Salt of the Earth: Catholics call for an end to embryo research

Social justice news
April 2001

Catholic Relief Services web site brings in donations, award
Catholics call for an end to embryonic stem cell research
JustFaith joins the Catholic Charities family
Movieland's war on drugs could have real-world influence
Mr. Bush goes to Washington: a presidential track record
Rediscovering women's work in church history
We're not just skin and bones anymore

Catholics call for an end to embryonic stem cell research
Whatever the possible medical benefits of embryonic stem cell research, human embryos should not be destroyed to further science, said a group of Catholic organizations and individuals in a statement released in March.

The document, signed by more than 100 Catholic leaders from organizations such as the Knights of Colombus, the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, described embryonic stem cell research as "intrinsically evil" and unnecessary. It urged researchers and physicians to pursue options such as adult stem cell studies instead and asked President Bush to forbid the destruction of human embryos in medical research.

"This statement demonstrates that Catholics are united with their bishops in opposing the destruction of embryos for stem cell research," says Deal Hudson, spokesman for the Catholic Leadership Conference, which released the document March 13.

Father Kevin FitzGerald, S.J, a Loyola University assistant professor of medicine who studies cancer and gene regulation, says statements like this can help further the debate over embryonic research. "We've got to get this out into the public sphere," he explains. "Scientists are not malicious or evil, but science does not have to dictate what we do."

FitzGerald says the Catholic leaders' statement is correct in its claim that stem cell research does not have to focus exclusively on embryos in research that inevitably includes their destruction. "Two years ago people were saying we had to do embryonic research, but in the past two years we've seen the incredible flexibility of adult stem cells," he says. "As far as moving toward therapeutic interventions, adult stem cells are out in the lead."

According to FitzGerald, one example is reseach conducted by PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep. He says its researchers had changed an adult skin cell into a heart cell. In the past, such alteration of a "differentiated" adult cell, that is a cell that had already developed into its role in the body, had been deemed impossible, leading researchers to focus on "undifferentiated" embyonic stem cells, cells that had not yet developed into a skin cell, or a lung cell, etc.

"If that is true, the whole embryonic stem cell research question might become moot," says FitzGerald. He adds that PPL Therapeutics is waiting on patent proceedings before releaseing its results.

Even so, scientists will continue to call for embryonic research, in the name of "good science" FitzGerald predicts, but he insists a line must be drawn. "How does research, just because it's 'interesting' show any special respect to the embryo?" He compares the use of embryos in medical studies to past research that used mentally ill people or African Americans adults as subjects because their humanity was equally undervalued by researchers.—Anne Graber

More info:
The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics
Unnatural selection: how biotechnology is redesigning humanity—from U.S. Catholic

Back to page top