Of all the arguments against stem cell research, the lamest has to be that "it would put us on a slippery slope." But since this case comes from the same precincts that gave us "gay marriage will lead to incest and man-on-dog sex," I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
The anti-stem-cell slippery slope argument goes like this: If you permit scientists to destroy human embryos for the purpose of research, it's a slippery slope from there to killing human fetuses in order to harvest tissue, and from there to euthanizing disabled or terminally ill people to harvest their organs, and from there to human cloning and human-animal hybrids, and if making chimeras is okay, well then Dr. Frankenstein must also be okay, and Dr. Mengele, too, and before you know it, it's one long hapless inevitable slide from high-minded medicine to the Nazis.
This is not the same as the argument over when human life begins. If the answer to that is, when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg, then a single-cell zygote is a already a tiny human being with a soul, and anything that stops it from becoming a fully-developed person is evil and must be outlawed. This way of thinking leads not only to ruling out exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest, a fatal genetic disorder or a threat to the mother's health; it also means a ban on in vitro fertilization, because that technique also leads to the destruction of superfluous embryos, unless of course you're the octo-mom, but let's not go there just now.
The when-life-begins argument is about logical consistency. Life is life, period, and no compromise, even for the most compassionate of reasons, is possible. How then do its adherents justify, say, killing people in self-defense, or in war? The answer is that those circumstances are sanctioned by the Bible, every word of which was divinely written. If that's fundamentally what you believe, then there's no slippery slope to be concerned about, because you never need to make exceptions to the rules, because all the rules come straight from the Creator.
But the slippery slope argument is all about exceptions. It doesn't require believing that legal rules come from moral rules that in turn come from on high. Instead, it's about what you believe coming from down below, from our innards and our evolutionary forebears. Call it hardwiring, or call it psychology; it doesn't matter. What counts is a fundamentalism about human nature.
This view of how people are, deep down, is implicit in the metaphor itself. Picture a person on a steep mountaintop. Then imagine him taking a step off the summit and onto an ice-covered slope. (Please don't be offended that I'm not saying "him or her"; this guy has got to be pretty stupid to take that step.) And following that step comes a cartoonish blur of whirling legs and arms, and before you know it the guy is tumbling ass over teakettle down the slope, a human snowball banging into trees, helplessly accelerating toward the fatal crevasse below.
What this case against stem cell research is saying is that people are basically animals, slaves to their appetites, incapable of restraining themselves, biologically unequipped to make complex rules, or draw fine distinctions, or debate exceptions, or enforce differences. If we make one exception, and permit a scientist to culture stem cells from discarded human blastocysts, then when that scientist wants to make cowumans and humabbits, society will be totally flummoxed, completely paralyzed, incapable of drawing a legal line and saying no.
If this were actually true, then the message society sends when police don't stop everyone over the speed limit on the freeway is that it must also be okay to be a hit-and-run driver. You know, there's a slippery slope between not arresting someone for smoking a joint and letting drug cartels destroy our cities. If you can restrict the sale of semi-automatic rifles, then you can ban the right to bear arms. If a shoplifter gets off easy, what's to stop a Bernie Madoff from being allowed to walk? If you make hate speech a crime, then it won't be long before free speech is a crime.
During George W. Bush's long summer vacation in 2001 -- the summer when he dismissed the CIA briefer who told him that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States with "All right, you've covered your ass now" -- the big news out of Crawford was his Solomonic decision to permit federally-funded research only on the 78 stem-cell lines already created in privately-funded labs. Those murders, he signaled to his base, had already been committed, so we might as well get some good out of the crimes.
It turns out that only about 20 of those lines were actually usable in laboratories. As a result, over these last 7 1/2 years, when stem-cell researchers might have been racing toward therapies for diseases like juvenile diabetes, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, they have instead had federal anvils chained to their ankles.
Today, some of those protesting President Obama's reversal of President Bush's limits are saying that we don't need any new lines of embryonic stem cells, because recently discovered techniques, like reprogramming human skin cells into iPS -- induced pluripotent stem cells -- make it unnecessary to depend on embryos. But the potential of iPS is still unclear; at least as promising and worth pursuing are the hundreds of stem cell lines that were created without federal funding during the Bush years, but have not yet benefited from the kind of balls-to-the-wall research that only the National Institutes of Health can support.
If God is dead, Dostoevsky had Ivan Karamazov say, then anything is possible. This turns out to be exactly wrong. In fact, you can build a just society on the basis of the rule of law, and you can build a good society on the basis of human culture and humanistic values. Despite what Bill O'Reilly says, a secular society is not the same as an immoral society. Every American has the right to choose a God to believe in, or not. But no Americans have the right to impose their own theistic absolutes, or their own dark views of human nature, on anyone else. That's what it means to be a pluralistic democratic society. And the last time I looked, being a democracy is not the first step down a slippery slope.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
The Catholic Church, which states that human life begins when the sperm fuses with the egg, at which point God creates a human soul. They don't explain, however, why it is that approximately 50 percent of the time a woman's egg is fertilized for the first time, the little thing doesn't manage to implant itself in the uterus wall. And is expelled in what doctors call a "spontaneous abortion."
O holy father, what is God doing here? Are we looking at a poorly designed system?
The Catholics are still debating what happens to the little micro-tot, but some Evangelicals have an answer. Without baptism -- infant damnation.
In other words, several hours after conception, this little creature that lacks even the parts necessary for lust --- finds itself broiling in Hell! As the Muslims would say, God is merciful, and just!
In his remarks yesterday, President Obama said we need to respect the ideas of opponents.
Sorry, at least not the above-mentioned clowns. It's important to realize who these people are and whet they "think."
I'm also an agnostic/atheist. I don't lie, cheat, steal, have premarital sex (though that's not my choice), nor do I desrespect my parents. The idea the BillO would suggest that I have no morals is outrageous. The guy has no problem skewing the news, and outright lying to his viewers on a daily basis. And me, well, I do what's right because it's right; not because I am afraid of God. It's called rational altruism, and mosts scientists are bound by it. Most conservatives, though...
Both may end up being useful, to deny another option simply because we have something that works would be like saying, "we have coal fired power plants, so why would we need wind turbines?"
It is highly likely that each type of stem cell will be able to do something that the other can't.
Bravo, Mr Kaplan. You have clearly and concisely stated what so many of us have been trying to convince our neighbors, co-workers and others of for years. Those of us that choose to make our decisions outside the confines of religous/faith systems are not to be feared. We, as a whole, are no more or less immoral than the next man/woman. Immorality is an indvidual trait that should not be proscribed to entire groups or categories of people based on their belief system.
Sorry Marty, but this is one slope I'm not willing to go down. Hate speech is disgusting, but it is free speech. Freedom of speech has to include speech that others find offensive. Otherwise, it's only freedom of popular speech.
There will always be some place where the line will have to be drawn anyway. If stem cell research leads to 'playing god,' then why allow it? But if the study of science leads to stem cell research, why allow that? If observation and inquiry into nature lead to science, then why allow observation of the natural world?
The "slippery slope' logic is as lame as the old "pot is a gateway drug to hard drugs"... in the same way as breast feeding leads to alcoholism I suppose
It has reached the point where the Flat Earthers will use any argument or tactic that they think might work to prevent progress in the world, no matter how ludicrous it may seem to sane people!.
The NIH just published a list of high priority stem cell research topics open for immediate funding.
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/challenge_award/High_Priority_Topics.pdf#topic_14
1. Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) Cells for Aging and Neurodegeneration Research.
2. Delineate Factors That Control The Differentiation Of Pluripotent Stem Cells In The Skin And Musculoskeletal System Into Different Lineages.
3. Precise Reprogramming of Cells from Oral and Craniofacial Tissues: Recent advances in reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) cells constitute an important breakthrough...
4. Induced pluripotent stem cells--cellular and humanized mouse models of disease.
5. Development of stem cell treatment for degenerative diseases of the eye.
6. Develop molecular signatures for heart, vascular, lung, and blood diseases by profiling reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) derived from affected individuals of defined genotype.
7. Developing iPS cells for mental disorders.
8. Reverse engineering human neurological disease. ... There will be an emphasis on appropriate validation of iPS cells and their derivatives, evaluating the hetero/homogeneity of any cell populations to be screened and use of cellular assays relevant to normal development, organ function and disease.
I'm glad we can stop politicizing this issue and trying to force scientists to ignore iPS cells in favor of low-priority hESC research for political reasons.
Fortunately, several states have opened up funding for the use of new ESC lines. But the grants stipulate that researchers may only use equipment bought with state grants for that research. So, for example, you couldn't even wear a pair of disposable latex gloves bought with a federal NIH grant to work on a state-funded project.
Be clear- there are challenges and limitations to the use of both iPSCs and ESCs. But only if work is allowed to progress on both fronts is there a better chance of seeing results. Whether or not the holy grail is attained with ESCs, it is refreshing to see the day when science is not regulated by faulty theology.
Rabbi Daniel A. Weiner
goodgodforus.com
May we all believe with perfect faith in the vast intelligence of the creator - whoever we believe that creator to be - and that we have been given a small reflection of that great wisdom, which can give us the ability to reason out matters of moral consequence with collective wisdom.