By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

Nov. 13, 2005

My title today is a question: Is stem cell research ethical? It may seem like an odd topic for Stewardship Sunday. But think about it—where would we be without the church to help us figure out ethics? Most of us need a community where we can go to get some help in figuring out life’s more difficult questions. A lot of things that we struggle to understand aren’t even mentioned in the Bible, and figuring out if something is moral or not can be anything but simple! Today, on this Stewardship Sunday, I would remind you that if you want a place where you can get help figuring out some of life’s stickier dilemmas, support your church!

Now, let’s move to the question I pose for you today: Is stem cell research ethical? Is it moral? It’s important for us to be informed on this subject, because stem cell research has the potential to dramatically change our lives. Tell me, how many of you know a person who has one of the following diseases? Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, juvenile diabetes, congestive heart failure, a spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, or macular degeneration, Stem cells offer us the possibility of reversing the course of all of these disease and conditions. If stem cell research can lead to a reversal of so many dreaded diseases, why then is it so controversial?

Stem cell research is controversial because the stem cells that have the most potential to turn into all kinds of tissue are stem cells retrieved from embryos. The clusters of cells that form the very earliest embryos are like a blank computer hard drive. In order to make a computer hard drive work, different programs are loaded so that it can be used to do different things. You can add an email program,, or a game, or a finance program, or word processing. The embryonic stem cells are in a sense, blank, that is they are not yet programmed to become specific tissue, for example liver tissue or spinal cord or brain tissue. But they can be programmed to become many types of tissue. "They offer the possibility of developing specific types of tissue for transplant or to encourage the body to regenerate its own tissue."

You may have heard about Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox and former President Reagan’s wife testifying before Congress, asking congress to approve more stem cell research. That’s because stem cells offer the possibility of regenerating nerve tissue for those who are paralyzed, or of regenerating nerve tissue damaged by Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. Another dramatic possibility is that of using stem cells to create organs for transplant that would offer the possibility of a perfect tissue match, since the recipient’s DNA would be inserted into the stem cells. Let me give you an example: let’s assume that one of the children here today develops kidney disease, and by the time she is in college, her kidneys fail, making a transplant necessary. In the past, she might have spent years on dialysis, waiting for a donor kidney, if she didn’t have a family member who was a match. But instead, stem cell research may very well make it possible to insert the nucleus of one of her somatic cells into stem cells that would then grow into new kidney tissue for a transplant that is a perfect match because it was made using her own genetic material.

But here’s the difficulty. The stem cell debate is essentially about the status of the human embryo. We are talking about clusters of cells less than 2 weeks old, called the hollow ball or blastocyst stage. On the one hand, there are those who are against using stem cells from embryos, because in order to derive the stem cells, the shell around them is destroyed. Some believe that destruction of even a very early embryo constitutes the unethical killing of a developing human being.

This argument is based on the idea that the embryo is morally equivalent to a person. In a lecture at Chautauqua this summer, Dr. Michael Sandel, an ethicist and professor at Harvard, who is also a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, in order to illustrate this position asked a audience this question: If you could save the lives of 5 people by taking the life of one healthy child and using her organs to give transplants to the other 5 people, would it be morally acceptable? Of course we all agreed that it would be wrong to take organs from a healthy child in order to cure other people. Even if one life might save 5 other lives, we wouldn’t conceive of destroying one child’s life to save others. Now, extend that argument to the 5-day-old embryo—neither should it be sacrificed, even to do good, because it is morally equal to a child.

But Dr. Sandel suggests that there is more to it than that. First, he pointed out that many of us from a variety of religious traditions believe life is sacred. Christian scriptures are full of references to life being a gift from God. But there is a difference between believing life is sacred and believing that a 5-day-old embryo is a person.

First of all, the embryos under consideration for use as stem cells are leftover embryos from fertility clinics. There are currently over 400,000 embryos in frozen storage at facilities around the country, leftover from processes used to help couples conceive babies. Typically more embryos are created than are implanted in the mother, and while some couples decide to later implant and use the extra ones, many do not. Some of these embryos are unsuitable for implantation. These 400,000 embryos will never be implanted, they will never become persons. They would remain frozen indefinitely, and probably eventually be destroyed.

Let’s consider another aspect of regarding these embryos as persons. How would you answer this question: If a fire occurred in a fertility clinic and you could save either a 5-year-old girl in the clinic or a tray of 12 frozen embryos, what would be the right thing to do?

Given the choice, all of us, I daresay, would choose to save one 5-year-old from a burning clinic, rather than 12 frozen embryos. This suggests to us that even though we regard the embryo with respect, we do not see it as fully a person. Developmental biologist Douglas Melton explains that a 5-day-old embryo has neither nerves, heart, lungs, brain, feelings, nor any sensibility at all. He says, "You can’t put a five-year-old in a freezer and then take it out" as you can a blastocyst. In the development of human life, there is no "bright line" or biologically determined moment when such a life acquires the moral status of a person. The process is gradual. And so, there is widespread support among scientists for using embryos, under two weeks of developmental age, for stem cell research.

At the 2001 General Synod of the UCC, held in Kansas City, our denomination passed a resolution in support of stem cell research, because it shows such promise for relieving suffering and it offers the potential for cures for many diseases. It recalled that Jesus healed people wherever he went, implying that God’s will for us is health and wholeness. The resolution wisely recognized the need for ethical guidelines and oversight. Part of the danger is that currently this research is being done primarily in privately funded labs, with less oversight than might occur in federally funded programs. That’s because President Bush, in 2001, approved federal funding only for research on a very few existing stem lines, and prohibited further development of new stem cell lines in any federally funded labs.

Stem cell work is taking place, however in private labs, where there is likely to be a for-profit motive. It could be that stem cell research in a for-profit lab will be devoted to genetic enhancement technology, i.e. creating genetic characteristics which people find desirable. Do we want research devoted to creating taller athletes, more intelligent or beautiful children, or curing disease? If we let the market determine what kind of research gets the most funding, curing disease may not be their focus.

Of this you can be sure…this research is happening in many places without government funding or regulation. And future questions need to be addressed, particularly the question of how we will make the new technology available to more than only the wealthy, because creating individualized tissue in stem cells will be very expensive. The question of fairness of distribution is one that the UCC recommended for future study in its resolution. Will extraordinary care be available at the expense of ordinary care for the poor? These are questions of cost and access, and they do not have easy answers in a country that fails to provide even a basic minimum of quality health care to all its citizens.

Scientists and ethicists warn us that ethical guidelines need to be established. Privately funded, commercial labs may not seek to curb or prevent potential negative uses of many of these technologies. For example, the development of technology that creates organs for transplant potentially opens the door to the cloning of a human being. Reproductive cloning, i.e. creating a child that is a genetic duplicate of another person by inserting that person’s DNA into an undifferentiated embryo, will almost certainly be scientifically possible very soon, but few people believe it is ethical. Already researchers have cloned sheep, mice, monkeys, cows, goats, pigs and even a cat. The cat, by the way was named CC for Copy-Cat and also Carbon Copy, born at Texas A & M University in 2001.

The General Synod of the UCC did not support reproductive cloning, which makes the cloned child an instrument of a parent’s will, and is very different from cloning cells for tissue that will promote healing and repairing of human bodies.

Life is a gift that commands our reverence. Jesus did provide a model of healing people. He not only healed, he did so creatively, as you heard in our text from john 9 today. At the same time, he broke old taboos by healing on the Sabbaath. Today, creative solutions to disease are being developed, and they require public debate as to what is taboo and what is not. They point to the need for guidelines. I encourage you to be involved in this process, and I predict that one day soon, you or someone you know will be affected by the results of this work. Amen.