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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
So that's where this new bill comes in, right? The supporters basically want the government to fund research on new stem cells?
Right. Supporters of the current bill -- it's called Castle-DeGette in the House, after its chief sponsors, Republican Mike Castle and Democrat Diana DeGette -- point out that there are more than 400,000 human embryos currently stored in freezers at in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics across the land, and that many of these can be used for stem cells.
Wait. Where did these embryos come from, and how did they get put on ice?
The embryos in storage were created as part of routine fertility treatments. It's common in IVF medicine for a doctor to fertilize several of a woman's eggs, creating multiple fertilized embryos, and then to implant only a few of those embryos in the woman's uterus in the hopes of producing a baby. The rest of the embryos -- the ones not implanted, which are usually the ones that doctors determine are not growing normally, or simply just don't look right -- are "cryopreserved," or frozen.
Though procedures vary from clinic to clinic, IVF patients are often free to determine what should happen to their frozen embryos, and most elect to do nothing at all with them -- to keep the embryos frozen indefinitely, in the event they may need the embryos again. According to a 2003 study by the RAND Corp., the vast majority of the 400,000 frozen embryos currently in storage are being saved by patients for possible future pregnancy attempts. A small number of embryos -- 2.3 percent -- have been slated to be donated to other expectant parents (what some on the right call "embryo adoption," and what fertility doctors call "embryo donation"), and 2.2 percent are marked to be discarded. Another small portion -- 2.8 percent, or 11,000 frozen embryos -- have been slated to be donated to scientific research.
RAND estimates that if all these 11,000 embryos marked for research were harvested for stem cells, scientists would derive about 275 new stem cell lines to work with -- an order of magnitude greater than the 22 stem cell lines currently eligible for funding.
There's one important fact to note about Castle-DeGette. The legislation would not fund the actual harvesting of stem cells from these IVF embryos; that process, which destroys the embryo, would still need to be funded with private or non-federal money (for example, from biotech firms, universities, or state governments). But if Castle-DeGette passes, all subsequent research on the stem cell lines derived from the frozen embryos would be eligible for federal funding.
So just to be clear, this bill would apply only to embryos that IVF patients don't want anymore -- embryos that would otherwise be discarded?
Yes. As written, the bill requires fertility patients to consent in writing to donation of their embryos; the patients must state that the embryos would have been discarded if they hadn't been donated for research.
And that's what makes the bill so appealing to lawmakers, even to those who identify themselves as "pro-life." One of these is Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat who often votes with Republicans on abortion issues, and who was paralyzed at 16 when an accidentally discharged bullet severed his spinal cord. "To me, being pro-life also means fighting for policies that will eliminate pain and suffering and help people enjoy longer, healthier lives," Langevin said on the House floor. "And to me, support for embryonic stem cell research is entirely consistent with that position. What could be more life-affirming than using what otherwise would be discarded to save, extend, and improve countless lives?"
Many pro-lifers agree with that rationale. In the end, 50 Republicans, some who have been given stellar marks by anti-abortion groups, voted for the bill in the House. In the Senate, the bill is thought to have at least 58 supporters, and possibly more than 60 -- enough to override a presidential veto in that chamber. It is unclear, though, if there are enough votes in the House to override a veto.
OK -- and that's important because the president has vowed to veto this bill, right?
Right. And what's remarkable about his promise is that if he goes through with it, this would be his first exercise of his veto power. Bush explains his decision by making the same argument as others on the far right -- embryos are human beings, he says, and he'll exercise his veto to protect that firm moral line.
OK, so maybe it's time to talk about whether Bush is on solid ethical ground when he says embryos are human beings. Is an embryo, as Bush says, a "real human life"?
It's not an easy question to answer. Indeed, whether or not embryos are human beings has been one of the most contentious debates in bioethics during the past decade -- and in the end the decision would seem to be a highly personal, moral choice.
Ethicists who argue that embryos are not human beings point to their lack of development. Scientists collect stem cells from a four- or five-day-old embryo, called a blastocyst. An embryo at this stage is about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter, as wide as a cross-section of human hair. Seen through a microscope, the embryo is a ball of less than 200 cells displaying no recognizable features of humanness. A days-old embryo has not yet established a head-to-toe orientation, and it has no capacity to feel pain or any other sensation. An embryo at this stage has none of the specialized cells that make up the tissues in our bodies; the cells in such an embryo have not even begun to become body cells. In a mother's body, a four-day-old embryo would not yet have attached itself to her uterine wall; its viability would be far from assured.
There are also philosophical reasons to question the embryo's status. Does the embryo have a "soul"? Bioethicists note that if it does, it's not an individual soul, since an embryo at this stage has not yet reached the point where it might split in two to become twins. An embryo can't be thought of as an individual person, some ethicists say, since it may actually become two different people.
Those on the other side of the debate counter that their lack of development does not mean embryos are not human beings. As the President's Council on Bioethics' 2004 report on stem cell research explained, critics of embryonic stem cell research "suggest that it is dangerous to begin to assign moral worth on the basis of the presence or absence of particular capacities and features, and that instead we must recognize each member of our species from his or her earliest days as a human being deserving of dignified treatment."
