How America came to accept using human embryos for research
DATE: June 17, 2008

TIME: 9:00 AM EST

In the ten years since Dr. James Thomson at the University of Madison first procured human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), support for the prospect of using human embryos and fetuses for research purposes has gradually seeped into the American mindset to the point at which it is now broadly tolerated, if not openly endorsed, especially in the political arena, in academia, and certainly within the scientific community. 1 As we continue to advance as a nation into the age of developmental biology there is reason to fear that Americans are slowly coming to embrace the idea of submitting one class of our citizenry to a lethal form of biotech serfdom. The class I am talking about, of course, are ex utero human embryos and early stage human fetuses.

How have we gotten to the point now where arguably half of the American population claim to approve of embryo-destructive biomedical research?

The very prospect of conducting direct research on human embryos, or creating them explicitly for the purposes of research, had been until very recently the object of near universal moral opprobrium in the public square. That began to change, however, with the advent of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1970s which made it possible to create human embryos in the laboratory and to engage in research on human embryonic development in addition to fertility problems. From that point on, the biomedical establishment’s prospects for incorporating human embryos into their preferred research platforms was on the horizon as never before. Advocates knew at the time that progress in this direction would require a process of slowly eroding away popular resistance to the idea of using embryos for research purposes.

In 1994, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened the Human Embryo Research Panel in response to growing tensions over this prospect. The panel was designed to exclude from membership individuals who objected to embryo-destructive research. In its 1994 “Report of the Human Embryo Research Panel” the panel stated:

From the perspective of public policy, the Panel concludes that sufficient arguments exist to support the permissibility of certain areas of research involving the preimplantation human embryo within a framework of stringent guidelines. This conclusion is based on an assessment of the moral status of the preimplantation embryo from various viewpoints and not solely on its location ex utero… Although the preimplantation human embryo warrants serious moral consideration as a developing form of human life, it does not have the same moral status as an infant or a child (p. x).

That panel went on to recommend 2 federal funding for (1) the use of left over IVF embryos, as well as for (2) the direct creation of human embryos for research purposes. Both proposals received immediate public moral reprehension, including bipartisan rebukes from within Congress, consternation from the Clinton White House, and even a rebuke from The Washington Post editorial board: “The creation of human embryos specifically for research that will destroy them is unconscionable,” said the Post editorial. “[I]t is not necessary to be against abortion rights, or to believe human life literally begins at conception, to be deeply alarmed by the notion of scientists' purposely causing conceptions in a context entirely divorced from even the potential of reproduction.” 3

Not withstanding the rebukes, however, the panel’s enthusiasm for ushering in the era of embryo and fetal-based biomedical research was a clarion call to a broad body of researchers to continue to advance the overarching project of using embryos for research. The next crucial step in that project would come into play just four years later, namely, to garner broad public acceptance for human embryonic stem cell research.

Under immediate and severe pressure from Congress, President Clinton rejected the panel’s second recommendation, but embraced the first and permitted the NIH to consider applications for the funding of research using embryos left over from IVF procedures. Congress disagreed, however, and attached language to the 1996 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (the annual budget bill that funds the HHS and the National Institutes of Health) prohibiting the use of federal funds for any research that destroys, discards or seriously endangers human embryos, or that creates them for research purposes. This provision, known as the Dickey Amendment, 4 has been attached to the HHS appropriations bill each year since then.

The following year, 1997, Ian Wilmut announced the birth of Dolly the sheep—the first mammal ever to be successfully cloned. This added further impetus to the hopes of harnessing the laws not only of mammalian development in general but especially of primate development. A year later, 1998, the science of developmental biology went mainstream when Dr. Thomson announced the isolation of hESCs for the first time.

This event added new and severe pressure on the Clinton administration to open the coffers of the NIH to fund research on hESCs. In response, the Clinton administration settled on a loophole in the Dickey Amendment. While the latter prohibits federal funding on research that would directly harm or destroy embryos, it did not appear to prohibit federal funding of research on the cells derived from human embryos once the act of embryo destruction had been accomplished and the lines of embryonic stem cells derived. Accordingly, the Clinton administration determined that federal funding could be used to fund research on cells derived from human embryos and requested that adequate guidelines be drawn up to govern the use of federal monies in this way. Those guidelines were never implemented, however. It was not until August 9, 2001 when President Bush announced a carefully crafted policy that would allow a limited amount of federal funding on the then already existing lines of hESCs, a policy he believed would not involve federal taxpayer money to be used for further embryo-destructive research, but which at the same time would allow research on hESCs to go forward.

Meanwhile, over the course of time, as the creation, donation and destruction of human embryos for research continued, vocal advocates of such research engaged in a constant and effective – if somewhat misleading – effort aimed at swaying public opinion in their favor. As a result, public opinion has gradually grown more tolerant of the once almost universally condemned notion that some human life is expendable if it can be of benefit to others.

Such is the road 5 that has brought us to where we are today in which polls will invariably state that approximately 50% of the country will tolerate embryo-destructive research on the belief that this will lead to ground-breaking therapies. I personally hold out hope that we can still get ourselves off the road to biotech serfdom. But it will continue to take enormous amounts of time, money, and energy to educate Americans on the moral and scientific facts which must inform their attitudes and opinions about stem cell research.

Rev. Thomas V. Berg, L.C. is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

1 The rationales for accepting this project are becoming more and more ubiquitous and forthright in their formulations. For instance, consider this recent post from Dominic Wilkinson, a doctoral student of Prof. Julian Savulescu, Oxford bioethicist and noted proponent of embryo-destructive researh. It follows as the third of three reasons he is offering his readers as to why we still need hESC research:

"Third, there are likely to continue to be good reasons for performing research in human embryos – even if stem cells can be safely and efficiently generated from other sources, and they prove as effective in treatment. For example, such research may be necessary for the development of therapies for a range of genetic diseases not amenable to stem cell based treatment. As I alluded in my post last week, it may be that research using early human embryos is ethically preferable to research in animals, since it will not cause the research subjects to suffer, and research findings are more likely to be directly transferable to humans.”

Available at: http://ethicsinthenews.typepad.com/practicalethics/2007/11/is-this-the-end.html#more (Emphasis my own).

2 The Panel’s two-volume report is available at http://ospp.od.nih.gov/policy.

3 "Embryos: Drawing the Line," The Washington Post, October 2, 1994 at C6.

4 The “Dickey Amendment” (named after its original author, former Representative Jay Dickey of Arkansas), has been attached to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill every year since 1996. The provision reads as follows:

(SEC. 510. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—

(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or

(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.208(a)(2) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).

(b) For purposes of this section, the term ‘human embryo or embryos’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.

For 12 years, the Dickey Amendment has effectively prohibited the use of fed

eral funds to support any research that would endanger or destroy human embryos.

5 See also, “The Administration's Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Funding Policy: Moral and Political Foundations” a staff working paper of the President’s Council on Bioethics, available at http://www.bioethics.gov/background/es_moralfoundations.html.

***