The Statesman editorial today praised President Obama for opening the door to taxpayer-funded research on embryo-destructive stem cell research Monday.
Where to begin.
“Getting Rid of a Restrictive Ban”
First, like most coverage of this story, the editors presented Obama as “getting rid of a restrictive ban”--as if no stem cell research has been going on in privately-funded endeavors until Monday, and as if federal funding of such research had once flowed to stem cell research before President Bush. In fact, President Bush was the first to release taxpayer money to this research. But he did so through a carefully-crafted compromise designed to respect the objections of opponents.
This compromise is what has been removed. Ironically, the compromise has been removed from a President who wants to be known as a pragmatic consensus-builder on the complex issues over which good Americans happen to disagree.
There are plenty of success stories in stem cell research that does not require the destruction of human life at its earliest stage. If President Obama really wanted to support a compromise with taxpayer money, he should be promoting these alternative sources. As Ryan T. Anderson points out, "The dispute is not about whether stem-cell science should proceed; it is about how it will proceed. Will it go forward in a way that respects all human life? Or will it regard the taking of human life in its early stages as justified by the desire to advance biomedical knowledge and seek therapies?”
Sadly, Obama’s action on Monday revoked “not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells” (story).
“Ideological Concerns”
Second, the Statesman editors approved Obama’s insistence “that ideological concerns that produced the ban be discounted in federally funded research.”
This is curious, since “ideological concerns” are precisely what we are supposed to debate in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, before the people fund anything. As Robert George and Eric Cohen write:
The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.
But now, as David Brooks writes in the NY Times, researchers “have been freed from the vulgar moralism of the masses, so they can operate according to the vulgar utilitarianism of their own social clique -- the belief that some human lives can be planted, plucked and processed for the benefit of others.”
Now, it's important to note that President Obama is in no way consistent when he objects to “ideological” concerns interfering with scientific research. While in Monday’s announcement the President claimed that the former ban on embryonic-destructive stem cell research was “ideological” and “political,” he nevertheless laid out an equally-ideological assurance that his government would never be involved in cloning which, he said, is “profoundly wrong and has no place in our society, or any society.”
So let’s get this straight: objections to the destruction of human life at its earliest stage is an “ideology” that should not be “imposed” artificially on scientific research. But cloning: well, we can impose our ideological squeamishness upon scientific research in that field. Why is the first objection an imposition of irrational sentiment upon science and not the other? And, if neither President Obama--nor the Statesman editors--can answer this question, how long will moral objections to cloning last?
It’s not just prolife writers who have raised eyebrows over the idea that objecting to embryo-destructive stem cell research is simply imposing “politics” over scientific freedom. Pro-choice writer, William Saletan wrote in Slate:
Think about what’s being dismissed here as “politics” and “ideology.” You don’t have to equate embryos with full-grown human beings—I don’t—to appreciate the danger of exploiting them. Embryos are the beginnings of people. They’re not parts of people. They’re the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It’s the difference between using an object and using a subject. How long can we grow this subject before dismembering it to get useful cells? How far should we strip-mine humanity in order to save it?
“Mindful of the Ethical Issues”
Third, the Statesman editorial fails to acknowledge exactly how objections to embryo-destructive stem cell research should be included in policy matters. President Bush opened the door to federal funding with a compromise meant to take seriously these moral objections. All President Obama has done is acknowledge that good people have concerns while failing to include those concerns in any actionable way. “In lifting Bush’s ban,” the Statesman editors write, “Obama noted the thorny religious and ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cell research. Many people consider the embryos the beginning of life and oppose research that destroys them.”
Well, perhaps we should be impressed that Obama “noted” the concerns before running past them. But what a curious phrase the editors chose: “Many people consider the embryos the beginning of life.” Many people? Does anyone challenge that the embryo is the beginning of human life? It doesn’t require religious conviction to say so.
No, what we’re debating is not whether the embryo is the beginning of human life but whether it’s ethical to exploit human life for the possible betterment of other human life. “The stem-cell fight wasn’t a fight between ideology and science,” the prochoice author William Saletan wrote, “It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won.”
But the 50-year-olds won while assuring us that they would remain somehow mindful of the moral objections. “Science needed to be freed from the ban,” the Statesman editors write, “but should be ever mindful of the ethical issues involved in stem cell research.” The editors have yet to inform us on what those ethical issues are and what being “ever mindful” of them looks like.
If you’re new to the stem cell debate, this “Q&A: Frequently asked questions about stem cell research“ will give you a start.
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