The "Yuck" Factor

Editor's note. I'm really looking forward to your comments on this one. Please write to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

One of the most rewarding parts of my job as editor of TN&V and of National Right to Life News is that I get to talk to so many people and read so many accounts that no sooner do I finish one than something else crops up that deepens and more finely tunes the analysis.

For example, early yesterday afternoon I was talking to an old friend, a nationally syndicated columnist who'd asked for the background data that NRLC used to backup a particular assertion in our great convention yearbook. (He knew we always carefully document our materials.)

As the conversation came to an end, we talked about "flashpoints"-- something the response to which will tell you more than just about anything else about an individual's fundamental moral orientation.

Wouldn't you know it, that very discussion was mirrored a couple of hours later in an e-mail exchange with another writer.

The phone call and the subsequent email shared a common denominator: what Dr. Leon Kass has called the "yuck factor," or, less colloquially, "repugnance."

Here's how the former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics put it: "In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power to fully articulate it."

Kass illustrates one side of the divide. If something practically burns your moral antenna to a crisp, chances are it's a clear signal that the action or behavior contemplated is to be avoided at all costs. Part of that is the intuition that just because something is legal does not mean it's morally acceptable.

The other side of the divide (as proponents I could offer practically the entire "Bioethical" establishment) is that this is simply inane, an illustration of a gut-level irrationality that has no place in "science." With this in mind, enter one of the most bizarre proposals I have ever heard, one that you would think would instantly evokes repugnance in anyone!

According to its web page, the San Francisco-based StemLifeLine Partners Company has just the thing for couples who have "completed their family planning goals" and, oh, by the way, have "left over" human embryos.  For a fee, the company will collect [a.k.a. lethally harvest] stem cells from these remaining human embryos.

In an ABC News account we're told that these "personal stem cell lines" could be "used to develop cures for diseases like diabetes, lymphoma and Parkinson's," according to one Dr. Russell Foulk. (Foulk is described as the "director of two of the four fertility clinics putting patients in touch with StemLifeLine and a member of the company's board of directors.")

According to ABC News reporter Russell Goldman, paraphrasing Foulk, "Those lines could then be turned into treatments that could be specially designed genetic matches just for donors."

Do you get it? I honestly didn't, on first blush, understand just how morally corrupt this proposal is. Using in vitro fertilization a couple creates a number of human embryos beyond the number they will implant. The "surplus" embryos are then cannibalized for stem cells that someday might help one or both of his/her parents.

Two quick thoughts. First, "We recommend that our clients commit at least ten remaining embryos to this process. to ensure high probability for the successful derivation of a personal stem cell line." This is not happenstance, but a blatant inducement to produce lots of embryos whose sole destiny is death to benefit his/her parents.

As another friend pointed out when I forwarded the materials to him, this is "taking the idea of the 'savior sibling' [the child created for the purpose of providing a donor match for an ailing sibling] to a whole new level. The cells from these embryos will likely not match even the siblings."

Second, this "first of its kind" service is not only reprehensible on its own terms, it would further divert attention away from the many, many sources of stem cells that are not ripped from a human embryos. These are ethically unobjectionable sources that already are producing therapies and cures.

It's moments like this that remind you just how real the slippery slope actually is.

If you have any comments or questions, please write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.