As you may know, back on Wednesday of this week (19 July 2006), US President George W. Bush vetoed legislation calling for increased Federal funding for stem cell research. Or perhaps you don’t know. It’s been tough for anything to get attention these last few days that isn’t the howl of a rocket. Or of a jet with a Star of David painted on it. Or of a blogger who is still surprised that Google AdSense hasn’t yet made the payments on the family yacht. Anyway, BigBadJohnny found himself in agreement with the veto, siding with those who consider research on embryonic stem cells “an insult to God�, and he asked me what I thought about it. Here’s my answer.

Might could be you’ve already heard more about stem cells than you ever thought necessary. But if you think you need to stop me from posting a brief review, you’re going to have to move awfully fast.

A “stem cell� is a cell in an animal’s body that can divide to make almost any kind of cell. Stem cells can make more stem cells, or they can make, say, muscle cells, or nerve cells. I used to speak of stem cells as “undifferentiated�, because they have not changed into cells that perform a specific function, like those muscle or nerve cells; they have not “differentiated�.

There are “adult� stem cells, ones that are a normal part of an animal’s body. The blood marrow cells, from which differentiated red and white blood cells are created, are adult stem cells. And there are “embryonic� stem cells, found only in animal embryos – in the earliest stages of the embryo, stem cells basically make up the whole thing.

It’s the embryo thing, of course, that’s responsible for all the fuss. Because, while you can get (almost) all the bone marrow cells you want from yourself for an experiment and still get up in the morning, you don’t (yet) have that option for an embryo. It either winds up as a layer of stem cells on a plate or a baby. We haven’t figured out how to do both yet. And that gets us into the whole “pro-life�, “insult to God� business.

More on that in a bit. But first – why do we get tangled up in this argument at all? If you can get all the stem cells you desire from your arm, can’t we just leave the embryos alone and keep the religious right the hell out of this?

Well, no. You see, not all stem cells are created equal. Sorry about that. Only the cells in the earliest stages of the embryo are totipotent, capable of making anything. Anything cellular, that is. You still have to get your iPod from Apple Computer. Sheesh. Stem cells in later embryonic stages, and adult stem cells, are pluripotent. They can make a lot of things, but not everything.

And the researchers, being kinda greedy people, don’t want to understand how these cells make just some things. Though adult stem cells certainly can make a lot. And sometimes what they don’t make is as important as what they do. Y’see, among the “everything� that cultured embryonic stem cells can make is “tumors�. The idea is to treat cancer, not cause it.

But that’s the point. Researchers don’t want to promote medical procedures that can turn into blobs while they’re not looking. Researchers wish to understand how all the processes that lead from an undifferentiated cell to a differentiated one work. And, if possible, vice versa. So that their treatments work. That’s not possible unless you can work from the earliest possible point in the process. That means embryos.

And that means a fundamental disagreement with the pro-life folks. Which leads to Bush’s veto on principle – the principle that he has so few folks left who support himself or his Administration, he can’t afford to hack off the ones who remain.

Yet, even so, the pro-lifers in this context, I think, perform an important function. The potential impacts of understanding human cell and tissue development through research on embryonic stem cells are staggering. The Forbes article cites numerous instances of practical applications of stem cell research, applications that are making stunning differences in how we understand and treat degenerative conditions caused by disease microbes, or rogue genes, or “simple� aging. The Fountain of Youth may well be within our grasp at last. And that prospect can cause an awful stampede towards Fame and Fortune. The nightmare vision is that no ovary, no conception, is safe from the mad scientists and corporations trying to find the Elixir of Eternal Life.

The pro-lifers remind us of the principle of sacrifice. That we are in fact dealing with human life, and that life is, supposedly, sacred. I wish we could convince certain people in the Middle East of this right now. That sacred life is only to be taken under circumstances in which the benefits far outweigh the costs. Lest we lose any remaining respect for life.

Those of you who have been following my posts realize, by now, that I have a metaphoric, rather than a literal, view of God. “God�, to me, is an image that we preserve to contain our memory of what has worked to preserve our communities, without which we perish in the time of crisis. We are social animals. Making and keeping a society is hard work. Our rules of society are given supernatural sanction to give them authority over our demanding selfishness, lest, as individuals, we get picked off from the village and devoured, one by one, by the grinding maw of credit card debt. To “insult God� is to offend the memory of a successful community strategy and provoke a surly response.

Unfortunately, “God� is very, very old, and slow to learn new tricks. Y’see, God wasn’t very happy with the germ theory of disease either. Yep, I said “germ theory�.

Unless you’re a lot older than I think you are, you grew up accepting as fact that germs (bacteria, fungi, viruses, prions, even an alga or two) are what make you sick. Most of the time anyway. But that idea, in its modern form, is not yet 200 years old. And those who considered disease to be an expression of divine retribution for sins weren’t too happy with the idea that an impartial agent, and one you couldn’t even see, was actually the responsible party.

A fellow by the name of John Snow worked out that a “germ�, not a vapor or a divine decree, was responsible for outbreaks of cholera in mid-19th century London. His idea, though, was not accepted until decades later, after the definitive studies on bacteria and disease by the likes of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch – delaying for decades the investments in public works (like, safe water supplies) that could have saved hundreds of lives in each outbreak.

The good news, though, of course, is that those public works were eventually built, the germ theory was eventually accepted – after all, it worked – and bacterial disease is now treated with antibiotics, not sermons. Stories like this give me hope that we will see our way through “God’s� objection to stem cell research and its ilk as well. If we remember the concepts of patience, and of sacrifice, while we perform this research.

And if we can manage to avoid blowing ourselves up to Kingdom Come in the meantime.

- O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.