The Holy Grail of reprogramming
A new era for stem cells?

		Making Sense  Out of Bioethics  Fr. Tad  Pacholczyk

The recent discovery that regular old garden-variety skin cells can be converted into highly flexible (pluripotent) stem cells has rocked the scientific world.

Two papers, one by a Japanese group, and another by an American group, have announced a genetic technique that produces stem cells without destroying (or using) any human embryos.

In other words, the kind of stem cell usually obtained by destroying embryos appears to be available another way. All that is required is to transfer four genes into the skin cells, triggering them to convert into pluripotent stem cells.

It has been called "biological alchemy," something like turning lead into gold. Many are hailing "cellular reprogramming" as a breakthrough of epic proportions, the stuff that Nobel prizes are made of, a kind of Holy Grail in biomedical research.

Changes the ethical discussion

As important as this advance may prove to be scientifically, it may be even more important to the ethical discussion. It offers a possible solution to a longstanding ethical impasse and a unique opportunity to declare a pause, maybe even a truce in the stem cell wars, given that the source of these cells is ethically pristine and uncomplicated.

As one stem cell researcher put it recently, if the new method produces equally potent cells, as it has been touted to do, "the whole field is going to completely change. People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about."

Thus, science itself may have devised a clever way to heal the wound it opened back in 1998 when human embryos began to be sought out and destroyed for their stem cells.

Dr. James Thomson (whose 1998 work ignited the controversy, and who also published one of the new breakthrough papers) acknowledged just such a possibility in comments to reporters: "Ten years of turmoil and now this nice ending."

Whether this nice ending will actually play out remains to be seen, but a discovery of this magnitude, coupled with a strong ethical vision, certainly has the potential to move us beyond the contentious moral quagmire of destroying human embryos.

Understanding the implications

Change never comes easily, however, and before we can really change, we need to see the reasons why we should change.

Each of us is, incredibly, an embryo who has grown up. This biological fact stares researchers in the face every time they choose to "disaggregate" a human embryo with their own bare hands.

It makes many researchers edgy, touching them on some deeper level of their being. It makes many Americans queasy and eager to find alternatives.

Dr. Thomson, who has overseen the destruction of numerous embryonic humans himself, had the honesty to acknowledge this fact in comments he made to the New York Times recently: "If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough."

Reprogramming eliminates these ethical concerns even as it offers a highly practical and straightforward technique for obtaining pluripotent stem cells. As Dr. Thomson himself put it, "Any basic microbiology lab can do it, and it's cheap and quick."

Reprogramming is also important because it provides an alternative approach to "therapeutic cloning," a complex and immoral procedure used to obtain patient-specific stem cells. Reprogramming provides patient-specific stem cells as well, but without using women's eggs, without killing embryos, and without crossing moral lines.

Continuing to destroy embryos

The sheer practicality of the new reprogramming approach, coupled with its ethical advantages, really make it a no-brainer. Yet despite all these advantages, a number of voices can be heard arguing that the bio-industrial-complex emerging around destructive human embryo research must be safeguarded and expanded. There are at least three reasons for this.

First, the financial investment that has already been made in this arena is significant, especially considering certain state initiatives like Proposition 71 in California which devote large sums of state taxpayer money to pursue research that depends on human embryo destruction. Once large sums of money are involved, ethics often becomes the first casualty.

Second, some of the scientists who advocate the destruction of human embryos have never really taken the moral concerns very seriously because the creed they subscribe to is the so-called "scientific imperative," namely, that science must go forward, as if it were the highest good. It must be able to do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants, and nobody should be pushing ethical viewpoints to limit what researchers do.

That, of course, is a completely untenable position because we regulate what scientists do all the time. The very mechanism by which we disperse federal money puts all kinds of checks and balances on what researchers can do and there are certain types of research like germ warfare studies or nuclear bomb development that the government strictly regulates already.

Other kinds of research are criminal, such as performing medical experiments on patients who don't give their consent. The idea that we have to allow science to do whatever it wants is little more than "pie-in-the-sky" wishful thinking.

Hedging for abortion

The third reason embryo destructive research will still likely be promoted has to do with abortion. Several astute commentators have noted recently how the whole field of embryonic stem cell research seems to serve as a kind of "hedge" for abortion. In the same way that a garden gets a hedge placed around it in order to protect it, embryonic stem cells are becoming a placeholder for abortion.

If embryo killing becomes incorporated into the way we cure illnesses and maintain our health as a society, then abortion on demand will be more likely to curry favor in our culture as well. If those trying to protect embryos carry the day, pro-abortionists fear that the same ethical arguments will prevail against abortion.

Hope for new era of ethical science

Several factors will therefore influence how this major new stem cell discovery plays out in the future. One thing is clear, however: those renegade researchers, lawmakers, and Hollywood personalities who have long dismissed ethical concerns and advocated human embryo destruction now find themselves at an important juncture because of this breakthrough.

We can only hope that in the wake of this discovery, the siren call of harvesting human embryos will cease ringing in their ears and allow for a new era of ethical science in our society.

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

Honoring a 'wonder woman'

The server did not show for Mass. So I recruited a tiny lady-like girl from the pews. As I scurried about, trying to figure out the microphone and other mysteries, I asked her to light the candles. She didn't seem to hear me. So I asked her again.

She answered, "Father, I can't. Mom won't let me play with matches."

As a good wise woman, her mother was being protective of her precious child because she loved her. This is part of the job description of a good mother now and forever.

A mother's love

A mother's love begins before birth and continues through time into Eternity. The Church teaches that while our bodies come into being through physical processes, our souls are all directly created by God. For nine months our mother bonded with us, body and soul, as she carried us in her womb next to her heart which beat with love for us. She longed to give birth to us and enrich the world with the present of our presence.

Our mother probably gave birth to us in pain. But surely some of her pain was lessened by the joy of holding us in her arms for the first time. After we were born, our mother fed us with milk produced by her own body. In giving us her own milk she came very close to nourishing us with her own body and blood. But only Jesus can give us his body and blood in the Eucharist.

My mother sometimes seemed to be Wonder Woman in disguise. She could take a few scraps of bread and fish and multiply them into salmon loaf that fed many. She could smell a match that someone lit yesterday, especially if I lit it. She was often too busy to call or write, but if she thought I was sick, depressed, or wounded in the heart, she would shower me with phone calls. Though she claimed poor vision, she could spot my perpetually untied shoes a mile away.

Despite the fact that she never understood the religion of baseball, when I started a team, she supported me and bailed me out many times. Once too, she sent me an article about the danger of chewing pencils. I think I know why?

Teaching their children to pray

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2685, the family is the domestic church. The family is where God's children learn to pray "as the Church" and to persevere in prayer (as we did.) Like the Blessed Mother, Mom taught us to pray by praying with us. She helped me to learn my morning and evening prayers and prayers before and after meals.

Mom also led us in the family rosary. Even after I was ordained, occasionally she told me not to slouch, but to kneel reverently when I prayed the rosary. Nor was she hesitant to order Dad to quit mumbling the Hail Mary.

My mother lived what she believed. She prayed for me every day. She scared the daylights out of me when she asked if I ever thought about my vocation. But she was just doing her job of Mom.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 239, says, "God's parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood." An old Zulu proverb says, "When a thorn pierces the foot, the entire body bends over to pull it out."

I remember fondly when Mom, as a member of the Body of Christ, helped to remove the thorn that was infecting my uncle's dignity. My uncle, the father of 13 children, lost his job. He had no success in finding another. His son, now a priest, said that it was the first time that he saw his dad cry. My mother heard about this and informed her brother who gave him a job that helped to restore his dignity.

When Dad died, Mom caught me grieving. She lifted my drooping spirit when she said, "You know, your dad was proud of you!" I didn't realize this. This is why these words choke me up every time I recall them.

Someone said the best gift a mother can give to her children is to love their father. Mom did. She modeled for us how to love our father on earth as in heaven. She and Dad were my primary teachers of religion and models of values.

Honor mom on Mother's Day

We should honor our mom every day. But Mother's Day is a special day when we show our love and respect for our mom for loving us for a lifetime.

At a memorable retreat, a young man said, "My mother may not be the best mother. But she is the only mother I will ever have. And I love her very much." But we also have Mary, our spiritual mother, watching over us from heaven.

Let us wish Mary and all mothers a happy Mother's Day. And let us make them both proud of us by being the best person we can be. Perhaps this is our best Mother's Day gift.

Fr. Don Lange is pastor emeritus of the Diocese of Madison.