What his stem cell decision means and where the field is going

DATE: April 7, 2009

President Barack Obama issued an executive order on March 9, 2009 which suspended the Bush administration policy on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and directed the National Institutes of Health to come up with a new set of regulations for that research within a period of 120 days. Much hailed as a major step toward what he described in his Inaugural Address as a pledge to "restore science to its rightful place," it was the center piece of the culture-of-death accomplishments of his first 60 days in office -- many of them aimed directly at the Catholic Church and attacking religious liberties in general.

Michael Gerson, former policy advisor and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, discovered a "common thread" running through Obama's pro-choice, anti-life agenda, namely, "the coercion of those who disagree with it." Writing in The Washington Post on March 11, he continued:

Obama has begun providing federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. He has moved to weaken conscience protections for health-care professionals. And he has chosen the most radical possible option on the use of embryonic stem cells -- a free license for researchers, with boundaries set only by the National Institutes of Health.

Now, taxpayers are likely to fund not only research on the "spare" embryos from in vitro fertilization but also on human lives produced and ended for the sole purpose of scientific exploitation. Biotechnicians have been freed from the vulgar moralism of the masses, so they can operate according to the vulgar utilitarianism of their own social clique -- the belief that some human lives can be planted, plucked and processed for the benefit of others.

As Gerson rightly points out, the next steps would go beyond merely using spare IVF embryos.

Even some secular voices of those who up until now have supported embryo destructive research and the use of "left over" embryos are raising a red flag at the rapidly approaching specter of creating human embryos on demand for research purposes. Among them, syndicated columnist and former member of the President's Council on Bioethics Charles Krauthammer -- who favors embryo-destructive research -- acknowledged that the forthcoming NIH regulations will strive to open the door as broadly as possible to a create-and-kill or clone-and-kill regime of stem cell research. He also rightly questioned Obama's blind faith in the ethical rectitude of those now involved in crafting the new regulations. Observed Krauthammer:

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Joseph Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

While those new regulations will almost certainly be aimed at eventually allowing the federal government to fund the direct creation and destruction of human embryos for research purposes by any means (in vitro fertilization and even human cloning), such a regulation would currently run afoul of the "Dickey-Wicker Amendment" (DWA) -- named after its original authors, former Representatives Jay Dickey of Arkansas and now-Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

DWA 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.

In force since 1996, the Dickey-Wicker amendment badly needs updating to fit the current research reality, if not outright repeal. But because it affects fewer researchers than did the funding restrictions on stem-cell research, scientists who spent hours in public outreach trying to overturn the stem-cell ban may well want to return to their labs, leaving this lower-profile law's implications unquestioned.

Such attitudes are understandable, but wrong. Both the Dickey-Wicker amendment and the new guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research being drawn up by the National Institutes of Health merit an intense national conversation. In particular, that dialogue should thoroughly explore attitudes towards studying different types of embryos -- not just those left over from fertility procedures, but also those that might be specially created for research.