A bright hope to be realized
The real question, then, is how to amend the Bush policy in a way that might be acceptable to all. One possibility? In vitro fertilization technology, which is yielding growing numbers of frozen human embryos, many that will never be used and could be the source of new stem-cell lines. Fertility clinics destroy far more human embryos than stem-cell research ever will, so we need to ask: Does a human embryo on a dish in a fertility clinic, inevitably bound for destruction, have the same moral status as the lives of real children and adults suffering from disabling and fatal diseases? Like abortion, the answer in part converges on the question of when human life begins.
Some 58 senators now seek a change in the Bush policy, including 14 Republicans. "There is no greater way to promote life," says Utah's Orrin Hatch, "than to find a way to defeat death, and . . . stem-cell research may provide a way to do that." Hatch, a foe of abortion, concluded that an embryo in a laboratory dish can be used for stem-cell research because it has no capacity to develop into a person: "Only after an embryo is transferred into a woman's womb . . . is that natural capacity to become a person attained, and only then does the government gain an interest in protecting that entity."
Provided the research is restricted to such cells, and federally supervised, is it not a sensible and moral way to accelerate the time when the fruits of this research can relieve human suffering?
Because stem-cell research can help so many, we must find a way to accelerate, organize, and fund it.
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