationalize abortion and other popular respect life related issues of today.  I welcome your comments.