Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T20:55:11.068Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Interventions in U.S. Human Embryo Research: An Ethical Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Ronald M. Green
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although the first human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) were produced in 1998, the direction of U.S. policy on stem cell research was set nearly 20 years earlier when the recommendations of a congressionally established Ethics Advisory Board were ignored by the Reagan administration. Thus began an unprecedented and unparalleled 30-year-long history of political intrusions in an area of scientific and biomedical research that has measurable impacts on the health of Americans. Driving these intrusions were religiously informed public policy positions that have usually escaped critical ethical analysis. Here I record my own encounters with this history of intrusions and the thinking behind them.

My most abrupt encounter with the politics of stem cell research occurred on September 6, 2006, at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Agencies, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Just a week before, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a small Massachusetts biotech company, had published a paper in the journal Nature in which they described a method for extracting stem cells from early human embryos while leaving the embryos intact and viable. As head of ACT’s Ethics Advisory Board, I had supported this research.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 220 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Klimanskaya, I., Chung, Y., Becker, S., Lu, S. J., and Lanza, R., “Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Single Blastomeres,” Nature 444 (November 23, 2006): 481–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doerflinger later gathered his criticisms and published them as “The Problem of Deception in Embryonic Stem Cell Research,” Cell Proliferation 41, Supp. 1 (2007): 65–70. It is outside my purpose here to reply to Doerflinger's many criticisms of the ACT study. At the time of this hearing, the principle criticism picked up by Senator Specter and others focused on the destruction of embryos in the experiment.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Public Law 104–99 Jan. 26, 1996 110 STAT. 34, Sec. 128.Google Scholar
President's Council on Bioethics, Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells: A White Paper (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 2005).Google Scholar
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW), Ethics Advisory Board (EAB), “Report and Conclusions: HEW Support of Research Involving Human In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer,” Federal Register 44, no. 118 (June 19, 1979): 35033–35058, at 35057.Google Scholar
Id., at 35058.Google Scholar
Id., at 35056.Google Scholar
Id., at 35057.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. and Steptoe, P., A Matter of Life (New York: William Morrow, 1980): at 92–94.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices, OTA-BA-358 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), available at <http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/ns20/alpha_f.html> (last visited March 27, 2010).+(last+visited+March+27,+2010).>Google Scholar
Committee on Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, National Research Council, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005): at 30, available at <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11278> (last visited March 19, 2010).+(last+visited+March+19,+2010).>Google Scholar
Green, R. M., The Human Embryo Research Debates: Bioethics in the Vortex of Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Varmus, H., The Art and Politics of Science (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009): at 206.Google ScholarPubMed
Editorial, “Embryos: Drawing the Line,” Washington Post, October 2, 1994, at C06.Google Scholar
Lanza, R. P. et al., “The Ethical Validity of Using Nuclear Transfer In Human Transplantation,” JAMA 284, no. 24 (December 27, 2000): 3175–3179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabb, H. S., General Counsel of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), “Memo to Harold Varmus Rendering Legal Opinion Regarding Federal Funding for Research Involving Human Pluripotent Stem Cells,” January 15, 1999.Google Scholar
National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Issues in Human Stem Cell Research, Volume 1, Report and Recommendations, Rockville, MD, September 1999, at iv, 57–59, available at <http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac/stemcell.pdf> (last visited April 3, 2010).+(last+visited+April+3,+2010).>Google Scholar
National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “Stem Cell Information: Frequently Asked Questions,” available at <http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs> (last visited March 19, 2010).+(last+visited+March+19,+2010).>Google Scholar
“President's Statement on Funding Stem Cell Research,” New York Times, August 9, 2001.Google Scholar
It appears that Bush relied heavily on the advice of bioethicists, such as the Hasting Center's Daniel Callahan, who opposed federal support of hESC research. See Mooney, C., “Irrationalist in Chief: The Real Problem with Leon Kass,” The American Prospect (September 24, 2001-October 8, 2001): at Section: Gazette, , at 10.Google Scholar
Rawls, J., Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Id., at 224.Google Scholar
Id., at 253.Google Scholar
Id., at 247.Google Scholar
National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Issues in Human Stem Cell Research, Volume 3, Religious Perspectives, Rockville, MD, September 1999, at iv, 57–59, available at <http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac/stemcell3.pdf> (last visited April 3, 2010).+(last+visited+April+3,+2010).>Google Scholar
Devolder, K. and Harris, J., “The Ambiguity of the Embryo: Ethical Inconsistency in the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate,” Metaphilosophy 38, nos. 2–3 (April 2007): 153–169, at 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Englert, Y., “The Fate of Supernumerary Embryos: What Do Parents Think about It?” in Hildt, E. and Mieth, D., eds., In Vitro Fertilization in the 1990s: Toward a Medical, Social, and Ethical Evaluation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999): at 227–232.Google Scholar
Bioethicist Dena Davis contends that this apparent inconsistency is explained by the fact that deeper issues of cultural values, not regard for the embryo per se, are shaping our debates in this area. Thus IVF is seen as “pro-family” whereas embryo destruction in research is assimilated to more utilitarian concerns or aspects of the abortion debate. See her article entitled “The Puzzle of IVF,” Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy 6 (2006): 275–296.Google Scholar
Saul, S., “The Gift of Life, and Its Price,” New York Times, October 10, 2009.Google Scholar
See Rawls, , supra note 21, at 243f., n. 32.Google Scholar
Rawls, J., The Law of Peoples with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999): at 169, n. 80.Google Scholar
Thus, , Dworkin, R. B. observes that the majority argument in Roe v. Wade recognizing a woman's unfettered right of access to abortion during the first trimester only makes sense on the basis of what he regards as the decision's unargued presumption that the fetus “is not a person entitled to constitutional protection.” See his Limits: The Role of Law in Bioethical Decision Making (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996): at 48f.Google Scholar
In her survey of state legislation on embryo research, Lori B. Andrews reported that nine states have banned embryo research entirely. See her paper entitled “State Regulation of Embryo Stem Cell Research,” in National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Issues in Human Stem Cell Research, Volume 2, Commissioned Papers, Rockville, MD, September 1999, at A1-A13, at A-4, available at <http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac/stemcell3.pdf> (last visited April 3, 2010).+(last+visited+April+3,+2010).>Google Scholar
Doerflinger, R., “The Ethics of Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research: A Catholic Viewpoint,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 2 (1999): 137–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stolberg, S. G., “Obama Lifts Bush Limits on Stem Cell Research,” New York Times, March 9, 2009.Google Scholar
Cyranoski, D., “5 Things To Know Before Jumping on the iPS Bandwagon,” Nature 452, no. 27 (March 2008): 406–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar