Skirting the Precipice

I'm looking forward to Ramesh Ponnuru's Tech Central Station follow-up to yesterday's piece about some newly proposed scientific techniques to which opponents of embryonic stem cell research don't know how to respond. In my previous post, I suggested that engaging in the artificial creation of life through cloning will lead to the presumption that we have dominion over that life, even to the point of dictating its value purely with reference to ourselves.

The first of the technologies that Ponnuru cites seems likely to effect the same end from another direction:

The first, by two Columbia University scientists, claims that some of the embryos frozen at fertility clinics are already dead -- that is, they are no longer capable of directing their own integral functioning as unitary entities, nor do they any longer possess the capacity for development, even in the most hospitable of circumstances. But it may be possible to take usable stem cells from these embryos. Since they are already dead, the taking of the stem cells will not kill them (whereas taking stem cells from a live embryo would kill it). The proposal is for more research into figuring out how to identify which are the dead embryos and how to take usable stem cells from them.

Ponnuru suggests that this would create an immoral incentive, but that seems an understatement to me. It is currently legal to create embryos and to let them die. Insisting that they die of natural causes (if that term is appropriate) before scientists can harvest them barely adds a step to the sequence. As for the time limit that he suggests as a possible solution, I'll merely say that I hear echoes of the amnesty for illegals debate. The "wasted stock" of dead and dying embryos will simply mount again, and the same logic will apply.

The first procedure gives the cultural impression that it is merely looking for ways to tiptoe lightly over a principle, rather than avoid it. The second procedure, I'll agree with Ponnuru, "raises more complicated issues":

Nature sometimes produces "teratomas," eggs without male genetic contributions that begin to divide and grow, even growing body parts such as hair and teeth. But these teratomas are not organisms: They lack the ability to organize themselves and to direct their own integral functioning and development. They are disordered growths, like tumors. Hurlbut suggests that we might be able to produce teratomas artificially and derive from them usable stem cells that are functional equivalents of embryonic stem cells. Since human teratomas are not human beings, this research would involve no killing.

My gut reaction is that this technique is still a step too close, but I'll hold off on declarations until I have a chance to read Ponnuru's part two.