A Wolf in Dolly's Clothing

Oh no, Hiroki! Come back home!

Well done, Steins! I'm not even from Missouri, and you guys have me rooting for the grassroot efforts to shoot down this amendment. Please keep us faithful "steindom-cast" listeners posted on developments with this story, and certainly the results of the vote on November 7th. You (and this issue) will remain in my prayers. In fact, as I think about it, I will tell Jill's parents about this issue and get them to go and vote. They live in Higginsville. It's an amendment to the state's constitution, right?

Peace,

Ryan

Two quick things -- I am admittedly not an expert on the science of stem cell research and human cloning, so I encourage people to check the websites listed above or some of the literature that is available. I apologize for not being as precise as is required with this issue.

But secondly, point taken -- it does not matter whether there have been 1,000 diseases cured with embryonic stem cell research and 0 cured through adult stem cell therapies. The point is that embryonic stem cell research involves killing human life. Period. It should never be an option for scientific research.

Thanks for taking the time to go through the podcast so carefully to make sure that everyone gets the facts.

In Christ, Christina

Joel,

I finally got to listening to your pod cast re. the Missouri stem cell/cloning constitutional amendment. I thought that it was well-done, and that the main points were stated clearly and effectively (the law is presented in a misleading fashion by claiming to ban "cloning", etc.). However, there were also some scientific irregularities I thought you might want to be aware of (or address in a footnote or something):

"...that requires there to be an exact donor..." "...not impossible, just hard."

For tissue/organ transplantation, the only "exact" tissue donor is oneself (e.g. take cartilage from your knee, stimulating its growth in a dish, and then implant it back into your knee), or an identical twin (=100% identical DNA). Other than that, doctors try to match immune markers as closely as possible (between the recipient and whatever donors are available at the time), but even the best matches are far from ideal, requiring that they immunosuppress the recipeint -- permanently -- so that the transplanted tissue is not destroyed by immune attack. The health consequences of chronic immunosuppression (drug side-effects, and more importantly a life-long increased susceptibility to infection) are eventually disasterous in most patients.

This is still a major problem with organ transplantation, and it is also the reason that no transplant is really a "cure" (despite the smiling happy people you see on hospital advertisements). This is a very real, and very unsolved problem in Medicine, and it is one of the big reasons that many scientists and doctors are so enthusiastic about the potential for embryonic stem cell-derived therapies. Pretending that this issue does not exist (or that doctors just won't admit that they already have a solution to it) is deceptive, and detracts from the integrity of your real argument, which is that SCNT produces human life.

"...and the adult stem cells are working, right?" "Exactly, exactly."

Once again, this overused obfuscation detracts from the integrity of your argument, which is that SCNT produces a new human person. So-called "adult stem cell therapy" does exist for a very limited number of conditions (e.g. the transplantaion of bone marrow, which from a transplant perspective is like a liver transplant, except that bone marrow contains stem cells that produce blood cells and immune cells). If you don't believe me about the damage done to the integrity of the anti-cloning position by this type of obfuscation, please read the recent letter by Smith Eaves, and Teitelbaum published in the journal /Science/. It derails the baloney that has been propogated as evidence for "adult stem cell therapy" with equal potential to embryonic stem cell research.

"...the DNA would match yours, in theory..."

After SCNT, the nuclear DNA would absolutely match yours -- not in theory, 100% in reality. That's the whole point.

"...let me create life...outside the bounds of what science is allowed to do..."

Scientists cannot create life (at least not yet). The egg cells into which they transplant a donor nucleus are, in fact, already alive. We don't have the genetic/molecular capabilities (or even knowledge) to construct a living cell from its non-living component parts, only to take living cells from a variety of natural organisms (including humans), and keep them alive in dishes.

The distiction here is what one defines (philisophically/ethically/morally) as a human being/human person. There is no scientific difference between the "life" status of an egg cell before or after SCNT, only in the potential of that cell to divide and differentiate into other types of tissues.

"...stem cell and embryonic research has produced zero fruit..."

Let's ignore the fact that this statement is patently false (and does a great disservice to thousands of very good developmental biologists, past and present). More importantly, it is difficult to produce "fruit" in fields of biomedical research that require decades of work and billions of dollars, when they are denied funding (or if the research is made illegal). Most researchers, whatever their personal opinions, are afraid to touch human embryonic stem cells with a 10-foot pole. Doesn't it seem a bit unfair to belittle people for not getting anything done yet, while crusading against their ability to do that work?

-Jeff's brother Joel

How did the vote turn out?