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The primary
function of the family is to produce and raise children. Modern science
has found a way to produce children in the laboratory. When you take
reproduction out of the natural family unit, you change the way the resultant
child is viewed. It changes from being a child and an individual person to
being a product of technology. Furthermore, if you can produce it in the
laboratory, you feel free to manipulate it and experiment on it.
The average
person doesn’t see a child in the collection of cells in the petri dish and is
lulled into thinking that this member of the human family does not have the
status of a human person with the right to life. However, an educated
person knows---or should know---that the zygote is a new, absolutely unique
human being in its earliest stages of development. That is why scientists
want to experiment on it. One of the biggest challenges to the family in
the 21st Century is to protect its youngest members and ensure that
all of us retain our rights as human persons. If we lose our rights at the
beginning of life, how can we get them back when we are older?
To understand
the threat of scientific research on stem cells and the use of cloning, we must
look at the scientific facts about the beginning of life. When the male
sperm enters the female egg in the fallopian tube of the mother, a new and
distinct individual is formed with its own unique set of chromosomes. This
new person is called a zygote.
The new single
cell divides producing two daughter cells that have exactly the same genetic
make-up as the mother cell. The cell divides into 2-, then 4- and then
8-cell stages. This takes about 2 ˝ days. During this time if, for
some reason, this cell cluster gets separated into two sub-clusters, identical
twins will form. If one of the cells gets separated from the rest, it can
develop into a complete human body. These cells are called embryonic stem
cells. They can become any kind of body cell. Because of that, they
are called totipotent embryonic stem cells. Now you can see why
researchers want to get a hold of them.
After four
days, the tiny human has grown to several hundred cells and acquired a new name.
He is now called a blastocyst. After six days the blastocyst begins to
implant itself into the inner wall of the uterus. Here is a simplified
picture of an embryo in the blastocyst stage. The important part is the
inner cell mass, which is made up of pluripotent embryonic stem cells.
Now we come to
the crucial aspect of the public policy debate on embryonic stem cells.
The biotech industry and researchers who do not respect human life in the
embryonic state want to “harvest” embryonic stem cells from humans in the
blastocyst stage.
Why?
Because the embryonic stem cells from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst can
either grow into new stem cells or develop into any tissue, except the placenta.
These are extremely powerful cells. Scientists rightfully say that
embryonic stem cells are maximally “pluripotent” because they can develop into
every tissue of the human body. Therefore, these scientists want to study
these cells and exploit their capabilities. And the biotech industry sees
the possibility of patents and huge profits arising from stem cell research.
The fundamental
problem with this is, of course, the fact that “harvesting” embryonic stem cells
from a human blastocyst kills a human being at the embryonic stage. As the
embryo grows, the stem cells become more specialized and less “pluripotent.”
After birth,
stem cells continue to be present in the umbilical cord blood and in the growing
body itself---right through the rest of the life span. They are often,
somewhat inaccurately, referred to as “adult stem cells.” These cells are
“pluripotent” and “multipotent” to varying degrees. They serve tissue
renewal and repair.
During
embryonic and fetal development, it is obvious what purpose stem cells have:
Upon receiving the right kind of biological signal, they transform or
“differentiate” themselves into the various tissue that make up the child’s
body. Once certain kinds of tissues have been created, further growth can
proceed through cell division. For example, the fetal liver can grow in
size by liver cells dividing. Later, the slow renewal of many tissues can
also be accomplished by cell division.
But what is the
purpose of stem cells after embryonic and fetal development? What is the
role of the so-called adult stem cells mentioned earlier? When adult stem
cells divide, the daughter cells can either become again stem cells or they can
“differentiate” into new tissue cells. This is how the red and white blood
cells are replaced after they have finished their limited life span. This
is how breast tissue can grow in pregnancy, especially the first pregnancy.
This how the lining in the intestines is constantly renewed or repaired.
And so on.
Scientists used
to think that adult stem cells were very specialized. Now, there is
mounting evidence that adult stem cells from one kind of tissue can be made to
differentiate into cells of another kind of tissue. There are currently
over 100 different therapies being used to help people using their own body’s
stem cells.
In addition
there is a new method of creating stem cells that does not kill a human embryo.
So-called “induced pluripotent stem cells” or “iPSCs” are derived from ordinary
somatic cells. A skin cell, for example, can be chemically “re-programmed”
into the stem cell state.
On the other
hand, embryonic stem cells are the most powerful pluripotent stem cells.
This is why researchers want to study them---either for the sake of pure
knowledge or with the goal of exploiting their potential medically or
commercially. However, using embryonic stem cell transplants
therapeutically is associated with three huge obstacles: two biological
ones and an enormous moral one.
First, a
stem cells taken from an embryo, with a different genetic make-up than the
transplant recipient, triggers tissue rejection in the patient. This
requires the use of powerful drugs to suppress the tissue rejection.
Second,
the very potential of embryonic stem cells, their very “wildness” you might way,
makes it hard to control their growth in a transplant. The danger is that
what grows is a tumor disorganized and varied somatic tissue, a so-called
teratoma. Thus, instead of the desired tissue, say neural tissue, the stem
cells might develop into a mass of hair and bone and teeth. This is
exactly what happened in an experimental transplant to a man in China.
Third,
there is the fundamental moral problem: Harvesting the embryonic stem
cells kills the embryo.
Currently,
there are thousands of frozen embryos left over from in vitro
fertilization, created by artificial fertilization in a glass dish.
Handing over left-over embryos to researchers so that they may harvest their
stem cells is tantamount to killing them. That is why pro-lifers oppose
it. In addition, these embryos are foreign tissue in the recipient’s body
and trigger the rejection reaction.
Instead, the
researchers want to clone an identical twin of the patient and then take that
twin’s stem cells while he is still in the embryonic state and implant them into
the patient. This way they hope to repair diseased tissue and heal the
patient, as there would be no rejection problem. However tumors could
still occur. The patient may live, but the twin must die. The
medical problem may be solved, but the moral problem remains.
The method of
cloning, at the current time, is the same as that used to clone Dolly, the
famous sheep. The method is called “somatic cell nuclear transfer” or SCNT
for short.
In this method
a diploid somatic cell (e.g., skin cell) is removed from the patient’s body.
One takes out the cell nucleus which contains a double set of chromosomes and
inserts it into a human egg cell from which a haploid or single set of
chromosomes has been removed. This egg cell has now changed from being
“haploid” to “diploid” and the newly organized cell is the equivalent to a
zygote, a new individual at the one-cell stage.
An electric
shock triggers the altered egg cell into cell division. The developing
embryo is a “clone” of the patient, a genetic twin---except years apart in
development. The embryo is specifically created to provide genetically
compatible stem cells, the cells are extracted, and the embryonic twin is
killed.
What will be
the impact if we continue down this path of human destruction?
Psychologically, every person needs to feel bonded to loving parents, who can be
trusted to be supportive and protective. Research has shown that human
bonding between a mother and her children is one of the most important
predictors of later healthy development. There is no question that this
bond begins in utero at the beginning of the parent-child relationship.
Processes that interfere with this bond result in poor parenting, low
self-esteem in children, an inability to form social relationships later in life
and, even to child abuse.
Clearly, social
policies that diminish bonding, by intervening in the natural reproductive
process, will most certainly contribute to these negative outcomes. The
push for embryonic stem cell research leads to the attitude of making objects
out of children in the research laboratory. If this attitude comes
to infect the thinking of parents, the effects on the family can only be
negative. Those cells in the petri dish are our children. If we fail to
protect them, we fail as parents and the fabric of the family is weakened.
Summary:
Embryonic stem
cell research and cloning is complicated and researchers have tried to confuse
the average person by using scientific jargon and mis-representation. It
is important to understand the basic facts. The push for embryonic stem
cell research has the potential to lead to a weakening of our respect for life
at its beginning and for undermining the normal human family. | 
