President Bush's heavily choreographed decisionto support "limited" stem cell research generated the desired headlines and TVcommentary. He had anguished over the decision, we were told, and navigated aprudent course between zealous scientists who would play God and zealoustraditionalists who claim a pipeline to God. Under Bush's guidelines, stem cellresearch can qualify for federal funding if it involves existing "lines" ofprivately developed embryonic stem cells. Others could not, but the harvesting ofstem cells from human embryos can continue with private funding. Bush hadcarefully chosen a middle ground between, as he put it, the good and the good.
This construct is, of course, nonsense. Bush has essentially letscience policy be dictated by fundamentalist Protestant views about when lifebegins. (The Catholic hierarchy, which consistently opposes trifling with embryosunder whatever auspices, lent cover to Bush's middle-ground charade by helpfullyopposing his policy.)
The policy is anything but coherent, either as ethics or as science. Ifharvesting of embryonic stem cells is morally dubious, why should it beprohibited with federal funding but allowed in private laboratories? And whyshould new colonies of stem cells be suspect but existing ones be acceptable?Bush's spurious distinction recalls thousands of years of cynically corrupttheological expediency--sales of indulgences, deals between popes and kings--andit reminds us why preachers should be kept far away from the laboratory to beginwith.
Let's not forget: Though he has obfuscated his position and winked at thereligious right, Bush declined the opportunity to say that a woman should bedenied the right to terminate a pregnancy. So if an embryo can be destroyed atwill for no specified reason, why on earth object to destroying embryos in thecourse of scientific research?
There are plenty of ethical questions to address, but Bush ducked them. Shouldwe use surplus embryos discarded from fertility clinics but not those createdexplicitly for their stem cells? Should we breed embryonic clones for spare partsfor a particular individual? What about whole-human clones? But this is not themoral realm Bush inhabits. His policy simply allows private industry to continuedeveloping embryos willy-nilly--activity that Bush considers too morally suspectto get public funds. How touchingly Republican that Bush would give corporateindustry an indulgence that he denies to socially funded activity. If the marketdoes it, then by definition it must be okay.
Bush's approach sidesteps and thereby aggravates a moreserious threat to biomedical progress. The real question is: Which scientificadvances shall be publicly funded, publicly regulated, and left in the publicdomain, and which shall be private and proprietary? This issue--and not thetheological questions about when embryonic life begins--is the truly difficultpolicy question crying out for resolution.
By disdaining public science in favor of pandering to the religiousright, Bush tacitly resolves the question in favor of the private biotechindustry. In effect, the religious right is a stalking horse for companies likeGeron, which no longer need to fear competition from the National Institutes ofHealth. After all, if most funding must proceed privately, then the governmentwill have little leverage over who shall gain access to the products of theresearch and on what terms. Private stem cell colonies will be available onlybased on licenses from the patent holder. Scientists at the University ofWisconsin, which has a lucrative deal with Geron, are now suing their universityto pursue access to the research products.
As science policy, Bush's approach makes stem cell research a more extremeversion of the path taken by pharmaceutical research. Instead of broad access andcollaboration in the scientific community, stem cell breakthroughs will beproprietary products. So when the miracle cures come, they will be available onlyat astronomical costs to a narrow public, the science will be needlesslybalkanized, and the Medicare budget will take another beating. When Bushannounced his policy, most scientists were aghast, but executives of Geron werecheering.
In a stroke, Bush has managed to alienate many religious conservatives as wellas most scientists. But that hardly means that his policy adds up to a sensiblemiddle ground. One way or another, this use of embryonic stem cells willcontinue--if not in the United States, then overseas. And if the right persistswith efforts to ban such research outright, it will only drive stem cell researchoffshore all the faster, to the detriment of U.S. science.
Though Bush did it pretty effectively in the campaign, it's hard to obfuscatethe issue of reproductive choice. One either favors restricting a woman's rightto choose or does not. But the issue of human-embryo cloning and science policyis much easier to fuzz up, because there are genuinely difficult policy questionsinvolving moral quandaries and subtle issues of intellectual-property law as wellas public science versus proprietary science. And these questions come bundledwith technical concepts that few lay people easily grasp.
We need to see Bush's policy for what it is--a pure sop to the fundamentalistright. This republic, with its legions of true believers, has done best when itfollowed Jefferson's strict separation of private belief and public business.Bush's stoking of the fundamentalist brimstone with his "faith-based" and"pro-life" pandering is pure mischief. It's bad enough to allow a fanaticminority to dictate its views on reproductive rights. It's even worse to letprivate religious dogmas restrict research that could relieve suffering, enrichhealth, and extend life.
