The Ethics of Embryo Research
Recent research suggests that human embryos may be an ideal source of
"stem cells," which can be grown into replacement tissues for
transplantation into people with chronic diseases, whose own cells are
dying. Scientists want to collect these cells from embryos that are to be
discarded by fertility clinics.
Since 1995, however, Congress has banned the use of
federal funds for research in which human embryos are destroyed. This ban
has so far precluded the vast majority of academic scientists from pursuing
human stem cell research.
Now that may change. In a report to be released this
month, the presidentially appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission
will recommend that Congress ease its embryo research ban to allow
federally funded stem cell researchers to destroy human embryos donated by
parents who have completed their fertility treatments.
The ethics commission held a one-day workshop at
Georgetown University last month to hear religious leaders' opinions about
the morality of such research. The speakers did not officially represent
their denominations, but their personal comments offer insights into how
some of the world's religions are responding to the prospect of human
embryo research.
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, rector and professor of
philosophy, University of Judaism, Bel Air, Calif.:
The Jewish tradition accepts both natural and artificial
means to overcome illness. Physicians are the agents and partners of God in
the ongoing act of healing . . . . We have a duty to God to develop and use
any therapies that can aid us in taking care of our bodies, which
ultimately belong to God. [But] we are not God. We are not omniscient, as
God is, and so we must take whatever precautions we can to ensure that our
actions do not harm ourselves or our world in the very effort to improve
them. A certain epistemological humility, in other words, must pervade
whatever we do, especially when we are pushing the scientific envelope, as
we are in stem cell research. We are, as Genesis says, supposed to work the
world and preserve it; it is that balance that is our divine duty.
Genetic materials outside the uterus have no legal
status in Jewish law, for they are not even a part of a human being until
implanted in a woman's womb and even then, during the first 40 days of
gestation, their status is "as if they were simply water." As a
result, frozen embryos may be discarded or used for reasonable purposes,
and so may stem cells procured from them.
Sources: Washington Post, (June
13, 1999) |