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September 3, 2004/Elul 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 50
Principled science
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Five-day old blastocysts, stored at infertility clinics, provide precious stem cell lines that can be used by researchers to find cures for disease. The embryos would have been destroyed if not used for reproductive purpose. Why not salvage them for human good?
Simple? Not really. Not if you see the issue as a troubling life-versus-life choice.
Some religious conservatives have co-opted the promise of stem cells as political premise, using it to rally the anti-abortion lobby. They foment emotion about the destruction of embryos, and they deny the reality that current federal limits on stem cell research are impeding medical ad-vance.
In so doing, they pit the lives of those unborn against the lives of those who suffer. Yet, it is the very wonder of creation that is engendering the miraculous hope of science, conflating, rather than apposing, the two.
Across the Jewish denominational spectrum there is widespread support for stem cell research. Yet there is concern for its moral and ethical implications.
"The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy," edited by Suzanne Holland, Karen Lebacqz and Laurie Zoloth, lays out the thorny issues.
Elliot Dorff, a Conservative rabbi who spoke at the recent Hadassah national conference in Phoenix along with Zoloth, contributed an article to the book. Dorff called stem cell research, which may lead to cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, "the most important medical breakthrough in modern medicine since antibiotics." He explained that stem cells have the capability of morphing into other cells and tissues in the body, giving rise to seemingly limitless possibility for repair and cure.
In "Debate," he dispenses with the so-called pro-life objections, explaining that genetic materials outside the uterus have no legal status in Jewish law. They do not constitute a human being until they are implanted in the womb, he writes. Further, the status of such material during the first 40 days of gestation is, according to the Talmud, "as if they were water."
Dorff cautions that while the science is neutral, the choices about how we use it are not. Most vexing is the potential for cloning, with its sinister specter of Hitler's aspiration for an Aryan master race.
Problematic, as well, is the possibility for using the technology for enhancement rather than for cure, for indulgent purpose rather than necessary treatment.
At issue, too, is maintaining respect for those who are ill even as we begin to conquer disease and disability. We are all created in God's image, Dorff reminds us, each with our own imperfections.
Stem cell research is a wondrous advance. But it requires religious leadership to delineate the moral and ethical parameters that inform public policy, in a unique convergence of science and spirit.
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