The debate about embryonic stem cell experimentation, which has been ignited anew following President Ronald Reagan's death, was predictable. The Former President had suffered for a decade from dreaded Alzheimer's disease, and supporters of embryonic stem cell research claim that Alzheimer's is one of the disorders that embryonic stem cell research can help cure. One peripheral aspect of the debate continues to target as unwarranted any prohibitions against federal funding for such research.

Stem cell research or therapy is one thing. What Catholic ethics is primarily concerned about is the source of embryonic cells. As bioethicist Father Kevin D. O'Rourke explains in the Summer 2004 issue of The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly: "The embryos from which ES cells are derived must be destroyed in the process of obtaining them" (p. 292).

For a Catholic believer, this is equivalent to direct abortion. So-called ES cells constitute human cells derived from embryos. The process used was evidently developed by two teams of scientists during the late 1990s. One phase of this development occurred at the University of Wisconsin; the other, at Johns Hopkins.

Pope John Paul II, in his powerfully illuminating encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995), wrote, after solemnly rejecting direct abortion as unethical; "This evaluation of the morality of abortion is to be applied also to the recent forms of intervention on human embryos which although carried out for purposes legitimate in themselves, inevitably involve the killing of those embryos. This is the case with experimentation on embryos, which is becoming increasingly widespread in the field of biomedical research and is legally permitted in some countries" (No. 63).

During the experiments of the late 1990s, it was also discovered that some stem cells appear in adult tissue. According to the scientific literature cited by Father 0'Rourke, adult stem cells are rarer than embryonic stem cells, but ... can be retrieved for therapy" (op. cit., p. 291). Moreover he writes: "The success of therapy using adult stem cells, although minimized by some, cannot be denied. Adult stem cells have successfully treated hundreds of thousands of patients with cancer and leukemia, they have repaired damaged corneas restoring sight ... they have healed broken bones and torn cartilages in clinical trials, and they are being used to help regenerate heart tissue... To date they would appear to be more effective than ES cells insofar as therapy is concerned" (op.cit, p. 292).

Adult stem cells obviously do not entail the destruction of human life. Hence research or therapy utilizing adult stem cells can be morally acceptable. The testimony given by Richard Doerflinger, representing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, before a Congressional subcommittee, on 18 July 2001, is especially meaningful:

"A decade ago it was fetal tissue from abortions that was hailed as the magic bullet that might cure diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and many other conditions in a few years, if only federal funds were provided. By the time such funds were approved in 1993, however, it was already becoming clear that fetal tissue from abortions would be largely useless in treating diabetes. Millions of taxpayers' dollars were diverted toward fetal tissue transplant trials for Parkinson's disease – and the Final results were not only disappointing but 'devastating,' according to The New York Times" (8 March, 2001).

The key argument being raised today in favor of embryonic stem cell research or therapy is that it can "save" lives. Even if this claim could be verified, the argument is an ethically bankrupt one, since it rests on the horrendous (horrendously utilitarian, really) premise that the end justifies the means. Pope John Paul II repeatedly reminds the Church and the world that no human being can be "used" by another. One cannot morally take the life of one person in order to serve another or any goal, howsoever lofty it may seem. As the 1987 Vatican document, Donum Vitae, expresses it:

...No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings, or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's body" Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 22 Feb. 1987; Sec. 4).

At any rate, President Reagan's adamant stance against embryonic stem cell experimentation is of public record. As Judge William P. Clark, his friend, as well as his National Security Advisor, explained in the 11 June 2004 0p-ed Page of The New York Times, the President "began a de facto ban on federal financing of embryo research that he held to throughout his presidency." Judge Clark is certain that the President "would have urged our nation to look to adult stem cell research – which has yielded many clinical successes – and away from the destruction of developing human lives, which has yielded none."

Copyright © 2004 The Catholic Transcript, Hartford, Connecticut

Msgr. David Q. Liptak is Pastor of St. Catherine Parish, Broad Brook, CT, and Censor Librorum for the Archdiocese of Hartford.

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