While private research in the U.S. has continued since 2001, private investment cannot match the resources government can provide. Powerful political support has developed in favor of public investment. In early summer 2005, when Congress was still in Republican control, both houses of Congress actually passed bills ending the Bush ban. Then as now, the bills fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a threatened presidential veto.
While several states has passed their own laws permitting public funding of stem cell research, the United States as a whole is quickly ceding its biomedical leadership to others. Beyond our shores, human embryonic stem cell research is proceeding apace, supported by government in places as diverse as Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and South Korea. As a result, we may someday soon find ourselves paying a premium price for the therapies derived from stem cell research overseas.
No one is suggesting we be careless with embryos. They must always be treated with special consideration and respect. Selling embryos on the open market is unequivocally wrong. Experimenting with them to create human clones must be made severely punishable. But the promise of human benefit from responsible embryo research is enormous, and such research must neither be curtailed nor criminalized.
Stem cells offer a staggering potential to improve life and relieve suffering. Human stem cell research is already leading to new ways of diagnosing disease, and could potentially lead to the discovery of safer drugs for treatment, in addition to the potential use of stem cells in replenishing or replacing mature cells and tissues destroyed by disease. The resolution of the ethical and religious considerations to stem cell research will doubtless take some time. After all, there is genuine morality and passion on both sides of this debate.
But the decision we face is whether an unwanted blastocyst, a mass of one hundred cells fully eleven weeks away from any neural function, has moral rights equivalent to the moral obligation we have to act for the benefit of the sick among us.
Two forms of human life are at stake: human embryos and living persons. The question ultimately is which is due more respect?
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