(March 15, 2009)
Stem Cell Research
Public Funding for Stem Cell Creation and Extraction:
The Right Reason
As The New York Times pointed out in its editorial "Science
and Stem Cells" on March 10, 2009, limitations still remain on
federal funding of stem cell research. In particular, Congressional restrictions
still prevent research involving the creation and extraction of stem cells
from human embryos. This work must be done with private or state financing.
The Times is right to argue for federal funding of this research,
but they do so for the wrong reasons. It’s important to get the reason right.
The Times offers two problematic arguments for lifting the final
limits on federal funding for stem cell research. The first is that there
should be no limits on federal funding of promising stem cell research.
The editorial observes: “Even with this enlightened stance, some promising
stem cell research will still be denied federal dollars. For that to change,
Congress must lift a separate ban that it has imposed every year since the
mid-1990s.”
It is highly problematic to suggest that promising research should inevitably
trump reasonable limits on science adopted by democratic governments. In
fact, a wide range of limits exist – and should exist – on otherwise promising
stem cell research. Some of these limits are procedural, such as regulations
dealing with the protection of human and animal subjects in research, conflicts
of interest among researchers, safety rules and exports of potentially dangerous
technologies. Other limits constrain the outcomes of research, such as limits
sought by many in Congress on the pursuit of human cloning.
These limits arose because human values – of safety, ethics and accountability
– were in conflict with research practice. Past experience, from the United
States and elsewhere, has taught us that limits are essential to preventing
purportedly promising research from being carried out in ways that give
rise to grave harm or violations of human rights.
Precisely where these societal limits on research should be drawn should
be the subject of broad deliberation in society, which is unfortunately
something that no administration in the last two decades has wanted to facilitate.
But there should be no blanket presumption that promising research should
receive federal funding.
The second wrong reason offered by The New York Times for supporting
public funding of research on stem cell creation and extraction is that
it will create a large infusion of money into the field. If research on
stem cell creation and extraction is important, in terms of potentially
valuable therapies, then we can expect businesses to put up the necessary
money. Indeed, over the past decade, they have.
In my view, the right reason to support public funding for research on
the creation and extraction of stem cells from embryos is that it would
shine the public light of day on the research being done in this ethically
treacherous domain. The ethical challenges of embryo research are precisely
why Congress has continued to authorize a ban on federal sponsorship, year
after year. Outlawing federal funding, however, is precisely the wrong response
because it pushes the research into privately funded labs that have no obligation
to share their research practices, methods or outcomes with the public.
In short, under the current law, we know almost nothing about what ethical
practices are being used by scientists who are engaged in this work. By
shifting the burden of such research into the public domain, we could both
see and appropriately police those practices.
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