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Stem Cells: A Modest ProposalIs it the ghastly eagerness with which, falsely framing the issue as either scientific progress or moral scruples, we merrily toss away the latter? President Bush just met with Pope John Paul II and heaped praise on his moral courage: "You have urged men and women of good will to take to their knees before God and to stand, unafraid, before tyrants," said Bush. "And this has added greatly to the momentum of freedom in our time. Where there is oppression you speak of human rights; where there is poverty you speak of justice and hope. Where there is ancient hatred, you defend and display a tolerance that reaches beyond every boundary of race and nation and belief." The 81-year-old pontiff in return asked President Bush to show a little moral courage of his own. Is America, which aspires to be a shining light to other countries, really about to entertain the idea of creating human embryos for research purposes? The pope warned Bush, who last week said he was still mulling over the question of removing bars to federally funded stem cell research, against "evils" such as "proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process." Maybe what gets me is the spectacle of normally "pro-life" men suddenly losing their principles when they get a whiff of personal benefit. "I'm a hypocrite," as one conservative New Jersey talk radio host cheerfully told me. It's one thing to have moral scruples about protecting human life when it's only women who bear the burden. But when it comes to scientific research that might save MY life, hey! Carve up those eentsy-weentsy unborn babies -- and here, have some taxpayer dollars to do it! No. I think what bothers me most about the Brave New World Bush may launch is not that a human life will be destroyed, but that these human lives are, collectively, the next generation. These are not just any old humans we're talking about consuming; they are our young! This offends, at the deepest level, my core, gut instincts about what life is for. In a good society, adults sacrifice for the next generation; they don't sacrifice the next generation to the needs of adults. What bothers me second most is the pessimism and lack of faith in human creativity implied by the advocates' argument: Either eat your young or people will die of MS, Alzheimer's, diabetes. This is always the devil's bargain, this attempt to make us believe that there is only one way to get some great thing, and that is to surrender all scruples. The truth is that in scientific terms, the answer is just not clear. Stem cells can be derived from multiple sources: umbilical cord blood, 5- to 10-week-old fetuses, adult tissues (fat, brain), embryos and pre-embryos. These cells have different characteristics, and as the National Institutes of Health report just released emphasizes, we just don't know "the extent to which these different cell types will be useful in the development of cell-based therapies to treat disease." There's no guarantee that opening floodgates of taxpayer dollars for embryo research will lead to a cure for anything. It may even divert scientists' time and attention from more promising strategies. The dismal record of the government's 30-year war on cancer should make us hesitant about putting too much faith in government science anyway. Right now, venture capital is flowing into adult stem cell research at twice the rate of embryonic stem cell research, according to biotech expert Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Any government research in this area is likely to be deeply distorted by abortion politics, anyway, as Dems rush to fund an end to any lingering respect for human life in its earliest stages. Here's one modest proposal: How about funding a new national program to get parents to donate stem cells from umbilical cords? That way President Bush could preserve a respect for human life while advancing science. We can have decency and progress, too. All we have to do is care enough to find a better way. By Maggie Gallagher
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