"You Could Hear a Pin Drop"

By Dave Andrusko

You could hear a pin drop at a packed hearing held July 17 by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. And that hushed reverence wasn't because of the awe-inspiring (and extremely controversial) topic on the agenda: stem cell research that would require the destruction of human embryos.

Instead the spectators were taken aback by the powerful testimony against proposals to lethally cull stem cells from human embryos. These objections were personified and made real by extraordinary witnesses who demonstrated both that nascent human life is no less human life than any other and that there are morally unobjectionable alternatives to vivisecting human embryos.

John and Lucinda Borden are the parents of nine-month-old twins, Mark and Luke. What made this otherwise unremarkable fact keenly significant was that the boys were adopted as embryos through the California-based Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program. In this program genetic parents donate their embryos to infertile couples.

Mark and Luke's flesh-and-blood existence dismantled two noxious ideas expounded by proponents of stem cell research that would require the destruction of human embryos: that all "spare" embryos will be destroyed--and therefore why not lethally cull their stem cells to attempt to remedy various diseases--and that early human life is nothing more than a clump of cells lacking in moral and ethical significance.

As his wife, Lucinda, held up a photo of their boys when they were embryos, John Borden rose from behind the witness table, a son cradled in each arm. His arms full of love, his voice filled with indignation, John Borden asked, "Which one of my children would you kill? Which one would you choose to take?"

If that weren't dramatic enough, interspersed between these two questions came the sound of a baby who had chosen just that moment to playfully squawk. This very human response underscored what Lucinda had said earlier: "Mark and Luke are living rebuttals to the claims that embryos are not people."

Marlene Strege came with her now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Hanna. "[My daughter] is an ambassador for the roughly 188,000 frozen human embryos like her...who could be adopted rather than terminated."

She said she cried when she heard Sen. Tom Harkin in a radio interview refer to frozen human embryos as "nothing more than a dot on a piece of paper."

When her husband came home, she told him, "Our little dot just put Winnie the Pooh in the toilet today."

Powerful in a different but equally significant way were the remarks of 16-year-old Nathan Salley. (See also the story on page 17.) Nathan told the subcommittee his leukemia was in remission.

The source of this wonderful turn of events? The infusion of stem cells, not from clones or from embryonic human beings, but from umbilical cord blood, which is rich in stem cells and morally uncontroversial.

"I am living proof," he said, that there are "useful alternatives to embryonic stem cell research and that embryos do not need to be killed." According to the New York Times, "As he spoke, his parents sat behind him, clutching hands; his mother's lips trembled and she fought back tears."

"Hanna, Luke, and Mark give the debate over stem-cell research three beautiful faces," said Chris Smith (R-NJ), who has introduced the Responsible Stem-Cell Research Act of 2001 to provide an additional $30 million in federal funding for adult stem cell research.

Pro-life Congressman David Weldon, M.D. (R-Fl.), warned that embryonic stem cells have not even been applied successfully in animal models. "Embryonic stem cell research to me is entirely hypothetical," he added.

Weldon said, "I would challenge anyone who makes the assertion [that embryonic stem cells are superior to adult stem cells] to debate me on the issues."