The Lorax hears a Who: Stem cell research
By Amy Laura Hall

"Should I put this speck down?" Horton thought with alarm. "If I do, these small persons may come to great harm. I can't put it down. And I won't! After all a person's a person. No matter how small."

-From Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss

For proponents of embryonic stem cell research, those who oppose the destruction of blastocysts seem no less irrational than Horton, trumpeting and pleading for the sake of a small speck of dust. How can anyone determine the status of this tiny bit of human matter? As Dr. Bernadine Healy, former director of the National Institutes for Health, exclaimed in frustration at a recent Johns Hopkins panel, "we might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!" Or, in Horton's case, how many Whos exist on a speck on a clover.

Should Americans endorse and fund embryonic stem cell research, potentially one day to treat Parkinson's disease, heart failure, and juvenile diabetes, to name a few possibilities? The argument for the research often goes something like this. On one side of the scale we have a child who must every day draw blood, submit her body to an invasive, unpredictable insulin pump, and worry whenever she feels queasy that she might end up in the emergency room. On the other side of the scale we have, well, nothing; a mere speck of cells, indiscernible to the naked eye. Only a crazed elephant would conclude that the speck of cells registers more moral weight.

This is the basic scenario narrated in argument after argument by research advocates. A living person vs. a mere blastocyst. The imagery is compelling in part because it trades on an almost visceral fear of reproductive coercion. If I take the status of the embryo seriously in my moral evaluation of embryonic stem cell research, then do I not ineluctably join forces with pro-life extremists who seemingly care more about formless early embryos than the real women who carry them?

This scenario is duplicitous. As research advocates ask us to choose between the plight of a suffering human and respect for a simple human cell, we may be sufficiently distracted from the larger, multi-million dollar, pharmaceutical context that surrounds the supposedly simple "which of these two matters more" scale of moral evaluation. Citizens are not choosing in a conflict between one particular human and another entity, linked in some way that would give such a scale meaning.

Unlike abortion, embryonic stem cell research does not involve the struggle between a woman and the fetus she is carrying-between two interconnected entities in conflict. We are faced instead with the decision for or against an elaborate, systematic industry of blastocyst production and destruction.

For the last several years, I served with a small group of pastors and scholars that worked on a United Methodist Bioethics Task Force convened by the denomination's Board of Church and Society. After months of discussion, the group drafted a call to ban all human cloning and to limit embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) to the use of the "excess" embryos created in the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The proposal also explicitly stated the grave moral boundary trangressed with so-called "therapeutic" cloning for stem-cell research.

Most controversially, the group took on the question of IVF and the production of "excess" embryos and counseled United Methodists to pursue adoption and foster care rather than IVF.

When the United Methodist General Conference discussed the proposal at its Pittsburgh convention in May, it vitiated the original document. The revision committee rewrote the report by striking in particular the contributions of the moral theologians. It removed the entire section on IVF, endorsed the donation of excess embryos, removed almost all language of caution, peril, and repentance, and supported people "who wish to enhance medical research by donating their early embryos."

Turning to Dr. Seuss
In order to step back and perceive the larger context and the larger choice we are making, we need to switch from one beloved Dr. Seuss story to another, The Lorax. Consider the question of embryonic stem cell research with the voice of the Lorax shouting in your ear.

"He was shortish. And oldish. And brownish. And mossy. And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy. Mister! he said with a sawdusty sneeze, I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues."

In Dr. Seuss' story, the Once-ler chopped down Truffula trees in order to produce thneeds-strangely shaped turtleneck sweaters. The Once-ler is confronted by the short and mossy Lorax who tries to stop the chopping down of the Truffla trees. The Lorax said, "Sir! You are crazy with greed. There is no one on earth who would buy that fool thneed!"

The Once-ler, however, was not about to stop chopping down the Truffla trees. He knew, as do all good entrepreneurs, that he could not keep his factory humming without creating a broader need for the thneed. Thus he claimed, "It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat. But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that. You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets! Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!"

At the risk of seeming shortish, mossy, sharpish, and bossy, I submit that embryonic stem cell research is wrong because it treats yet another important part of creation as grist for the biotechnological mill, as stuff for the scientific taking. For many opponents of embryonic stem cell research, this is the most salient feature of the decision facing citizens. Will Americans sink ever further down the slope of treating all forms of life as serviceable materials? This is where those who want to link abortion and embryonic stem cell research are missing a crucial point. It is one thing to accept the legal necessity of abortion in our present context. It is another to accept the full-scale production, marketing, and destruction of incipient human life as a part of a vast business that Barbara Ehrenreich called in 1970 the Medical-Industrial Complex. Some of us suspect embryonic stem cell research is yet another step toward the commodification of everything and the objectification of everyone.

Many who oppose embryonic stem cell research suspect that the industry will practice a similar "research bait and switch," as the Once-ler did.

First, you hook the public with the promise of life-saving therapies for people suffering from disease then, in order to make the pursuit actually lucrative, you begin researching for more broadly applicable products. In the next 10 years, the research could possibly yield therapies for juvenile diabetes, but to suggest that we will not also see the emergence of more generally marketable products defies economic sobriety. Note that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) already calls embryonic stem cells a "veritable fountain of youth." Indeed, there is a thneed that everyone needs!

Some Lorax fans may insist that blastocysts are not like Truffula trees. Hugging trees is one thing. Speaking up for the embryo is altogether too wacky. But such unlikely bedfellows as Europe's Green Party and the Pope see the corporate production and destruction of human embryos as a part of a larger, life-grinding vice called greed. Strangely enough, the Roman Catholic Church sounds more like Galileo on this point than the scientific community-human beings are not the center of the universe, and the unmitigated Western pursuit of health, entertainment, and comfort is a sickness to be feared more than the sicknesses we seek to cure.

The power to create incipient human life in vitro is recent, and it seemed morally apt for a time to draw boundaries around the use of human embryos. For a brief interlude in medical ethics history, the human embryo carried a kind of cultural, almost iconic, moral weight that prohibited its creation merely for its destruction. This was the result of a kind of uneasy agreement between those who believe that human embryos are human life and those who think that supposing something like that about embryos is necessary, given our apparent proclivity to treat all marginal forms of human life (not to mention non-human forms of life) as mere things for neglect, disposal, or mere use.  But, the mere uses now beckon, the pharmaceutical R&D teams scheme, and the fragile moral boundaries seem now absurdly artificial.  Some of us suspect that, with the promise of "therapeutic" cloning on the horizon, previously fragile boundaries that govern the necessary "harvesting" of human ova from economically vulnerable women will likely begin to erode as well.

If I put my ear to the clear slide under the microscope and listen, I do not hear a Who as Horton may have ("After all a person's a person. No matter how small"). If I back up, however, to take in the embryonic landscape that surrounds that microscope, I hear the collective shouts of imperceptible beings.

Amy Laura Hall is assistant professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.



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