Vatican opposes Obama’s stem-cell intentions

President-elect Obama has said that upon taking office, he will reverse President Bush’s executive order limiting federal spending for embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican announced Tuesday that it will oppose any changes in the order, thus setting the stage for one of what surely will be many early controversies for the new president.

The order, issued in 2001, limits federally funded research to using only stem-cell lines that were available at that time, thus effectively stopping any new embryos from being used. Scientists have complained that the available lines are often inadequate for new, meaningful research.

Most Americans, and a majority of Congress, want the order reversed. Congress passed legislation to do so both in 2005 and 2007 but could not muster the votes needed to override the president’s veto.

On one level, this debate revolves around one of the basic questions in ethics: Does the end justify the means? The end that scientists hope to achieve is the relief of human suffering, and no one debates the worthiness of that goal. The controversy is about the means – the use of donated embryos that, by virtue of the donor’s instructions, will never enter a uterus.

Key to the debate is the question of what the embryo is. At the extremes, some hold that embryos are just like any other human cells, and there should be no limits on what scientists can do with them; others hold that an embryo should be assigned the same value as a full human person, so nothing should be done to an embryo that wouldn’t be done to a person.

Ronald Cole-Turner, a Protestant professor at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, says the many positions in the middle of these extremes lead to more complex thinking about the ethical guidelines under which embryonic stem-cell research should proceed. He is not categorically opposed to the research but urges that it be done within limits, such as:

• Requiring that the research be done under federal license that mandates prior review of the project, full disclosure of the protocols to be used and a full report of the results.

• Using only the number of embryos needed for the research.

• Limiting the purpose to include only research in human embryology that cannot be done using embryos from other species, or for research that leads to compelling medical advances.

• Defining the funding, intellectual property and commercial factors so that no person, corporation or nation profits financially from the donation, research upon or destruction of a human embryo.

Cole-Turner notes that it makes no sense to try to draw ethical limits using publicly funded research versus privately funded research as a dividing line. Regardless of where the money comes from, the ethical issues are the same.

Cole-Turner’s last principle seems to argue for expansion of publicly funded research to help limit over-commercialization. Pharmaceutical companies would disagree with Cole-Turner, of course, and can offer some compelling arguments for their position. This suggests that full, vigorous, worldwide debate of the issues needs to take place.

As President-elect Obama rescinds the order, he should consider initiating a new, inclusive public forum for discussing the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cell research. We need a broad working group – including the extremes and the middles – to develop consensus around the issue and to address new issues as the research continues to unfold.