I’ve been involved in a few discussions recently about stem cell research, and I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding, in addition to outright deception, going on in the public debates.
By way of introduction, I’m a Ph.D. researcher at a biotech drug company and I’ve been involved in research in academia as well. While I am involved in bacterial / mammalian cell fermentation, and not stem cells, I have a good understanding of this issue, and the technologies involved. It’s another example of attempts to politicize science, and politicize facts. The science says embryonic stem cells are the way to go. Period. End of story. If you think there’s a morally unjustifiable cost associate with those benefits then just say that. That’s an intellectually honest debate to have, and one that could be had in the public sphere.
Let me get this out of the way first, the debate is fundamentally about how one views human embryos. The issue is solely about the belief that it is wrong to use human embryos for any purpose, because that use would justify their destruction. To stem cell opponents this is morally unjustifiable.
To people who don’t share this view, there is nothing even remarkable about using discarded human embryos, they are no more special than skins cells or blood cells. To someone with this mindset there’s no reason not to use this kind of cell for research that could potentially save lives.
It may be hard to believe, but that really is the whole of the legitimate debate. If you think embryos have rights and are people, then their destruction is unjustifiable under any circumstances. If you think they are not people, then they are just cells, and it’s fine to use them for research. I am not going to attempt to address this fundamental question of embryo rights in this article. That is a belief that is informed by religion and there’s no overcoming that. The purpose of this article is to address some of the other nonsense that’s being propagated about stem cell research in an attempt to bolster the anti-stem-cell position. This article is about the facts of stem cell research, not about the ethical status of human embryos.
Again, if you believe that human embryos have rights then you should be clear that this is your position. Don’t get caught up in a bunch of posturing and misdirection. If it was very clear and factual that we could turn 5 year old children into a clean, abundant source of energy you wouldn’t get caught up in trying to attack the facts or the science, you would be comfortable standing by the position that killing children for energy is wrong. My point is that in the stem cell debate the pro-embryo side is not content to make that moral argument, and instead is spreading misinformation. My personal feeling is that the pro-embryo-rights crowd is afraid that they will not retain popular support on a purely ethical basis, i.e. they will not convince enough people that embryos have rights, so they feel that it is morally justifiable to spread misinformation to attain their goal. From their perspective this is true. They think they are saving lives, and surely that is worth lying. But it doesn’t make what they are saying correct.
For the rest of this article I will answer what I see as the most common questions or misunderstandings about this research.
What is an embryo?
First let me address the basic issue of what is meant by “embryo.” After fertilization the egg divides a few times and when it reaches about 50 cells you have what is called a “blastula.” This is a hollow ball of identical cells with no features. Cells are taken from this ball to use for stem cell research, destroying the viability of the cell mass. They don’t have a heartbeat or any of that, they are in no way recognizable as anything other than a hollow ball of 50 cells.
Where do these embryos come from?
They come from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics. When a couple cannot conceive they can go to an IVF clinic where the couple’s egg and sperm cells are extracted and combined and then allowed to divide to the blastula (embryo) stage, again, still in the test tube. The lab will generate a fair number of fertilized embryos at this step. After creation, an embryo is implanted into the prospective mother. If the technique works the mother will carry that embryo to term, and all of the remaining embryos created in the test tubes will be frozen just in case the couple needs them (miscarriage, etc). If the couple does not need them then the frozen embryos are discarded. This pool of “extra” embryos are what would be used for stem cell research to try to generate a stable cell line.
There are no abortions in this process. No embryos are ever taken from a womb. It’s all done in glass vessels in a clinic, then a selected embryo is implanted.
Won’t stem cell research will lead to farming embryos and encourage abortion?
I’ve heard the concern that if we do find a way to use stem cells for life-saving therapies that we will have to start promoting people to get pregnant specifically in order to create embryos destined for destruction (i.e. promoting abortion). This is complete nonsense, and I’ll explain why.
Let me give you the example of the current go-to mammalian cell line for biotech: Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. They were isolated back in the 60s and developed into a cell line. Development means you take a few source cells from some unlucky hamster and coax it into growing in your test tubes and bioreactors. We ended up with a stable cell line that works well in a reactor, and that’s what’s been used since then. We take a culture of this cell line and modify it with genetic engineering, we adapt it to different conditions, but we never go back to the hamster itself. We are still using cells from that same hamster zero from back in the 60s. I guess there are people who look at cells directly from hamsters, but it’s certainly a very small number of labs (I’m not familiar with any work being done). And, by the way, a lot of lifesaving medicines are produced by genetically engineered CHO cells.
That’s what I see happening with stem cells. There’s relatively few researchers who have the training or interest to try to convert human embryonic cells into a usable research stem cell line, but a ton of people who would love to use an established cell line once it was created. I think IVF clinics are going to continue to generate enough discarded embryos to supply any foreseeable number of researchers in that smaller group. I could be wrong of course, but the idea that we will need embryos themselves for the product of stem cell research is nonsense. We’d almost certainly never be in a situation where we needed a new embryo for normal research, and definitely not for commercially producing a therapeutic.
Doesn’t using embryonic stem cells validate abortion?
It has nothing at all to do with validating abortion. To a stem cell research proponent there’s not even a mental connection between the two. But the stem-cell-proponent attitude does come from the same place: there’s nothing overwhelmingly sacred or “almost human” about an embryo. I’d guess that the anti-abortion crowd overlaps almost completely with the anti-embryonic-stem-cell crowd because the rationale is the same for the two. But that doesn’t mean that the converse is true: the pro-choice crowd is not using stem cell research as a red herring to promote their cause.
It’s only a ban on federal spending, what’s the big deal?
I’ve heard this a lot. It’s the idea that the federal ban does not ban the research, only federal spending, so what’s the big deal? The research can still happen with private / business funding, right? This line of reasoning is either ignorant or deceitful.
I’ll be charitable and assume that it’s mostly ignorance of how research funding works. Stem cell research is not a “right around the corner” commercially viable line of inquiry yet. It’s basic research, meaning that it’s just trying to understand the fundamentals to enable other, more application (medicine) oriented research later. I’m a big free-market guy, but basic research is very hard to get funded by free enterprise. It’s got a long time horizon for payoff, and that payoff is very uncertain. The whole reason for federal funding of basic research is to fill this gap, so that the basic research will still happen. So losing federal funding means a loss of the overwhelming source of funding for this type of work, and its a type that’s very hard to replace. California tried with some huge state level funding. But ultimately this research is just moving out of the US.
Also note that if you exclude the top 2 companies, biotech is a money-losing industry. It’s actually lost a lot of money. The private sector for biotech just can’t afford to do basic research, or anything that doesn’t have a short term payoff.
A second point regarding the realities of funding is that it becomes effectively impossible to separate your research so that you can do both stem cell research with private money and non-embryonic work with federal money. Lets say I buy a centrifuge for my regular, federally funded lab. Normally I could use that centrifuge for any of my research projects. If I want to do stem cell research I need a separate lab, with it’s own centrifuge.
Ok, so that’s not so terrible is it? Then what about utilities? Electricity, water, air conditioning? That has to be broken out into a separate bill to my cost code. You need a completely separate, completely independent lab. You have to demonstrate that no federal dollars are supporting your stem cell lab in any way. I was in university when this was being discussed and people were just overwhelmed trying to figure out how to just separate the expenses. It’s a tough challenge that adds a lot of overhead just to keep your books straight.
I think the other side of this “what’s the big deal” argument is people who claim “why should the federal government fund this research or choose what kind of work to support? Let the market decide!” I’m pretty libertarian, and think there’s almost nothing the government does that couldn’t be done better by private enterprise. But I do think that funding long term basic research is one of those things that the market doesn’t do well. On the time horizon that the market, as it stands today, likes to invest, there’s no incentive to put money toward things with a payoff that’s decades off, especially where the payoff wouldn’t necessarily be for the investing organizations.
It’s true that the public nature of this funding is what makes this an issue, and it definitely deserves discussion. But when you say “don’t fund it federally and let the market decide” are you proposing and end to federal funding of research? I think this is where the deceit comes in.
The debate is not about private funding of research. It’s about embryo rights. I don’t think it’s honest to say that you are opposed to ESR funding because the private sector can handle it, if what you really mean is “I’m opposed to all federal research funding.” If that’s what you mean, then say it as such. It’s like saying “they should ban the Toyota Prius because I think all cars should be banned.” That’s just a ridiculous argument. Say “all basic research should be funded by charities like the Gates foundation, or we should rely on private companies to fund research with 20+ year potential payoffs.” I don’t believe that this is actually the position held by proponents of the “let the market decide” faction. I think they are using this as a smokescreen or another angle of attack for the cause of embryo rights.
Smokescreen - cord blood and adult stem cells / alternate research avenues
In all fairness (and this is probably why scientists lose public debates), cord blood and adult stem cells do have a lot of potential. They are interesting research areas in their own right. But there’s a problem with presenting them as a substitutable replacement for embryonic stem cells. It will require a great deal of research and money to bring adult stem cells to “feature parity” with embryonic cells. We’re talking years of work and a lot of money. You might think that’s ok, as long as you get to the same place, right?
The perspective of therapeutics research is that when you turn away from a more promising path to a therapeutic you are literally choosing to let patients die. Our feeling is that the years of work trying to (potentially) get cord blood cells or adult stem cells to the level of embryonic stem cells are going to translate to years on the back-end where patients are dying that might otherwise have had a treatment by that time. It’s all potential, right. Potential therapy, potentially adapt cord blood cells, etc. But that’s the way at least my industry works with drug development. You estimate the odds of technical success and weigh that against the number of patients (aka market size) to determine your priorities.
I’m sure you are all aware of that trade off, at least on some level. Working on adult stem cells means a longer path to the same therapeutic (if it’s possible at all), by definition. And that, by definition, means patients are suffering or dying for longer than they have to. That’s all pretty self-evident I think. But I want to point it out because, to people who actually do this work, it’s a very real concern. If I botch an experiment or mess up a time line at work and a molecule that I’m working on is delayed, that means people are dying because of me. That’s the reason you keep hearing it from the researchers. The feeling is that you are saying to a researcher “turn away from this promising avenue, and choose to let these people die.” It’s a different feeling when it’s you doing the work.
Of course the flip side to that is that the embryonic stem cell opponents think that every destroyed embryo is a murder, and a lost human life. They see it as if I’m asking “let me kill these potential humans today, for sure, so that these other sick/dying people might be saved years from now.” Again, it all comes back to your attitude toward these undifferentiated hollow balls of 50 cells.
Where’s the progress?
I’ll briefly touch on the silly claim of “why haven’t we seen any wonderful cures yet if stem cells are so great?” That’s just a profoundly ignorant position. I’m working on a molecule right now that was identified over 10 years ago, and we are producing it with an established technology. We’re still in phase 2 clinical trials today (meaning, no verdict yet on whether it actually works). If you are expecting medical breakthroughs on a fundamentally new type of biologic (which is a particularly complex type of therapeutic) in just a couple of years, then you have no idea, at all, how drug discovery and development works. Drug development is slow. Research is slow. And basic research (which I consider stem cells to be) is the process of trying to get a handle on the science so that an application can be found.
Intellectual Honesty
Intellectual honesty is all any researcher wants in this debate. Most of us are not politically inclined. We almost all think embryonic stem cells are the way to go based on technical merit, and I’ve never met one who didn’t think that. We just want an honest public debate about whether this is something that deserves public funding. Researchers know they have to do work that the public approves of (or doesn’t disapprove of) to get those dollars. That’s not a surprise to anyone.
The thing that just burns me up is the dishonest presentation of the technical merits. I don’t know that this is true, but it feels like the anti-stem-cell crowd thought they were losing the public debate because of the possibilities of the technology, and decided to start muddying the technical waters with bullshit.
I’m not saying the stem cell crowd would just roll over and stop debating if the public decided against stem cells. But the current misrepresentation has really just got scientists sort of flabbergasted. “B-b-but thats… that’s just not true? How can you be saying that when it’s clearly not true?” The thing with researchers is that they are not politicians. We have all of our debates in conferences or meetings full of highly knowledgeable peers, and a complete falsehood would be immediately laughed down. This is my opinion, but I think researchers have no idea how to effectively respond if someone says something that’s just a bald-faced-lie.
So maybe my saying “let’s have an intellectually honest debate” is a way of whining “why don’t you fight fair?” I don’t know. Politics is a mess. But it seems like a disservice to the public if you have to distort the facts to get what you want.
Please don’t get caught up in conspiracy theories about some abortion agenda with respect to stem cells. Don’t buy into the bullshit about there being equally good options out there other than stem cells. There’s nothing out there with the long term promise of embryonic stem cells. It’s not about “oh look there are other options.” It’s about saying that embryos are human, have rights, and have value. So if that’s what you believe, then say that.
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