CNS STORY: Stem-cell debate said to neglect some important moral issues

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STEMCELL-PUBLIC Oct-6-2004 (520 words) xxxn

Stem-cell debate said to neglect some important moral issues

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien

Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "Hype from both sides" in the embryonic stem-cell debate has distracted the American public from other important moral issues raised by the research, a law professor told a Washington conference Oct. 4.

Rebecca Dresser, the Daniel Noyes Kirby professor of law and professor of ethics in medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, said the debate over stem-cell research involving embryos has "captured the nation's attention," with "compelling moral arguments on both sides."

Lost in the discussion, however, are considerations of justice both within the United States and around the world, she said.

"There are many competing demands for limited research dollars," Dresser said. "What value should be assigned to regenerative medicine?

"Is it defensible for wealthy nations to devote those dollars to diseases of the elderly," she asked, when diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are causing "a high rate of premature death" around the world?

Dresser, who also serves on the 18-member President's Council on Bioethics, spoke on the first day of an Oct. 4-5 conference on the stem-cell debate in the United States and Germany. The conference was sponsored by The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Although many of the talks at the conference focused on how stem-cell research affects the embryo, Dresser said stem-cell research "raises complex moral issues apart from the status of the human embryo."

When development of the first line of human embryonic stem cells was announced by the University of Wisconsin in 1997, she said, "the public was happy to believe the claims of irresponsible scientists" that therapeutic uses for them "were right around the corner."

As an example of such hyperbole, she cited a comment by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., that stem-cell research would result in emptying "three-quarters of the nursing home beds in Massachusetts" because of cures.

"The public support would be much less if the research were portrayed accurately," Dresser said.

She described stem-cell research as "a new tool for basic research, not a sure cure for devastating illnesses."

Exaggeration of the speed with which therapies can be developed is bad for the public, bad for science and will "almost certainly bring a backlash" in terms of public support for scientific endeavors, she added.

The hype also provides politicians with "an easy and cheap way to show their concern for suffering patients," while at the same time allowing them to avoid work on a solution to the problem of "the uninsured who can't get basic (health) services" in the United States, Dresser said.

"We must not allow the embryonic stem-cell debate to divert the attention of politicians from the burgeoning health care crisis in this country," she said.

One of the goals of the President's Council on Bioethics, Dresser said, is to "foster a serious, open-minded and collegial discussion" about the moral status of the human embryo and other issues surrounding the stem-cell debate.

"In a few years, a more realistic picture will emerge" about the potential of stem cells, she said. "But then some other line will emerge as the new miracle cure."

END

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