Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Zero Results for Human Persons from Embryonic Stem Cells

There are no success stories for real people using embryonic stem cells. No human patient in the world has even received an embryonic stem cell because the cells are unstable and tend to cause tumors.

The Living Human Embryo is Always Destroyed to Obtain the Stem Cells
Embryonic stem cells remain controversial because a living human embryo must be killed to obtain the cells. Huge ethical problems here. We have to destroy a life because maybe -- and it is a big maybe – another person might be helped someday.

The “hype” about embryonic stem cells is such that you and many others probably believe “cures” are either happening or right around the corner for patients with Parkinson’s disease or diabetes. You are sadly misled. Even James Thomson, the UW-Madison scientist who first isolated embryonic stem cells, expressed as recently as January 2007 in an interview that “it may be decades before stem cells produce treatments that cure diabetes, Parkinson’s disease or help the paralyzed walk again.” Thomson said that there is more than a little “irrational exuberance” surrounding embryonic stem cells.

Why Not Get Some “Good” from Frozen Embryos
Which Are Going to Be Destroyed Anyway?
You probably feel on some level that we should obtain some “good” for people suffering from serious conditions by using frozen embryos that might be discarded. This line of reasoning ignores basic ethical principles that one human being should not be destroyed or used for the potential or even real benefit to another. And, this argument is being oversold.

Of the 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States, only 2-3% are potentially available for research purposes. If all 8,000 to 12,000 are donated, only 275 will be useful for creating stem cell lines after thawing and other processes, far too few for the number of researchers who want them. That’s why scientists will likely eventually create human embryos through the process of in vitro fertilization or clone human embryos and then destroy them for research purposes.

Further, human embryos don’t have to be destroyed. They can be made available for adoption.

Is There an End to the Stem Cell Debate?

In what is regarded as a major scientific breakthrough, scientists in Wisconsin and Japan reported in late 2007 that they were able to coax ordinary skin cells into becoming pluripotent stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells behave like embryonic stem cells and are believed to have the potential to be able to become any cell in the human body. No living human beings had to be destroyed to achieve this discovery which should revolutionize this entire area of research.

To be certain, the ethical controversy over destruction of human embryos has been minimized, if not completely mitigated, by this discovery.

The practical benefits are enormous. It is far easier to extract skin cells from a child or adult than to create and destroy an embryo or gain permission to use and destroy a frozen embryo. There is a limited supply of frozen embryos. Embryonic stem cells will be rejected because they carry the DNA of a different human person; using a person's own cells eliminates the rejection factor.

Human cloning, and all of the risks and disadvantages associated with this process, is no longer necessary. Women will not have to undergo risks to produce enough eggs to allow human cloning to be practiced. The perceived need to create chimeras (which are part animal–part human) to carry out human cloning is eliminated.

Pluripotent stem cells contain all of the problems associated with embryonic stem cells and are too dangerous to put into a person. This discovery should not halt in any way the incredible progress of adult stem cells which are helping real people with real diseases.

It remains to be seen if scientists will cling to embryonic stem cell research or move to ethical and practical research using pluripotent stem cells.

Thanks to the moral fortitude and diligence of many, we have learned, once again, that advances in the treatment of human persons do not have to sacrifice one person for the benefit of another.