Kass is right; the council's report does not reject embryonic stem cell science, nor does it ignore the benefits that society might realize from stem cells. Rather, the report seeks to balance those benefits against the argument, made by many ethicists, that human embryos represent new life and are therefore "inviolable." In the ethics of stem cell science, this question goes to the heart of the matter: Is a 5-day-old human embryo actually new life? The council got nowhere near reaching consensus on the question. Instead, it found only unbridgeable differences, and its chapter examining the ethical debate surrounding embryos reads as if it was put together by a committee in total disagreement. Every statement is followed by a caveat, and in the end, the "on-the-one-hand this, on-the-other-hand that" argument leads nowhere. One is left feeling that the moral status of embryos will probably forever remain in dispute, constantly eluding compromise.

To scientists who favor embryonic stem cell research, a 5-day-old human embryo -- which is about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter, as big as a cross-section of human hair is wide -- is just an ordinary group of cells, of no more moral significance than any other biological material. "It's not a developing human being," says Michael West, of Advanced Cell Technology. "There are no body cells of any kind" in the embryo at this stage, West explains. "There are not even any cells that have begun to become any body cells of any kind."

In the first two weeks, the embryo's head-to-toe orientation has not yet been established. It does not have a nervous system, and no capacity for feeling pain (or anything else). Indeed, the young embryo has not yet reached the stage when it would divide into two if it's destined to become identical twins -- a fact that some have used to conclude that the embryo's "individuality must not yet be established," as the council's report says, because it "might yet become two embryos."

"The arguments that this is somehow a human being are unfounded and have no basis in religion or science," West says. "Those in the religious community who are saying this are basing it on nothing -- there's nothing in any religious document that says this is even against religion."

Others in the debate point out that embryos are already being destroyed or are slated for destruction as part of the routine business of in vitro fertilization. In the United States, there are more than 400,000 embryos in frozen storage in IVF clinics; nobody believes that the majority of embryos will ever become children. (Since many of them were stored because clinicians determined they didn't have a strong chance of becoming children, implanting them would actually raise ethical questions.) Why not harvest stem cells from these embryos? "Many conservative pro-life individuals should see this as a good thing," says Bob Goldstein, the chief scientific officer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which favors a looser policy on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. "It would be a benefit to somebody who's sick -- one could view that as a pro-life event. So we're not standing up and saying please destroy embryos. It's occurring in the natural course of events. We're saying if you're going to be destroying these embryos anyway or they're not suitable for IVF, let's use them for something good."

One study presented to the council estimated that if all of the embryos in storage were processed, scientists would yield about 275 stem cell types for research -- a quantum leap over the number of cell lines available today. But critics of embryonic stem cell science argue there is nothing intrinsic about "IVF spares" that allows us to destroy them -- they are, for these people, still developing human life, and we have a duty to protect (or at least not to destroy) life. In modern medicine, research on people is only acceptable if the subject has granted his "informed consent"; if we start working on embryos, opponents of embryonic stem cell research say, aren't we setting a bad precedent for the limits society should set on scientific experimentation conducted on human beings? Those who believe that even these young embryos deserve protection concede that there may be significant differences between us and embryos, but all of us, they point out, started out as embryos; genetically, in maybe the only way that counts, we are the same as embryos. So what if the embryos can't feel pain? The critics "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," the council's report states.

What you conclude about the moral status of embryos would seem, in the end, to be a deeply personal decision; there is no right answer here, and the council's report should be commended for making that clear. The problem is, your personal opinion on the matter doesn't much count these days. Only the president's does.

It was in the summer of 2001 that George W. Bush wrestled with this question of the moral status of human embryos. After weeks of what the White House promoted as anguished deliberation, he announced his policy decision in a televised address from his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush said he'd spoken to many experts, and he encountered "widespread disagreement" in his quest for truth. Some people told him that because a 5-day-old "cluster of cells" in a dish could not develop on its own, it was not to be considered a new human being. Others said that it would be with a "heavy heart" that we destroy "the seeds of the next generation."

Bush sided with the second line of reasoning. "I believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator," he said. Bush decided that no federal money would go to fund any stem cells harvested from embryos destroyed after his speech, on Aug. 9, 2001. But private companies had already created "more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines," Bush said, and he announced that the government would support research on those stem cells, "where the life and death decision has already been made." The policy "allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line," he said.

The White House promoted Bush's policy as one of compromise, a moderate position in an area that was largely free of moderation; it embodied "compassionate conservatism." But it soon became clear there was nothing moderate about Bush's plan. While it was true that scientists had created "more than 60 genetically diverse stem cells lines," reporters discovered that only a handful of them were good enough for actual research. Currently, there are only 15 different kinds of stem cells available for scientists seeking federal research money. According to an unpublished report obtained from the National Institutes of Health by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, the government's "best case scenario" is that only eight additional pre-Aug. 9 stem cell lines (for a total of 23) will ever be ready for research.

Since Aug. 9, 2001, dozens of new stem cell lines have been created by private laboratories around the world. Under Bush's policy, American researchers are prohibited from using federal money to work on the new lines. And even though many scientists would like Bush to expand federal money to these cell types, he can't; as the bioethics council says in its report, the only way for Bush to support expansion is by tacitly supporting the destruction of human embryos that occurred after he declared that such destruction went against the will of God. "Funding research on the currently ineligible lines derived after August 9, 2001," the council notes, "would not extend the logic of the policy or of the law, but rather contradict them both: it would be a difference not of degree but of principle."

In a sense, then, Bush is boxed in by his own moral decision, and so are we all. He is committed to his line of thinking, whatever the cost. As the bioethics council points out in its report, Tommy Thompson, Bush's secretary of health and human services, has actually said that "neither unexpected scientific breakthroughs nor unanticipated research problems would cause Bush to reconsider" his policy, because it is based on "a high moral line that this president is not going to cross."

Recent Stories