Over the past few months, the issue of human embryonic stem-cell research has been very controversial: Controversial in Wisconsin because taxpayers would provide bricks and mortar for the UW’s Biostar project, and controversial at the federal level because scientists sought taxpayer dollars for federal research.
As researchers continue to carry out the decades-old practice of unethical experimentation on people for the purported benefit of others, researchers and their ethicists seem unable (or unwilling) to recognize basic human rights. Because of this, many citizens find their activities unacceptable.
Although the current state and national debate places an emphasis on science, human rights is an issue of law, not science. We must answer a straightforward question: Which human beings deserve legal rights and protection from harm?
For centuries, personhood has been assigned and taken away by governments. When the founding fathers created our constitution, for example, they designated enslaved black human beings as three-fifths of a white person. Likewise, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime decimated the Jewish population in Europe by making a Jew less of a person than a member of the “master race.” This afforded the Nazis the opportunity to conduct evil medical experiments and use Jews as slave labor.
In essence, whenever societies want to utilize or eliminate a group of human beings for their own purposes, they simply relegate the group to less-than-personhood status.
Of course, if human beings are not people, then they become property – property sold, traded, used and destroyed for financial profit and the alleged (but not guaranteed) benefit of others. To avoid this abhorrent policy, the United States Supreme Court, Congress and the states must definitively provide legal recognition of all human beings as protected human persons through the U.S. Constitution.
Some support research on tiny human beings because we may obtain cures for diseases. This may be true, but that doesn’t make the research ethical. Everyone wants to find cures for debilitating diseases that affect our loved ones, but it is barbaric to deem one group of human beings expendable, then sacrifice them for the alleged benefit of another group – even if successful treatments can come from such research.
Drawing arbitrary lines and sanctioning the intentional destruction of a group of innocent human beings makes us all vulnerable to other unconscionable and unethical acts. For example, if we approve of embryonic research today, what moral rationale stops research on the infirm in nursing homes? On AIDS patients? On Alzheimer’s patients? On the developmentally or cognitively disabled? Undoubtedly, research on these subjects would lead to better treatments (and maybe even cures).
The fact remains that embryonic stem-cell research has not helped one person, nor have researchers produced any evidence that it will. To the contrary, current research shows embryonic stem cells can be harmful (e.g. uncontrollable tumors).
On the other hand, successful, ethical and viable research using adult stem cells have already produced cures. Umbilical cord blood stem cells are credited with speeding the recovery of stroke victims and curing three young boys born with defective immune systems. Fifteen people with serious juvenile diabetes became insulin-injection-free after receiving adult pancreatic islet-cell transplants. Finally, several legally blind people now see more clearly after reconstructive surgery using corneal stem cells.
In the end, our leadership in biotechnology must be grounded in bioethics if we truly want to protect human rights. Every human being, regardless of their life stage, skin color, religion or ethnicity, deserves legal protection.
A utilitarian view that relegates people to the status of property for “brave new world” research clouds the lines between human rights and property rights – a scary proposition from a social and legal standpoint.
Rather than continue with unethical research, we should channel investment dollars from taxpayers and the private sector to ethical areas of research with demonstrable success, notably adult stem cells. God’s most precious creation – people – deserves the best legal and medical protections society can give. Wisconsin can and should show leadership on both fronts.
