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I am
both honored and grateful for this opportunity to testify on a bill of
such momentous implications as the one before you.
I am a
member of the President's Council on Bioethics, but I am not here as a
representative of the Council, nor are my views intended to reflect the
deliberations and recommendations of that body. However, I am attaching to
this testimony a letter signed by five members of the Council, including
myself, conveying to you our considered opinion about the implications of
Bill 482. Nevertheless, the views expressed in what follows are strictly
my own. I stand before you as a Maryland resident who teaches moral
philosophy and the history of ethics at Georgetown University.
The preamble
of Bill 842 states that "(s)tem cell research, including use of embryonic
stem cells for medical research, raises significant ethical and policy
concerns that must be carefully considered." With your leave, I would like
to address some of those ethical concerns.
Subtitle 8
authorizes stem cell research. Both sections of Subtitle 8 explicitly
state that the human stem cells involved can be derived "from any
source." And this is deeply troubling.
From a moral
point of view the source and the manner in which human stem cells are
obtained is of the utmost importance.
Please allow
me to sort out some of the different sources:
(1) HUMAN ADULT STEM
CELLS. These cells can be obtained by a simple procedure such as drawing
blood or extraction of bone marrow from a grown individual. As long as the
procedure is reasonably safe and the person has given his or her informed
consent, there is absolutely no ethical objection to this manner of
providing material for research. Indeed, this source, together with stem
cells derived from the umbilical cord or placenta of newborns, should be
at the forefront of our efforts to find the cures promised by this
invaluable new resource for human healing. No one is harmed, the dignity
of human beings is respected, and the transplantation of cells and tissues
back to the donor would not be subject to rejection.
(2) EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS.
These are the cells obtained from a human embryo conceived by fusion of
male and female gametes and allowed to grow to the blastocyst stage. At
present (as far as I know) these cells cannot be obtained without
destroying a human embryo. Apart from the fact that there is no
genetically exact match for cells and tissues obtained in this way (due
most probably to the difference in mitochondrial DNA), there is the
serious moral objection that a genetically human being is allowed to grow
and then dismembered. Nascent human life is being used exclusively as a
means for our own goals. The same holds for stem cells derived from
so-called "spare" embryos "left over" from in vitro fertilization
attempts. These embryos, usually preserved by being frozen under special
conditions, are also human beings at an early stage of their lives. If
implanted under proper conditions, they would grow to become adults like
you and me. Here too we have an extreme instrumentalization of human life.
(3) STEM CELLS FROM
CLONED EMBRYOS. The Bill explicitly includes cells derived by Somatic Cell
Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), an accurate description of the procedure known in
everyday language as "cloning." As we know from Dolly the sheep, human
SCNT (if successful) would consist in inserting into the previously
enucleated egg of a woman the full complement of 46 chromosomes of a
somatic cell. Since Dolly was a sheep, a cloned human being would be a
human being, and the aforementioned moral concerns would also apply to
this case. There is a further reason for concern.
(4) STEM CELLS FROM
CLONED FETAL TISSUE AND FROM CLONED ADULTS. Bill 482 authorizes the
production of cloned human embryos. This would create the availability of
such embryos for implantation into a uterus for the gestation and later
birth of a human clone. Since embryonic germ cells and cadaveric fetal
tissue can only be obtained after implantation, and since the use
of both is authorized, it follows that the first step in reproductive
cloning is not banned. The explicit reference to "human adult stem cells"
followed twice by the emphatic expression "from any source, including SCNT"
insures that reproductive cloning is allowed.
Now,
both President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Rockville,
1997) and the National Academy of Sciences (Washington DC 2002) have
warned that reproductive cloning is a procedure that involves enormous
risks of harm for the mother and the child. There is also, in my view, the
serious moral concern derived from the willful imposition of a specific
genome on a human being. This would be again a case of instrumentalization
and violation of dignity.
You have
probably heard the claim that an embryo is not a person and therefore
deserves no respect or only a "special" respect that does not prevent us
from destroying him or her (I deliberately use the personal pronouns
because an embryo already has the XX or XY combination of chromosomes that
make it male or female). I could give you lengthy arguments against the
view that an embryo does not deserve our respect. I will limit myself to a
few elementary considerations.
In the
courts today if the DNA of the defendant matches the DNA found at the site
of the crime, we know that the defendant is the same individual as the
criminal. Scientists tell us that the DNA we have now is the same DNA we
had at the embryonic stage. Whether mature personhood starts in late
infancy or early childhood, each of us is the same individual he or she
was at the embryonic stage. If I had been destroyed at the embryonic
stage, I would not be here. The Golden Rule requires that I respect
nascent life just as my life was respected.
It should be
noted that the claim that each of us starts as a one cell organism is a
matter of strict scientific evidence and not of religious belief. It is
something anyone can understand and accept. If at all possible, I would
like to include as part of my deposition an article from the prestigious
journal Nature (July 4, 2002) that provides the background
information for the view I have presented.
In sum, Bill
482 is a law that while forbidding the purchase and selling of tissue
derived from stem cells would in fact authorize what can be appropriately
called "embryo farming", that is, the production, cultivation,
implantation, and subsequent destruction of countless human embryos,
cloned or not, for our own benefit. In my view, the Bill should not be
approved in its present form. A law that promotes the production and
destruction of human life cannot be a binding law. Maryland should have a
law encouraging, perhaps even subsidizing, research on stem cells derived
from willing and consenting adults. It would be the morally correct thing
to do, and probably the one that may well lead more readily to the
therapies we all desire for ourselves and our loved ones.
Note: As
presented to the committee this testimony included two attachments: A
letter opposing HB 482, signed by the witness and four other individuals
who serve on the President's Council on Bioethics; and an article by Helen
Pearson, "Your destiny, from day one," in 418 NATURE (4 July 2002), pp.
14-15. |
