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THE U.P. CATHOLIC COMMENTARY
December 17, 2021
5
New Cures from Embryonic Stem Cells?
A
recent article in the New York Times by Gina Kolata chronicles the remarkable story of a patient who for many years suffered from type 1 diabetes. After receiving a newly-devel- oped form of embryonic stem cell infusion, he became able to live insulin-free, apparently cured of his blood sugar imbalances. It was largely a matter of time, funding and elbow grease before cures of this kind would start to appear. That makes it urgent for us, as a society, to confront and address the ethical questions arising in the wake of these up and coming therapies. We can formulate the ethical ques- tion this way: Is it wrong to develop treatments that rely on the direct destruction of fellow human beings who are in their embryonic stages? It should go without saying that it is always wrong to take the life of one human being to harvest body parts, even to save the life of another hu- man being. Such medicine is funda- mentally exploitative and immoral, and ought to be summarily rejected. Many people are beginning to ask, however, whether receiving a treatment for diabetes developed from embryonic stem cells is really that different from getting vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine developed using abortion-derived cell lines? The two cases are, in fact, quite different. When it comes to abortion-derived cell lines and their use in developing some of the COVID-19 vaccines, the wrong that was committed involved taking somatic cells (not stem cells), such as kidney cells or retinal cells, from an aborted fetus and working them up in or- der to prepare a special cell line for use in research or vaccine development. The abortion, it should be noted, as wrong as it was in itself, was not performed in order to obtain research material, and the evil of this corpse raiding was compounded by not having obtained valid informed consent. What makes embryonic stem cell-based therapies ethically worse is that a very young human being, still in his or her embryonic stage of existence, is being targeted and intentionally killed in order to obtain the desired stem cells that stand at the center of that medi- cal treatment. Why, then, would it be morally allowable to receive a vaccine prepared using abortion-derived cell lines, but morally unacceptable to receive a diabetes treatment developed from embryonic stem cells? Because the type of moral offense and its gravity are different in kind and degree. Directly killing someone to obtain their cells for treatment is different in kind and worse than the wrongdoing involved in taking cells from a corpse, even from a young human whose life was unjustly ended for an unrelated reason. It is always wrong to steal, even from a cadaver. But it's much worse to kill in order to take. In one case the researcher himself becomes the executioner who procures cells and tissues from the in- dividual he has just directly and purposefully killed; in the other case, the researcher shows up at the morgue or the abortion clinic following the death, and procures cells or tissues from the individual's body (with the death having occurred at the hands of others and the researcher afterwards profiting from the resultant ca- daver). This latter case would not raise ethical concerns at all if researchers were to derive the needed cells from a miscarriage instead of a direct abortion. If an unborn baby girl, for example, were to die of natural causes, her parents could validly grant informed consent for the use of tissues and cells from her body, in effect donat- ing her body to science. These kinds of distinctions are important, because receiving a diabetes treatment produced with em- bryonic stem cells signals a willingness on our part to tolerate the killing of younger human beings in order to benefit others who are older. Meanwhile, receiving a COVID-19 vaccine produced using abortion-derived cell lines does not indicate a willingness on our part to tolerate killing for research (since the killing was not done for research, but for some other unrelated motive), and instead indicates a willingness to tolerate cells and tissues that were unethically taken from a corpse. Should we always avoid using therapies that are produced using embryonic stem cells taken from young humans who were killed in order to obtain the cells? Yes, such therapies are unethical because killing one human being for the purpose of healing another crosses a fundamental moral line. But the fact that the question is being raised reminds us of the slip- pery ethical slope that arises whenever we try to use parts of human beings derived from abortions: legally permitting abortion only makes the confusion worse. Hence, there is an urgent need to encourage the use of alternative, non-embryo-derived cell sources by researchers, including cells derived from miscarriages, adult stem cells, or embryonic-type alternatives such as induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be obtained by genetically manipulating adult human skin cells. These approaches open a path forward in the direction of ethical research and medical therapies. Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com.
MAKING SENSE OUT OF BIOETHICS
Father Tad Pacholczyk, Ph. D
A child who is spiritually whole
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wo-time Christopher Award-winning author Christopher de Vinck knows firsthand the truth of the Scripture verse from Isaiah 11:6, A little child shall lead them. He saw it in his home, growing up with his severely disabled brother Oliver, about whom he wrote the acclaimed memoir, The Power of the Powerless. Christopher has now applied that idea to a Christ- mas novel called Mr. Nicholas, which tells the sto- ry of a boy with Down syndrome, his self-absorbed father who can't accept his son's disability, and the Santa Claus figure who helps bridge the divide between the two of them. We discussed it recently on Chris- topher Closeup. Christopher recalled that no one knew anything was wrong with Oliver after he was born, until one day when his mother noticed he was staring directly at the sun and realized he was blind. Christopher explained, As the years progressed, they realized he had no intellect. They came to Mount Sinai Hospital, the doctor did all sorts of tests and said, 'Take him home and love him.' My mom said that was the best advice a doctor could give...We fed Oliver, bathed Oliver...He lay in bed for 32 years. He could not see, talk, learn, [or] even chew. But my mom would always remind us how blessed we were to have our health, and to have the compassion and love to tend to somebody who was so weak and helpless... The one thing he did, in the middle of the night, he would laugh and laugh. We never understood. My sister said, 'He's probably laughing with the an- gels.'It's hard to explain Oliver, except that he was physically a mess, but he was spiritually whole. JB, the boy with Down syndrome in Mr. Nicho- las, has fewer physical problems than Oliver, but he is spiritually whole as well. JB's father, John, on the other hand, is not. Though Christopher has met many parents of children with disabilities who are loving and supportive of their kids, a few were not able to accept their child's condition. They inspired the character of John, who agreed to have a child with his wife to strengthen their rela- tionship. Instead, it wound up driving them apart, mainly because John prefers to keep his relation- ships superficial-and because he can't accept his less-than-perfect son. It takes the actions of the jolly, white-bearded hardware store owner Mr. Nicholas to help John see JB as the wonderful, loving child he is. When I asked Christopher about God's role in his writing, he referenced the line from the movie Chariots of Fire, when one of the runners states, I run because God made me fast. I run for His plea- sure. Christopher believes his talent for writing connects him to something higher. He also hopes that readers of Mr. Nicholas find that connection themselves in the book. Christopher concluded, I hope that they're re- minded, Christmas is so far beyond what you find in the malls, so much more than exchanging presents and gifts. There is that wonderful story of this little child who was born thousands of years ago and changed the way we think about the world. So, 'Mr. Nicholas' is about a little boy who changed the way a mother and father thought about the world and about themselves. I'm not giving anything away, they do not get the divorce after all, they do stay together. And the Christmas story is that [sim- plicity], innocence, purity of heart, goodness, and the Christ Child can make the greatest difference in our lives. h a S t W t k
LIGHT ONE CANDLE Tony Rossi, The Christophers
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