Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The cowardice and politicization continued even after scientists "developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human embryo without destroying it."

BEFORE this development, Bush asserted, "Some people argue that finding new cures for disease requires the destruction of human embryos.... I disagree." And mouthpiece Tony Snow railed, "The simple answer is he thinks murder is wrong."  

AFTER the development, Bush spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore retreated from the 'murder' charge, finding cover behind a barricade of ambiguity, "Any use of human embryos for research purposes raises serious ethical questions. This technique does not resolve those concerns."

Now, there's yet another promising breakthrough -- one that should easily thwart the criticism and obstructionism of Bush and his ideological toadies. Right?

Scientists say they have created a stem cell line from a human embryo that had stopped developing naturally, and so was considered dead. Using such embryos might ease ethical concerns about creating such cells, they suggested.

One specialist said the technique makes harvesting stem cells no more ethically troublesome than organ donation.

[...]

Part of the work focused on 132 arrested embryos, those that had stopped dividing for 24 or 48 hours after reaching various stages of development.

Thirteen of these embryos had developed more than the others, reaching 16 to 24 cells before cell division stopped.

[...]

"Regardless of how you feel about personhood for embryos, if the embryo is dead, then the issue of personhood is resolved," said Dr. Donald W. Landry, director of the division of experimental therapeutics at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who proposed the idea of getting stem cells from arrested embryos in 2004,

Though millions of actual living human being's lives are at stake, soulless ideologues are already honing their assault on the methodology.

There is no way to prove that an arrested embryo would have stopped growing if it had been put into a woman's womb rather than a lab dish, said Robin Lovell-Badge of the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research in London. So that leaves open the possibility that it was the lab conditions that halted their growth, he said.

Then there is the "Depends on what the definition of 'dead' is." argument.

But other experts last night warned that the use of dead embryo cells could lead to more ethical dilemmas, not fewer. 'How do you know when an embryo is dead?' said Eric Meslin, director of the Indiana University center of bioethics.

The primary point here is that the label of 'dead' is applied when the embryo stops dividing. Essentially, you can't take the pulse of a cluster of cells. Thus, another standard for declaring death must be applied, for embryonic cells, that standard is defined by 'arrested' cell division.

[Scientists] took 13 embryos, created by In Vitro Fertilization. All 13 had stopped developing a few days after conception. 'They were in a very early stage of development,' said Stojkovic, now head of Sintocell, the Serbian medical research centre.

The team then waited 24 hours to check that the embryos were no longer dividing before beginning their experiments. 'These were all deemed to be arrested embryos,' said Stojkovic. 'In other words, they were dead. [But] they had the capacity to develop any different type of cell you could think of, including kidney cells, liver cells, and skin cells.'

[...]

[Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a Catholic campaign group] warned that the case for the use of dead embryo cells had not been proved. 'There is the critical question of how you know when an embryo is dead or not.'

It seems clear that when dealing with blastocysts framed as 'human life', there will always be an excuse to avoid using them -- regardless of how senseless and cruel the consequences to humanity.  

Unfortunately, the antagonism regarding stem cell research seems based not on legitimate concern for life -- since millions of lives are likely sacrificed in the pursuit of saving doomed blastocysts -- but rather on a fight for ideological control. And when ideologues seize control, we are all doomed.

RELATED: Four years ago, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, also known as ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. We know what it means to be intimately, though indirectly, affected by the horrors of such a disease. And we wonder what might have been had federal funding of Embryonic lines been made available years ago.

This Saturday, My family and I will be participating in the Walk to d'Feet ALS. I invite each and every one of you to join me and my family and friends to support the ALS Foundation and their fight for Stem Cell Research!! Simply click on the button below, then choose "Virtual Walker" (ignore the "Fundraising Target" Box), and insert the contribution amount where it says "Additional Gift", click on the button that says "next step" and you will be walked through the donation process! This will list you as a member of "Kadin's Kamp" my family's team for the "Walk to d'Feet" ALS.

$1, $5, $10...It's all good!! And don't forget to add the $0.01.

Thank you all so much. You all ROCK!!!