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TechnoratiStem-Cell Research Is Liberation Biology - and The Religious Objectors Are Costing Lives
The Religious Damned Organ Donation, Autopsies, IVF and Even Pasteurised Milk
In the black gloop of down-beat news on global warming and Iraq, we sometimes forget that, in at least one respect, we are living through a shimmering moment of progress that should fill us with awe. The 21st century is - as the science writer Ronald Bailey puts it - an era of Liberation Biology. Every week now, scientists are steadily defusing the diseases that have cut human life short for millennia, and stolen from us the grandparents we never knew or the lovers who died too soon. They are setting us free.
Only yesterday, it was revealed by Yale University scientists that they have been able to make primates with severe Parkinson's disease walk and eat unaided, by injecting them with human neural stem cells. The implications for further research into humans are obvious - and dazzling.
Even those of us who are not privileged to be scientists can get the gist of what is happening. In 1998, researchers were first able to isolate embryonic stem cells - immature cells taken from human embyros.
These cells matter because they have the potential to develop into many different types of tissue. Scientists are now slowly discovering which molecular signals make them develop in different ways. If they can unlock this code - if they can make the cells grow into whatever we need - they will be able to transplant nerve cells into broken spines, making the lame walk. They will be able to inject insulin-producing cells into diabetics. They will be able to generate motor-neurone cells to treat Parkinson's. And on the list goes, each one freeing millions of humans from misery.
But - incredibly- there is a large slice of humanity that stubbornly refuses to see any of this as progress. Instead, they see it as a massacre.
The religious backlash against Liberation Biology has been viciously successful, holding back scientific progress in almost every part of the world. In Nigeria, mullahs have this year successfully prevented the World Health Organisation from finally eradicating polio from the human condition, by claiming the vaccine is part of an "anti-Islamic plot" and ordering their congregations to refuse it.
In the US, President Bush again pledged this week to veto legislation sent to him by Congress that would permit federal funds to be used for stem-cell research. And - lest we Europeans get smug - Britain is about to introduce new laws restricting the development of "hybrid embryos" that will slowly strangle life-saving research.
This is all part of an old story: the conflict between science and religion. For all the prattling by bishops that there is "no incompatibility here", in reality they are based on fundamentally contrasting ways of understanding the world. Science is based on strict empirical observation of the world, and deductions based on reason from it. Faith is based on divine revelation (that is, hallucination), or following the words of men who claim to have experienced it.
This battle has been playing out ever since modern science developed. The religious damned autopsies, organ donation, IVF, and even pasturised milk. Today, they are trying to halt the latest wave of Liberation Biology because they claim that blastocysts - hollow spheres of cells almost invisible to the naked eye - are "human beings," and therefore cannot be harvested for life-saving stem cells.
What fact or reason can they point to, to make this point? There are none. We can see through empirical observation that blastocysts have no brains, no thoughts, no capacity to feel pain. So the religious ignore empirical fact. Instead, they say that an invisible thing called "the soul" magically appears at the moment of conception. How do they know? They just do. Okay?
These beliefs have animated the hardcore evangelical base in the US to fight to retard and suppress research - and they have won. If they can delay research in America - which is the world's laboratory, due to its pro-science Enlightenment constitution - they can do it anywhere.
Scientists have been forced by this backlash into a massive diversion, where they have had to try to use adult stem cells instead. Until recently, it was thought that they are only capable of forming their tissue of origin, making them far more limited. But it seems there has been a breakthrough: researchers at UCLA claimed last month that they have been able to take normal adult tissue cells and reprogramme them to act as embryonic stem cells.
So is there, at last, a chance to dodge this debate with fanatics and make progress? Sadly, it's not that simple. Previous "breakthroughs" in this area have turned out to be dead-ends. And even if this isn't another one, adult stem cells are much harder to harvest at a reasonable cost. It takes human embryonic stem cells 25 days to grow from 10 million cells to 10 trillion cells. It takes adult stem cells two weeks longer, and it takes a hundred times more tissue culture surface to do it. So research based on adult stem cells will be slower, burn up more of the limited research funds - and therefore save fewer lives.
Here in Britain, we have a more subtle problem, with the debate focusing on the plea by scientists to allow them to create "hybrid embryos" - taking an animal egg and injecting it with human DNA. They need to do this because there are so few fully human stem cells to experiment with. At the moment, they are dependent on the cast-offs from IVF. By contrast, acquiring and adapting animal eggs offers an almost unlimited supply.
But a string of tabloid headlines immediately conjured images of "chimpmanzees" and "pig-girls" being made by latter-day Dr Moreaus. One headline shrieked: "Can centaurs and talking pigs be far behind?" This is a pig-ignorant question. At Newcastle University, for example, the team led by Lyle Armstrong wants to use cow eggs to develop treatments for diabetes and paralysis. These are not villains; they are heroes. We should be cheering them on, not throwing obstacles into their paths.
But the Government is doing just that. In December, they announced an outright ban on hybrid embryo research. Last month, they backed off - but only a little. The 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act - which has covered these issues until now - outlined a few general ethical rules of thumb, but left the science to an independent body of experts to assess. The new legislation junks this approach, instead offering mind-boggling detail outlining very narrow confines within which scientists can operate.
There is none of the openness to new development of the old system; in time, it will choke off innovations in the name of primitive, unfounded fears.
Progress, it seems, never comes without a punch-up. Even the most beautiful advances are fought against, by people speaking in the name of "prophets" who thought demons and witches caused illnesses. Every day they succeed in delaying this research is a day thousands of us die unnecessarily.
© 2007 The Independent
16 Comments so far
Show AllPoet,
Interesting you should bring up exploitation of the poor. Where do you think they get the eggs to research? They pay women for their eggs. But that isn't practical, at one per month, so they give them drugs to increase that, a lot. Women have only a finite supply of eggs, so when they're gone, they're gone. The embryonic stem cell industy is making young poor women who are desparate for money infirtle, and risking their lives with the drug cocktails. Open your eyes and use your brain. Stop insisting that everyone who disagrees with you has their head in the sand.
dcman98,
Many embryonic stem cells are from IVF "left-overs" and the women have already consented to using drugs to stimulate release of ova. If there is wrongdoing in the embryonic stem cell "industry", as you call it, that should be addressed through legal means. But even if there were, scrapping the entire next generation of therapy and cures is immoral on almost any axis of judgement there is, outside, of course, the idiotic ideology this article exposes.
People who oppose avenues of therapy and cure need to think long and hard on the consequences of their action. It's a quiet crime, since the cures are not yet here, but it IS a sin of omission. How many deaths have Bush, et al. already cause by forwarding their proscriptions? Impossible to evaluate. It's hard to say that Mr. X suffering from disease Y died because Bush delayed a possible therapy by one year, two years, three years. If the promise is never realized they might breathe a sigh of relief, but what if stem cells is on par with penicillin and antibiotic therapy? Scientific ludites will be excoriated like the 50's foot-draggers who refused to acknowledge the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.
The potential for massive crime here is great.
This article highlights one of the great tragedies of our day, the impeding of cutting edge science by idiots and ideologues that can't and won't understand it. It doesn't mention that even childbirth anesthesia was at first proscribed in the 19th century because religious ideologues thought God meant for women to suffer during delivery. That, my friends, is the level of humanity these sadists support. Every single person reading this has something to lose, your own or, worse, a loved one's life. Let's do something!
Samski: And if BOTH paradigms are dangerous? Science is no boy scout when put to serve the interests of profit.
Chchicano: Thank you for the points you raise. Let me add an anecdote that may shed light, or invite the questions that ought be asked here. Years ago I sat in on a session with a trance medium who was asked questions from the group. I raised the question, "Is AIDS a natural phenomenon or the result of a scientific experiment gone awry." The spiritual source answered, "Some of both." Probably because the topic was "not acceptable" (being too explosive) to general MSM, I found a very deep discussion in Rolling Stone Magazine. (I was at a coffee shop in NY looking for something to read. This was in the l990's.) The author of the well-researched article traced AIDS to a group of Black citizens that the Dutch government of that part of Africa OK'd polio drug testing on. The anti-viral (?) was grown in the liver of the rhesus monkey. THOUSANDS of monkeys were slaughtered for this which eventually led to an outcry in India (where the monkeys came from). The researchers decided to grow the medicine in the liver of a monkey indigenous to Africa. The author of the article contended that once the virus crossed over to a different species it mutated and became lethal. People argue that modern medicine has eradicated diseases, but sometimes I wonder if clean water, washing our hands, eating more diverse diets and in the West, (up until this rightwing coup), enjoying our lives more has led to lifespan augmentation? MIND is a key factor in the way matter responds. Personally, I think medicine is over-rated. For women, EVERY stage of our lives has been "pathologized" so that young girls are given drugs for menstruation; then our fertility is turned off with birth control pills; then for ones whose bodies won't turn back on to produce a baby on demand, there are expensive fertility drugs and treatments; then it's menopause. Every day small body responses are also being recodified as diseases so that people will take drugs; then they need drugs to medicate away the side effects of the ones being taken. And on and on. Sure, if I am in an auto wreck I'd opt for a surgeon over a tailor to sew me up; but that's about it. After having my 2nd daughter at home with a mid-wife in the rain forest of Puerto Rico, I decided a lot can be done with nature's assistance. And after a car wreck, $28 in herbs and acupuncture got me walking again. So. I think we humans are a lot more resilient with GOD-given capacities to heal... a lot of the time, our diets, and "medical" intervention thwarts that innate healing process. Robert Mendelson wrote an excellent book, "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" that speaks of the way diseases are created, and populations managed through the MDeity. Yep. Taking care of ourselves as much as we can is GOOD medicine; and that level of self-discipline and respect for the body temple usually extends to how we treat the BODY of earth, and hopefully one another.
The "Right to Life" ends at birth.
Why is religion allowed to shape the course of science, and science never allowed to shape the course of worship?
Imagine the outcry if professors of cosmology determined which sub-sects of Christianity were allowed to build chapels.
Once again, human fear creates belief in mumbo-jumbo which trumps rationality.
We must separate church and state, church and science, church from from everything.
"Even those of us who are not privileged to be scientists"... should refrain from spreading false information about possibly very dangerous 'medical advances'. Or they should at least reveal which big pharma company pays them to do just that!!
The two biggest killers in the world today are malnutrition and unsanitary water. In our country there are millions who don't have access to the most basic healthcare. And yet "liberals" are advocating giving the sickness-industrial complex billions to pursue the pipe-dream of stem cell research. Twenty years ago funding-hungry researchers promised that gene therapy would cure cancer, genetic diseases and AIDS in ten years. Gene therapy turned out to be a bust so a new way to grab billions using high tech promises was created.
THEOCRACY, POLITICS & EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH
Still not satisfied with robbing hope from thousands of those with incurable diseases, and then impeding California's voters efforts to pursue it, Bush now abuses his veto power to block this promising cure.
His alleged concern for the unborn is rendered void by the unmeasurable deaths and illnesses resulting from his blockage of vital environmental, conservation and health reforms--either with secrecy, or disguising them as environmental friendly based irrational logic and manipulated science used to a degree never before experienced in our history.
With similar irrationality, he has compounded this destruction by undermining family planning and women's rights in impoverished areas--the only real means of ending world starvation and poverty for this and future generations, including the unborn.
In order to pacify his radical supporters, satisfy his own theocratic ego, and create diversions from real problems; he justifies his actions using the same misinformation and manipulated science to invalidate support from the medical profession and the public for this research. His shameless repeat theatrics with the "snowflake children" to forge his assertion--that using some of the thousands of otherwise discarded embryos is murder-- underscores his mentality and mendacity.
By allowing such outrages from this unlearned and dangerous president, guided by his financial and radical religious right supporters who planted him in office; Americans have only themselves to blame for not only the resulting medical setbacks, but also expanded world poverty, sickness, and degradation of our planet.
Wow Kelmer! Congratulations on blaming the knife for murder! You have managed to conflate a tool (science) with the intent of a moral agent wielding it!
Sarcasm aside, your point regarding wisdom is important. Our wisdom ought to not outstrip our knowledge lest we loose ourselves along some dark path of eugenics or bio-warfare.
As far as stem cell research goes, I am yet to encounter a temporal argument that causes me pause. If we figure out how to utilize this technology well, we can coax a body to repair itself, regrow soft tissue organs, fill in missing neurons, and ultimately even regrow limbs. We won't have to worry about transplants, human experiments, and the like when (if?) this comes to pass.
Fact is the Religious Right doesn't care how many lives are lost -- anymore than they care about how many lives are lost in Iraq, Iraqi or American.
What's worse, their mindset is impervious to reason and impenetrable to moral appeal -- literally.
What's worst of all, most American fall into this group.
Kelmer: I agree and thank you for your points on science and the MDEity's claims to more than they can reliably guarantee.
Earth to Kelmer:
You went into something that has nothing to do with this article first no one of these stem cells are being tortured. secondly they are going to get old roughly 3-5 years why flush them down the toilet if they can be used to save someones life? And why do you not talk about how many of these so call religious will lie about all these other experimental research without any concern to those who are suffering from it. How fair is it to tell someone that these cells that will grow old and eventually be flush down the tolet more important than you are. I am sicxk of religion being used to hold back and to suppress progess because of someones religious beliefs which has nothing to do with science. Your argument about all of those who these scientists experiment on were human beings these are cells that will never see the light of day. I feel sorry for those who make a big production out of this instead of facing reality.
Earth to Johann:
Science is treated like a religion when people think that you can just go forward blindly and do whatever you want--and nothing bad will happen. How ignorant you are about human nature and history.
Heroin and cocaine seemed like the perfect cough medicine 100 years ago--but it has led to the destruction of thousands of lives.
And that was just scrapings off a plant.
The other article here on genetically engineered crops shows this as well.
People have a reason to be cautious about scientific research especially when it involves life.
The response people have to vivisection(which is what we are talking about here in essence) is the same visceral response that prompted Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. There is something anti-natural about it--especially when it involves the exploitation or harm to one in the hope of helping another. That type of ethical construct is the same as saying you wish to help a homeless man by kicking a family out of their house. Flawed moral reasoning.
Science is a tool--it isnt wisdom.
Medical science is not inherently benign.
Organ transplants required the torture and killing of many innocents(just read Bernard's own words on the suffering he observed among the chimps he did research on). Sure, it saved lives, but at what cost? Now we have people waiting on donor's lists--and when you think about it, if you are waiting for a new kidney, you have to be praying that someone dies so you can continue to live.
Pretty bankrupt morality.
All thanks to science and "progress."
Even with the best intentions, medical science can be used for the opposite purpose.
How about Dr. James Marion Sims--pioneering surgeon who you would no doubt regard as a "hero." They even made him president of the American medical Association. He used to perform live dissections on black slaves. Removed some guy's jaw as he was strapped to a chair(since the luddite couldnt appreciate the contribution he was making to science and progress).
Look at the Nigerian Pfizer scandal. They go to Africa to do research trials because people here are so full of drugs that they cant test their products properly. But its for medical progress right? The battle to stop the Grim reaper?
The work of scientists who are willing to torture and harm innocents for the benefit of others is the same type of thinking that lets big Nations invade little ones in the hope of stealing its wealth.
Its all about alleged progress and benefits.
Believing we should let scientists do what they want without any sort of ethical consideration is incredibly selfish and infantile.
Science teaches us that we must live, and seeks the ways of prolonging life.
Wisdom teaches us that we must die, and seeks the way for us to die well.
"Every day they succeed in delaying this research is a day thousands of us die unnecessarily."
IMHO, part of the reason the Religious Right is fighting this so hard in the research stage is that once this technology comes to its fruition, it will be nearly universally accepted. I think 20 years from now we will look back upon those who opposed this with the same bemused wonder as those who opposed organ transplants, or vaccines, or anti-biotic drugs.
This technology will be developed, one way or the other. If not in the West, then in Asia or other less-repressed research centers. Tell me that 10 years from now hardcore Republican parents will look at their teenage son - paralyzed from a car accident - and refuse ESCR-derived cures that will let him walk again. They will instead say "Its God's will that our son stays in a wheelchair the rest of his life. Praise be." Yeah, right.
It's about class exploitation. We want lots of dirt poor illiterate grunt slaves but please not any longher than it takes them to breed the next generation of similar hapless workabees and then would you please go a way and die so we can everything.