STATUS OF EMBRYO AT HEART OF DEBATE
BY MARTHA STODDARD -- Lincoln Journal Star

   Two schools of ethical thought collide over living beings smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
    Those beings are human embryos, only days away from their creation by the union of sperm and egg. Beings of about 100 cells massed within a tiny ring of outer cells. Each inner cell - called a stem cell - is identical to all the others and has nearly unlimited potential for producing different specialized cells.
    On the one hand, those embryonic stem cells offer the hope of life-saving breakthroughs in understanding and treating diseases and disorders.
    On the other, using those cells for research or treatment kills the embryo.
    Therein lies the debate.

Tom Shepherd, Union College

    "On one side you have this great value of saving life and improving health," said Tom Shepherd, a professor of religion and ethics at Union College. "On the other side you have this issue of the status of the fetus (or embryo)."
    Shepherd finds his own answer within his religious beliefs. A Seventh-day Adventist, he believes humans become souls when they acquire their bodies. And the only clear point when that happens, he argues, is at conception.
    "Everything else is all a gradation of the process of development," he said. "If at conception, it has that status, you have to be careful how you treat it.. We give ourselves an out when it comes to an embryo because we can't see a face, we can't see arms and legs. We end up playing God."
    But Daniel Perry, chairman of the Patients Coalition for Urgent Research, a national coalition of patient advocacy groups, takes issue with that view.
    Religious scholars from several faiths, including some Catholics, hold complex positions about when developing embryos should be considered human beings. These scholars support using embryonic stem cells in research and treatment, he said.
    "For them, the overriding concern of relieving human suffering is paramount over the rights of a days-old embryo that has no features, no spine, no organs, no brain," Perry said. "We want to keep the focus on relieving the terrible suffering that otherwise would occur."

Greg Schleppenbach, State Director of the Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Plan for Pro Life Activities

   The moral and ethical status of embryos became a public issue recently as science opened up the possibility that embryonic stem cells could be used to grow unlimited supplies of new tissue and organs to treat myriad ailments.
    That hope has yet to be realized.
    But, in 1998, University of Wisconsin researchers reported successfully culturing stem cells from embryos and keeping them alive in the laboratory. That same year, a team from Johns Hopkins University cultured similar cells from the developing sperm and egg cells of aborted fetuses.
    Geron Corp., a private company working to develop and commercialize stem cell discoveries, funded both efforts.
    The months since have been filled with reports from researchers who have successfully directed embryonic stem cells to produce bone, blood, brain and other specialized cells.
    Getting stem cells from either embryos or fetuses troubles Greg Schleppenbach, state director for the Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Plan for Pro Life Activities.
    Science shows humans gain their full complement of genes at conception, he said. That should be enough to entitle a human embryo, and later a fetus, to all the rights of personhood, starting with the right to life.
    "What determines personhood? Who determines personhood? If we're not going to base it on the objective criteria of being of the human species, that ought to frighten anyone," Schleppenbach said.
    "If we trample on the sacredness and rights of certain classes of human beings to find cures for physical ailments, we will lose something far greater than our physical health. We will lose our souls."
    But Andrew Jameton, a bioethicist and professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said knowing an embryo is genetically human tells us nothing about how it should be treated.
    Views about embryos - or later in development, fetuses - vary considerably from one religious or ethical tradition to another and the differences cannot be resolved by science.
    "If you say the idea of a human being is not one concept but several concepts, what do you say about something that has some features of a human being or ... that lacks some features?" Jameton asked, suggesting that humans gain rights as their development progresses. "It's kind of like children. We respect them, but they don't get to vote."
    Yet few argue for totally unfettered use of human embryos. And many support research on embryonic stem cells only within strict ethical limits.
    "I do think you want respect for a human embryo because this is a near-human, it is human-like," Jameton said. "Even if you don't want to count it as human, it's still alive. ... You can't just discard embryos without good reasons."

Andrew Jameton, bioethicist, Medical Center

   Creating an embryo specifically for research or treatment crosses the line for many supporters of embryonic stem cell research because that could turn a human embryo into a commodity.
    "Such a development ... denies the embryo the respect it should be accorded," Britain's Nuffield Council on Bioethics said in a report on stem cell therapy.
    The embryos currently used in research are those left over from in vitro fertilization procedures - embryos that were created in laboratories for couples trying to have children but not used for various reasons.
    As many as 100,000 such embryos may exist in freezers throughout the United States. Couples can donate the extra embryos to other infertile people, keep them frozen or destroy them. It is embryos already destined for destruction that have been used - with the parents' permission - for research.
    That source is key for many supporters of embryonic stem cell research.
    "You're talking about a situation where the choice is throw in the trash or use to alleviate human suffering," said Sandy Goodman, executive director of Nebraskans for Research. The group has not taken a position on embryonic stem cell research but advocates for medical research generally.
    Such arguments don't sway Schleppenbach or many other pro-life activists. He argues against in vitro fertilization generally - "Human life should be begotten, not made" - and because it forces people to make life-and-death decisions about human embryos.
    "It doesn't matter how we're created. Even if we're created through an immoral act, it doesn't change the right and dignity of our personhood," he said.
    Using self-perpetuating lines of embryonic stem cells would cause somewhat less concern, Schleppenbach said. Cell lines continue indefinitely in the laboratory. That means future research could be done without destroying additional embryos and scientists would work only with embryonic cells, not embryos themselves.
    "I don't think it's as troubling as research that continually involves the destruction of the embryo but the question is how proximate is the immoral act?" he said.
    Yet even if such stem cell lines become widely available, finding consensus on embryonic stem cell research appears as far out of reach as finding an ethical middle ground on abortion.
    "I think the dialogue is essential," Goodman said. "We need to consciously focus on life in all its aspects, life in how it's created and how it's lived and how to relieve suffering at the end of life."