a liberal defense of Bush's stem cell research policy

[Guest guest]

I pasted in a paper I wrote last year about stem cell research policy.

In it, I try to break down the traditional Right versus Left

dichotomy of the culture war and use " liberal " arguments to support

what most people would characterize as a " conservative " policy.

Basically, I try to reframe the issue in a new way that gets people

thinking more creatively about it (bill, it was an attempt at applying

a bit of pragmatic method). This doesn't relate to dwarfisn really,

but I think it represents a perspective on the stem cell debate that

most people have not considered.

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Simply put, the debate over stem cell research policy is a debate over

the moral status of the embryos that are destroyed when a line of

these cells are created for research purposes. There would be no

debate over stem cell research policy if there was no debate over this

issue. The fundamental question that must be answered is: Do human

embryos meet the necessary and sufficient criteria to be given the

moral – and hence legal – status of human persons that are full

members of the moral community? Any policy addressing stem cell

research must address this difficult question, but a compromise may be

at hand.

If one could set fourth a criterion or list of criteria for being

morally considerable, this policy choice would merely be a matter of

comparing the characteristics of an embryo at its " useful " stage of

development to the necessary and sufficient criteria for full moral

status. Certainly, if an embryo did not meet this criteria, no one

could or would want to stall this research that has the potential to

eliminate vast amounts of suffering in the long run. Scientists and

policy advocates claim that stem cells harvested from embryos could

unlock the medical miracles curing everything from Alzheimer's disease

to spinal cord injuries. To be sure, if we could conclusively prove

that the embryos being destroyed were not persons in the normative

sense, we would not only have the desire to pursue such research but

the moral duty to do so.

Conversely, if an embryo did meet the necessary and sufficient

criteria to qualify as a fully morally valuable human being, no

argument made by even the most famous or sympathy evoking advocate

would shake our duty to protect these embryos from exploitation and

death. If these embryos met the qualifications for personhood status,

no amount of benefit derived from their use and destruction could

justify such an action. Once something is regarded as a person, our

deepest moral intuitions keep us from killing them for the benefit of

others. Certainly, it would be absurd to propose that we use infants,

children, adolescents, or adults for such research if it resulted in

their death, because they are persons and are protected by these basic

intuitions.

Some would argue that these embryos are destined for destruction

anyway because they are left over from in vitro fertilization

techniques. However, even this argument would carry little weight if

it could be proven without any doubt that embryos at this stage of

development are the moral equivalent of the newborn or child. It

would mean that our moral obligation was to use science to find ways

to help these embryos flourish and grow into adults rather than find

ways to make their death useful to the rest of the moral community.

Ultimately, when it comes to the stem cell research issue, the policy

maker or analyst is making this choice about the moral status of the

human embryo. Problems arise because science, theology, and

philosophy have given us inadequate tools to make this choice with

certainty. Of course, arguments have been constructed using these

tools in an attempt to convince scholars, policy makers, and the

public to make this decision about whether embryos fall within the

moral fold. Most of these arguments were constructed in an attempt to

persuade others regarding the issue of abortion, which hinges on the

same choice of moral value. The perpetually controversial abortion

issue shows us that that there is no argument that wins the day

regarding the moral status of the embryo. Both sides of the argument

gain new followers with each generation and no consensus can be

reached with one completely sound argument for the moral status of the

embryo or lack thereof.

The ambiguous status of the embryo leaves the policy maker in a very

precarious situation when it comes to the stem cell research decision.

Most politicians and journalists have polarized the discussion and

fallen into rank within ideological camps, conservatives calling for a

ban on the research and liberals pushing for generous federal funding

to support the research. However, the policy maker seeking

constructive compromise is not completely without guidance on this

tricky issue. He has the precedent set by the US Supreme Court in

their January 22, 1973 ruling, Roe v. Wade. Roe creates a public

policy without answering the question of the embryo's moral status and

does this explicitly in the majority decision that reads: " We need not

resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained

in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology

are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in

the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate

as to the answer. "

So, by crafting this decision, the highest court of the land did not

explicitly argue that an embryo is not morally valuable, but merely

that there is no compelling evidence that it does have full moral and

legal status. In other words, the Texas statute that was overturned

by Roe was grounded in the belief that an embryo should be valued and

hence protected from its conception and the Supreme Court's ruling

found that there was not enough evidence or consensus to establish

this claim. However, the court did not go as far as to say that it

could absolutely conclude an embryo is not morally valuable and that

no one should ever see an embryo and fetus as such. Surely, the

court did not rule that every doctor must supply abortion on demand

and consider an embryo and fetus as morally worthless. Further, it

did not say an embryo or fetus lacked moral value and so every mother

who was faced with a certain set of circumstances like poverty had a

moral and a legal responsibility to seek an abortion.

The compromise struck by the court on this issue of when life begins –

or what the necessary and sufficient criteria for moral value should

be – was simply the decision not to decide. Instead, the court left

this decision up to the mother, couple, and doctor. In other words,

one of the many " choices, " perhaps the essential choice, left to the

individual regarding abortion is how they view the moral value of the

embryo or fetus. Ultimately, because there was no compelling argument

one way or the other, the Roe Supreme Court avoided crafting a policy

that characterized the embryo or fetus as valuable or not and left

this matter up to individual choice.

Can we learn anything useful concerning stem cell research embryos

from Justice Blackmun's majority decision? Could such a compromise be

reached regarding the moral status of embryos involved in stem cell

research? The answer to this question is that such a compromise has

already been laid out on the table. Despite the enthusiastic

" pro-life " language President Bush uses when talking about the embryos

in question, the content of his policy regarding federal funding for

the research is, at its essence, pro-choice because it strikes the

same compromise that Blackmun first created.

Certainly, Bush angered both abortion rights and stem cell research

advocates with the language of his August 9, 2001 speech when he first

announced the policy position his administration would pursue. This

was caused by his pro-life comments like, " Research on embryonic stem

cells raises profound ethical questions, because extracting the stem

cell destroys the embryo, and thus destroys its potential for life.

Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique

genetic potential of an individual human being. " Certainly, when

dealing with this issue, Bush's language often implies that his

religious commitments have already decided for him the issue of an

embryo's moral status, " I also believe human life is a sacred gift

from our Creator. I worry about a culture that devalues life, and

believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and

encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world. "

Since he has come under heavy fire for his position on stem cell

research from celebrities and even Reagan, his language has

become even more decisive when it comes to his moral regard for

embryos. In his 2004 presidential debate with Senator Kerry, Bush

stated, " Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life

to create a stem cell… To destroy life to save life is one of the real

ethical dilemmas that we face… I had to make the decision, do we

destroy more life? Do we continue to destroy life? " Despite such

language, the content of Bush's policy on stem cell research mirrors

Blackmun's decision when it comes to the federal government's official

stance on an embryo's moral value.

President Bush's decision announced in the 2001 speech provides

federal funding for stem cell research that does not destroy embryos,

but stops short of " taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage

further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential

for life. " At first, it would seem that such a stance makes the

decision about the worth of embryos in favor of the embryo as

valuable. However, we need to also look at what this policy does not

do. It does not ask congress to ban embryonic stem cell research, but

merely does not give it federal funding. So, Bush does not create a

policy that reduces an embryo to purely instrumental value by putting

the governmental stamp of approval on this research with federal

funding, but neither does he decide that the embryo is intrinsically

morally valuable, because such a policy would have to ban the research

all-together.

In other words, like Blackmun's decision, Bush's policy leaves the

choice of how to view the moral status of an embryo to the individual.

Of course, the individuals making this choice are not the same in

each case. The decision on how to view the fetus and embryo regarding

abortion is made by pregnant women, couples and doctors, while the

status of embryos involved in stem cell research is decided by the

privately funded university scientist, the biotech company executive,

or the state governor. By leaving this choice up to the free market,

Bush has mirrored the precedent set by Roe and decided not to decide

about the moral status of the embryo. Although Bush's rhetoric

describing his compromise could be more accurate and less divisive,

this compromise is the best that can be hoped for when it comes to the

incredibly thorny and ambiguous issue of the moral worth of a human

embryo.