Would Authorize Federal Funding of Destructive Research on Embryos

NIH Guidelines Invite Brave New World of Humans as Spare Parts

By Richard M. Doerflinger
"I think there may be issues in the future that will require us to look at the restrictions again. And I think it's important to remember that this is all incremental, that we're making an agreement for now about how we want to proceed and we can, if we wish, change it in the future."

Thus spoke Dr. Ron McKay of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on August 23. His remarks on National Public Radio came hours after his agency released final guidelines which will compel American taxpayers to fund experiments requiring the destruction of human embryos.
President Clinton praised the guidelines for their "rigorous ethical standards." But there is nothing ethical about the way these guidelines treat human embryos -- and as Dr. McKay observed, any limits that remain are merely temporary.

The Guidelines
The NIH guidelines tell researchers how to obtain "excess" living human embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics so they can destroy the embryos for their "stem cells."
These are fast-growing, unspecialized cells that may be able to produce a wide variety of cells and tissues needed by the body.

News media have misreported what the guidelines will do, while giving short shrift to the existence of morally acceptable -- and probably safer -- alternatives. Some accounts even say that the guidelines address pro-life objections raised by tens of thousands of Americans who provided "public comment" on NIH's guidelines published last December. In fact the final guidelines are as bad as, and in one respect even worse than, the draft guidelines.

The guidelines do forbid directly using federal dollars for the specific act of killing human embryos. That is only because the NIH must pretend to comply with a current federal law (the Dickey Amendment), approved by Congress every year since 1996, which forbids funding "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

The NIH insists that under the guidelines, it will not be funding research "in which" embryos are destroyed, because its grants for stem cell research will kick in only after these embryos are killed for their stem cells. But of course, it is precisely the act of killing the embryos (or having them killed by others) that will make scientists eligible for NIH grants.

Even the NIH's allies on President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) have said it is "disingenuous" to claim that the NIH is not supporting the killing of embryos through this scheme. Rank hypocrisy is an even better description.

The NIH's other claim to moral sensitivity is this: It will carefully select which embryos are destroyed. Only embryos created in the lab for "reproductive purposes" who are now "in excess of clinical need" (that is, no longer wanted by their parents) will be used. Some reporters treat this as a concession to the pro-life movement. But can they really believe that this movement only wants to protect unborn children who are wanted by their parents?

Here the final guidelines add an extra twist. Last year's draft restricted the project to embryos created for "infertility treatment." This is now expanded to cover all embryos created for "fertility treatment," to include embryos created "to facilitate reproduction in fertile, as well as in infertile, individuals."

These will not necessarily be embryos who were created by IVF because their parents couldn't have a baby any other way. Fertile couples can participate, spurred on by a clinic's promise that any unused embryos will help to usher in the brave new world of medical progress.
The NIH says it will forbid any use of embryos "specially created" for research. But that assurance is now meaningless. As far as the NIH will know, all the embryos killed in this project could be from couples who do not need IVF, but who had embryos created in this way because this research project is available.

Imagine the articles that will appear in some women's magazines. Does your father have Parkinson's disease, your grandmother have Alzheimer's, your sister have breast cancer? Get to an IVF clinic for your family members' diseases and and you can have babies while donating your "excess" embryos to produce cures for your family members' diseases.

The Next Step: Embryos Made to Order
The NIH guidelines still forbid use of embryos created for research by cloning, saying that this has not received adequate public discussion "at this time." But it is a likely future step in the "incremental" process outlined by Dr. McKay.

The British government now says it will support experiments in which human embryos are created by cloning and then killed for their stem cells. To prevent the cells from being rejected as foreign tissue, British scientists will make the embryos "to order," by using patients' own DNA.
These embryos will be created specifically and only for destruction -- in fact it will be illegal to try to bring them to live birth. The government will define a class of human beings that it is illegal not to kill!

The U.S. biotechnology company most involved in embryonic stem cell research, the Geron Corporation, merged last year with the Scottish firm that used cloning to make "Dolly" the sheep. Thus Geron has combined its stem cell expertise with the cloning know- how (and looser laws) of the British Isles. This could result in international traffic in creating and destroying human lives for profit. Once the NIH has done its lab work with cells from "spare" embryos and feels ready to attempt human transplants, it can insist on dropping the ban on cloning so it can produce genetically matched tissue that won't be rejected by patients' bodies.

The Road Not Taken: Adult Stem Cells
Pro-life experts have argued that adult stem cells -- found in nerve tissue, umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, etc. -- provide a morally acceptable alternative that does not require doing harm to human beings. The NIH responds to this argument in two ways.

First, the guidelines say that while adult stem cells are promising, we cannot be sure at this time which cells will be " the very best source" for future therapies, so "it is important to simultaneously pursue all lines of promising research."

Here the NIH simply violates the standard set last year by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. The NBAC concluded that " human embryos deserve respect as a form of human life," and so should not be destroyed needlessly: "In our judgment, the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research."

Open-ended fishing expeditions to see which stem cells are "the very best" simply don't qualify, even by the NBAC's loose standards.

Perhaps realizing this, the NIH's second ploy is denial: Simply refusing to acknowledge the benefits of adult stem cells. The final NIH guidelines make various claims: adult nerve stem cells can be obtained "only by removing a portion of the brain" and risking harm to patients; often one cannot "grow enough cells" in culture for treatments; and adult stem cells cannot be used to create "all cell and tissue types."

But a week before the NIH issued these guidelines, NIH-funded researchers blew the agency's arguments to bits. A startling breakthrough was announced in the Journal of Neuroscience Research, showing that stem cells from patients' own bone marrow can be directed to provide an "abundant and accessible" supply of nerve cells for transplant. The authors say this confirms earlier studies suggesting that adult stem cells "may be less restricted than was previously thought" -- that they can indeed be "pluripotent," as embryonic cells are.

These stem cells can easily be obtained from a patient's own bone marrow, cultured to produce a virtually unlimited supply of new nerve cells, and transplanted back into that patient to treat illnesses and disabilities of the brain and spinal cord. Because the cells are a perfect genetic match for the patient, they avoid the ethical problem of destroying embryos as well as the medical problem of rejecting foreign tissue. Our bodies supply their own repair kits, so we can pursue cures without cannibalizing our young.

This groundbreaking research was also funded by the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which has testified that the NIH must fund embryonic stem cell research. The foundation's congressional testimony was delivered April 26 by activist actor Christopher Reeve himself, who said that adult stem cells are no adequate substitute because they "are no longer pluripotent, or capable of transforming into other cell types." Yet the foundation's own study proving just the opposite was submitted for publication on March 31, a month before that hearing. (For a detailed rebuttal of the NIH's claims about adult stem cells, see www.stemcellresearch.org/ pr000829.htm.)

At the Crossroads
The only good thing about the NIH guidelines is that they come from a federal bureaucracy. That means it will take months of red tape before tax dollars are disbursed to researchers for embryonic stem cell research. So the next President will decide whether taxpayers are forced to fund this immoral and illegal research.

As the Boston Globe noted on August 24, the major presidential candidates disagree on this issue: Vice President Al Gore supports federal funding for destructive embryo research, while Governor George W. Bush opposes it.

This month the Senate may also debate a "Stem Cell Research Act" sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D- Iowa). Though destroying embryos for research is a felony in his home state, Sen. Specter will try to change current federal law to fund the actual killing of human embryos as well as research on the resulting stem cells.

Pro-life members of Congress, such as Congressman Jay Dickey (R- Ar.) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.), will oppose this bill and explore ways to make the NIH obey current law against supporting destructive embryo research.

While the short-term political outcome is uncertain, a longer view shows us two very different roads for medical research in the 21st century. One road leads us to explore the life-giving resources in our own bodies for treating and even curing debilitating diseases. The other road takes us down a slippery slope toward creating and destroying other human beings for our benefit -- a future in which the most vulnerable members of our family are seen as nothing more than spare parts.

Mr. Doerflinger is associate director for policy development at the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.