[1] Stem cell technologies represent a promising new area of
medical research. The prospective benefits are astounding, with
experiments demonstrating possibilities that just five years ago
were science fiction. The current quest is for
pluripotent1
stem cells that can generate any type of tissue needed by medical
therapy. One exciting mouse experiment injected bone marrow stem
cells after artificially giving a mouse a heart attack. Some blood
stem cells migrated to the damaged area of the heart and converted
into heart muscle cells. This exemplifies the great promise of stem
cells. This optimistic outlook must be balanced with the caveat
that science and the media frequently overestimate technology's
benefits as well as the ease of its development. For example, the
first implantable artificial heart was designed in the 1960's. In
1982, a premature attempt at a permanent artificial heart
transplant went into Barney Clark. Not until almost twenty years
later, in the summer of 2001, was the Abiocor artificial heart
declared a success when the first recipient survived past 30
days.2
[2] Do the promises of stem cell technologies justify the
research costs and risks? Religion can guide people in this value
assessment. Stem cell technologies will at high cost markedly
benefit only a subset of the population. Important issues of social
justice and access must be raised. These are actually the more
worthy issues for public consideration. Such consideration would
show that even pro-life and pro-choice groups of Christians have
much in common when discussing social justice. Alas, instead the
public debate has currently focused on the divisive issue of "when
human life begins" so this essay addresses that debate. Stem cell
technologies touch strongly on our very perception of what it is to
be a human being created in God's image. Indeed, I submit this is
another paradigm shift science has created for Christianity.
[3] In my training I've dealt briefly with in vitro
fertilization, genetic counseling, and fetal pathology. I've cared
for premature infants weighing only one pound, attended stillbirths
and babies born with lethal birth defects. I've had the great
privilege of telling countless parents that they have a healthy
newborn boy or girl. I've cared for children with severe
disabilities. I describe all this to expose my biases. I'm a
pediatrician, strongly committed to the lives of children. There is
something sacred about human life that is beyond that explainable
by science. It is evidenced in the faces of new parents, the joy of
seeing a baby smile, and in the grief of a woman who has
miscarried. But in my experience this awe does not extend to a few
cells in a tissue culture flask.
[4] As a pediatrician, I'm committed daily to affirming that
children are precious gifts too often undervalued and under
appreciated in this world. But 70-80% of fertilized eggs miscarry,
the majority of these within the first 2 weeks after fertilization,
before the woman even knew she was pregnant. The scientist in me
cannot ascribe the same value to these zygotes as I do to a newborn
child. It is difficult to define a point at which this collection
of living cells becomes a morally salient human life. But in a
world of war, holocausts, abortion as birth control, and greatest
of all, children born into poverty, it seems hypocritical, even
idolatrous, to attach so great a value to a microscopic collection
of cells.
[5] I use the term hypocrisy not in the modern sense where a
person says one thing and does another, but as Jesus used it to
describe Pharisees who held fast to the Law without understanding
its true meaning. The most relevant examples were when Jesus healed
on the Sabbath. (See Matthew 12:1-13 and Luke 13:10-17.) Accused of
breaking a commandment, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of his accusers
who knew the Law but not its purpose.
[6] A paradigm shift is in progress. Christianity has adapted to
the scientific understanding that the earth revolves around the
sun. Christianity has adapted to the theory of evolution. Even if
God does not change, the paradigms mortals use to partially
describe and comprehend God do change and evolve. In this age, with
the human genome sequenced, animals cloned, and stem cell
technology expanding, Christianity must reconcile its concept of an
incarnate God with the realization that our humanity is not tied to
our DNA or to the sacks of protoplasm that surround it.
[7] I understand the fear of those who believe that if
Christians abandon the concept of a fertilized egg being sacred, it
could alter our treatment of humanity in negative ways. Given
humankind's great tendency to rationalize and make ethics relative,
this is not an unwarranted anxiety. All churches need their
traditions and orthodoxy, but as a church of the Reformation,
Lutherans must continuously challenge dogma. Rather than clinging
to orthodoxy, anxiety can be overcome by more clearly affirming
what Christians do value about human life. This is analogous to
remembering why the Sabbath is holy. As a physician I'm called to
care for people even on a Sabbath, avoiding hypocrisy by making my
actions reflect God's glory all seven days of the week. I cannot
remain within safe confines of simplified phrases like "remember
the Sabbath and keep it holy," or "life begins at conception."
Christ always challenges me to keep as my highest commandment a
loving response to the suffering of my neighbor.
[8] When confronted with moral dilemmas, I am called upon to
respond lovingly, even if it means to "sin boldly" rather than
recite regulations. I cannot say with certainty when a new human
life begins, but scientifically fertilization is not a compelling
milestone. Fertilization has been a recent orthodox position in
Christian theology, but not the only position in Judeo-Christian
history. Jesus, by healing on the Sabbath, reinterpreted a
Commandment. Let us likewise affirm what is sacred about human
beings without linking it solely to the dust from which we are
constructed.
© October
2001
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 1, Issue 2
1 http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/
2 http://www.heartpioneers.com/releases/083001.html