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Massuchusetts Stem Cell Debate

February 19, 2005

The Boston Globe publishes their account of embroyonic stem cell alternatives. Here is a fairer summary, and here is the transcript of the President's Council on Bioethics meeting last December where Dr. William Hurlbut of Stanford University proposed a way of getting embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying embroyos. Using a techniques called "altered nuclear transfer" embryonic stem cells would be made available without creating embroyos.
A human embryo is defined as any whole, living member of the species homo sapiens in the embryonic stage, which includes the stages of zygote, morula, and blastocyst. A human embryo is that which, barring natural failure or lethal intervention, will become what everybody recognizes as a baby.
First Things explains "altered nuclear transfer" as a type of embroyonic stem cell that once created never could and never would become a baby and, it therefore follows, is never a human being at any point. It is so to speak, human material, as an amputated ear is human material. Otherwise it could not provide human stem cells. But it is not a human being. It is human life but it is not a human life.
Contrast this explanation with Peter Koutoujian's statement (a Waltham, MA Democrat who is cochairman of the Legislature's Public Health Committee.)

This is science proposed by a nonscientist. This gentleman is a medical ethicist and his theory has been debunked by research scientists throughout academia. Even if this can be done, he's presenting a compromised entity. It is not the same as an embryonic stem cell. It is a damaged embryo so you can't even compare. You can't use apples to make orange juice.

With closed minds, and agenda driven politician's like Peter Koutoujian, Mitt Romney has a fight on his hands.