April 13, 2007 - The Stem-Cell Mess

Every once in a while, I have the uncanny experience of reading about myself in the news – not some story in our local weekly, but the national news. Today’s article doesn’t mention me by name, but I’m in there, nonetheless.

The article – an editorial in the New York Times – is about stem cells. I’ve long followed the stem-cell debate with great interest – long before I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s a fascinating case, from the standpoint of Christian ethics: rock-ribbed, inflexible moral absolutism vs. cutting-edge medical science that could save lives.

Which is the lesser of two evils? Destroying a frozen embryo that could – if implanted in a woman’s uterus – develop into a viable human being? Or, holding off on medical research that could result in life-saving treatments?

President Bush believes the first option is the worse evil. The Times editorial doesn’t mince words in saying how wrong the newspaper’s editors think he is:

“...one man, President Bush, and a minority of his party, the religious and social conservatives, are once again trying to impose their moral code on the rest of the nation and stand in the way of scientific progress.... The restrictions on federal financing have led to absurdly complicated and costly maneuvers. Scientists are forced to buy extra equipment and laboratory space with private money to perform off-limits research while using equipment and supplies bought with federal money on the permitted stem cell research. In a shocking example cited during Senate debate, a California researcher who had been cultivating stem cells in a makeshift privately financed lab suffered a power failure but was unable to transfer her lines into industrial-strength freezers in another lab because they were federally financed. Two years of work melted away because of this inanity.”

I said, just now, that I’m mentioned in this editorial – but only by implication. As a blood-cancer patient, I stand to benefit from stem-cell research, big-time. Every once in a while, that realization hits me like the proverbial ton of bricks. The anonymous patients who can benefit from stem-cell research are people very much like me: in fact, I am one of them.

Earlier today, I sat in the nurses' room at Dr. Lerner’s office, waiting for my monthly port flush. There were two elderly men sitting on either side of me, both there to get shots: one in his arm, the other in his stomach. What were the medicines they were receiving, through those hypodermic injections? Were they developed through cultures taken from stem cells? If so, were the cells harvested before the Federal research ban? Or did they come from one of the approved “lines,” that the Bush administration has determined can still be grandfathered in, under the law?

This isn’t some moral abstraction. There are lives that will be saved, if the restrictions on stem-cell research are dropped. Real, human lives. Maybe the lives of some of the people sitting beside me in the doctors office. Maybe even my life.

No, for me this is no abstraction. It’s personal.