WASHINGTON, Aug 13, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Two responses to President Bush’s stem cell decision deserve special mention.
One delivered by Mark Pickup, a disabled activist who has chronic, progressive multiple sclerosis. Mark writes, President Bush “crossed a moral line . In seeking compromise, (he) unintentionally drove into America’s conscience the thin edge of an immoral wedge; the wedge will widen as more pressure is applied by special interests to have increased research that relies upon destroying early human life.” Mark explains, “This has been the pattern of human behaviour throughout the ages: That which was previously unthinkable becomes quite thinkable, then speakable, then possible and finally necessary.”“And so what about the 60 lines of genetic material derived from embryonic life sacrificed on the altar of experimental science? I want no part of it anymore than I would want the kidneys Jack Kevorkian removed from Joseph Tushowski of Las Vegas after killing him and then offering the organs for public consumption. Jack’s utilitarian reasoning was the same as the fetal stem cell utilitarians are putting forth to get their latex gloves on frozen embryos: “They’re going to be wasted anyway!”,” writes Mark. He concludes courageously, “I will not accept deliverance from MS at the expense of another life. I’d rather stay in my wheelchair and wait for stem cell therapy that does not rely of the destruction of human life.”
Catholic World News editor Philip F. Lawler makes a similar point calling for a “patient’s equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath. We might join in a pledging that we shall refuse any medical treatment that requires, or profits from, the deliberate killing of human beings.”
Lawler identifies the capitulation on embryo research, not as Bush’s decision on stem cells, but as the allowance of in vitro fertilization. “And then there is another dimension to this debate—an issue that has rarely been raised amid the clamor over stem-cell research. If it is immoral to extract stem cells from human embryos, isn’t it also immoral to leave those embryos in a freezer? Isn’t it immoral to sacrifice several dozen embryos—human lives—in the quest for one successful pregnancy? There too, in the process of in vitro fertilization, we are exploiting some human lives for the benefit of others,” he writes. Lawler suggests that the “debate over the fate of frozen embryos would not have occurred if, years ago, the world had listened to the wisdom of the Catholic Church, and recognized the immorality of in vitro fertilization. We are tempted to exploit these embryos for stem-cell research only because we are already exploiting them to achieve pregnancy by artificial means.”
Lawler concludes, “It is a great blessing when a barren couple conceives a child—just as it would be a great blessing if patients recovered from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease as the result of stem-cell research. But if the blessed result is achieved through the destruction of human lives, then the cost is too high.”