STEM CELLS: WHY ALL THE FUSS?

As the debate about embryonic stem cell research rages, only one thing appears to be certain: the American people are deeply confused and deeply divided.

At stake are millions of dollars in federal funding and countless lives. Whose lives? That all depends on which side you listen to. Are scientists going to be saving millions of lives through new miracle cures or are they going to be sacrificing the lives of millions of unborn babies?

Both sides of the debate claim the moral high ground, but which side is right?

Certainly, everyone wants to see science continue to advance its noble war on disease. The promise of a cure for Alzheimers, Parkinson's, or heart disease is nothing short of a miracle. And the use of a few cells that will be discarded anyway seems like a minor detail in so great an endeavor.

Why then has there been such an outcry against this research from religious and moral leaders? Is this just another narrow-minded attempt to make science bow to religion? Perhaps, but when have so many differing creeds been so unified on a point. Or is it a case of abortion foes taking the cause to extremes? Even a long-time supporter of abortion rights, the United Methodist Church, has condemned embryonic stem cell use, citing "profound and disturbing moral and ethical issues."

And in spite of the tempting benefits, there is a general reluctance among the public. Close to two dozen states have already enacted laws restricting research on human embryos and nine ban the practice outright. By a two-to-one margin, Americans favor the use of cells taken from adult humans over the experimentation on a human embryo.

The sense of revulsion that ordinary people feel cannot be ignored. The American Heart Association learned quickly just how squeamish Americans are about such research, and reversed its support based on projected losses in volunteers and charitable income. Scientists might dismiss such feelings as sentimentality. But what if the still small voice saying, "Don't take this path," is the voice of our conscience.

There are societies existing in the world today that do not hear the call of conscience. They allow their people to starve and subject them to all manner of indignities and atrocities, including slavery, torture, even cannibalism and child sacrifice. We call these people barbarians and consider ourselves incapable of ever producing such behavior.

But what if everything that we are and have ever been rests on this one principle: that all human life is sacred? If we now decide that some human life can be set aside and sacrificed for the greater good, how will we be able to decide not to sacrifice some more? Where on the continuum of human life will we be able to place a marker and say, "These lives cannot be sacrificed."

We are faced with a great temptation: to take a small step into darkness in order to achieve what appears to be a very great good. The danger is that the darkness may conceal an abyss from which there is no return. Then, having cast away our guiding principle and everything that hung upon it, there will be no stopping our descent into barbarism.

Winston Churchill, the great statesman, who more than any other in his century understood the quiet beginnings of tyranny, urged against this sort of compromise in a memorable address in 1941, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

Kyleen Wright
President
Texans for Life Coalition

Phone: 817.572.1115 - Cell: 214.213.4296 - Fax: 817.625.3050 - kwright@texlife.org

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