Stem Cell Research: The Bigger Picture

In 1998, a team led by Wisconsin researcher James Thomson created the first line of human embryonic stem cells. Since then, stem cells have rarely left the headlines. Not since Asilomar and the genetic engineering controversy has a basic science topic generated so much press and political discussion. Why? What accounts for the preoccupation and the passion?

Part of the explanation lies in the compelling moral claims made on both sides of the debate. Also at work is an unprecedented level of advocacy, not just from the usual suspects—researchers, scientific organizations, and pro-life groups—but from patients, families, and celebrities, too.

Research using human embryonic stem cells raises an array of complex ethical issues, including, but by no means limited to, the moral status of developing human life. Unfortunately, much of the public discussion fails to take into account this complexity. Advocacy for liberal and conservative positions on human embryonic stem cell research can be simplistic and misleading. This research will always be controversial, but a richer public debate could clarify the issues and point to more thoughtful policy approaches to the stem cell question.

The President's Council on Bioethics has issued two reports on stem cell research. The first, Human Cloning and Human Dignity (President's Council 2002), discusses the creation of cloned embryos as sources of stem cells. The second, Monitoring Stem Cell Research (President's Council 2004), covers research using stem cells from a variety of sources, including human embryos. Both reports set forth the reasoning that underlies different positions on scientific uses of human embryonic stem cells. In this essay, I draw on material from both Council reports, as well as on my own views, to analyze ethical and policy issues raised by this research. I focus on different possibilities for implementing an approach incorporating the position that human embryos have an intermediate moral status. I also call attention to important but neglected considerations that should be part of the debate over federal support for human embryonic stem cell research.

Moral Status and Developing Human Life

Stem cells themselves are not human embryos, but they must be derived from embryos. To derive stem cells, scientists must destroy a human embryo. Is this morally permissible? Each individual's position on this issue is affected by that individual's view of the early embryo's moral status.

Some people believe that embryos have the moral status of persons, based on the view that conception is the point that a person begins. In a statement accompanying Human Cloning and Human Dignity, Robert George presented this view: "The embryonic, fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages are stages in the development of a determinate and enduring entity—a human being—who comes into existence as a single cell organism and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood many years later" (George 2002, p. 294).

For people who share this belief, possible knowledge gains cannot justify stem cell or any other research that requires embryo destruction. This belief underlies President Bush's decision to limit federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. According to the decision, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) may support only projects using stem cells from lines developed before August 2001, when the President made his announcement. This time limit for NIH funding was imposed to keep government research support from becoming an incentive for further embryo destruction (Bush 2001).

Of course, many people disagree with the position that human embryos have the same moral status as children and adults. People who see the embryo as something less than a full person note that early embryos lack many characteristics that make persons morally significant, such as the ability to think and feel pain and pleasure. In early embryos, the beginning of nervous system, the primitive streak, hasn't yet formed. At the point that stem cells are derived, which is about five days after conception, embryos are not even clear individuals—twinning can occur after that point (President's Council 2004, pp. 78–81).

The location of the embryos also matters to some people. For example, Jewish law has been interpreted to hold...